House of Marley EM-JE030-DR Uplift Drift In-Ear Headphones

General Information

Copied from the Amazon page:
  • 8mm high-performance micro speaker
  • Tangle-free, durable fabric cable and REWIND fabric carry case composed of reclaimed hemp, organic cotton, and recycled plastic bottles (RPET)
  • Microphone with Apple three-button controller

Latest reviews

NeonHD

100+ Head-Fier
Pros: Good powerful bass response

Decent mids

Premium build quality
Cons: Mediocre sound quality

Bass is a bit overdone and not well controlled (leaks into the mids)

Lack of detail in the upper treble (Or lack of any details whatsoever)

Poor sound presentation

Not worth $20
As much as I want to get talking about the sound, I can't deny that these are built very nicely. The high quality fabric cable along with the wooden housings with the aluminum accents just look amazing. Unfortunately the sound quality just doesn't match the nice build quality.

Sound Quality

Let me put it this way: they don't sound bad, but they don't sound good especially for around $20. Sure there's a lot of bass, good mids, and a polite amount of treble, but overall the sound is really artificial.

Sound signature:

This is just your typical V-shaped consumer orientated sound sig. Bass is emphasized as usual. Mids are not recessed, which is good, but nothing to write home about. And the treble isn't recessed either, which is good, but it doesn't stand out.

Sound presentation:

First off, there is nothing dynamic about the sound, so it doesn't sound natural or clear. It rather sounds very congested and artificial, as if the frequencies are competing for each other. Different frequencies in the bass and in the treble all sound very indistinguishable from one another.

Secondly, there is also no sense of space between how sounds are presented, which is quite a letdown considering that lots of other sub-$20 earphones have decent soundstaging and instrument separation.

And lastly, there is little to no detail in the sound. They just present your music in a very superficial manner.

Trust me, your money is better spent on other $20-25 earphones like the MEMT X5, the Xiaomi Mi Hybrids, or the Symphonized NRG 3.0, all of which are available on Amazon.

Even the sub-$15 KZ ED9 and the $10 UiiSii HM7 (currently on sale for $5) is 10 times better than this.

In summary, the Uplift isn't a bad earphone per se, but when compared to today's plethora of excellent budget earphones, things start to get quite ugly for the Uplift.
  • Like
Reactions: PlantsmanTX

Comments

There are no comments to display.
Back
Top