I'm definitely impressed with these little earpods. Well, maybe not super impressed, as this is what headphones that ship with iPhones/MP3 players SHOULD should like. These are good enough for most casual listeners to be fairly happy. I am more of a Beyer/Grado guy for some reference.
As I have had these guys for ~24 hours now, it is possible that the sound quality may change during burn in, i have noted the following:
Bass is pronounced, especially the midbass. On bass heavy tracks you can hear it extend below 80 Hz without much effort. The bass does bleed a little bit into the midrange. Bass is a bit tubby sounding. The boost is annoying on acoustic guitar music as you can hear hand noise, string percussion etc.
Mids are thick and a bit blocky, no real grain to the sound. The bass bleed into the midrange may be to blame. Overall the mid are typical of a 'recorded' rather than a 'live' sound... ie. NOT like grados or beyers, more like sennheisers.
Highs pretty much suck and I think only people that are super sensitive to highs will not want to EQ these. I think there may be a bit of a Sennheiser notch to the lower treble frequencies as well. I find that the sound quality increases drastically when adding some (or alot of) extra treble. There does seem to be a little bit of 'wobble' between the L and R channels when the treble is boosted, but it is subtle. Boosting the treble also clips a bit of the highs, but I prefer this over pressing the treble frequencies so far down that i feel like i am listening through earmuffs.
Upon increasing the treble, I am happy to say that a significant amount of detail in the music is revealed, and a bit of the midrange thickness is thinned to a more enjoyable listening experience (IMO).
Soundstage is good as noted by other authors, this helps the separation and thin the overall thick sound of these headphones. Dyanmics are ok, not too bad for these guys. All in all they are pretty good, but still slaughtered by my Brainwavz M1 and Grado SR60 (all i can compare to at this point).
No real isolation, but better than the previous model. Still have no idea how the buttons work on the mic.
For comparison, i think they kind of sound like beats solos, and are quite similar to the MEelctronics M9.