That's interesting! Having owned several pairs of the less expensive and lower range Image S4, I had some serious reliability issues with them, with one of the two channels definitely ceasing working past a finite amount of time... If the split in the rubber part is the only issue, that's fine...

According to my personal experience, the Image S4 are great for the sound and their acoustic isolation (the seal provided by the particular oval-shaped earbuds). However, when it comes to durability, even though I use them everyday a lot, they never lasted longer than one year, and for each...