Far End Gear XDU Pathfinder + Mic Single Stereo-to-Mono Noise Isolating Earphone, Reinforced Cord

After using it almost every day for two years, the sound is as a good as ever, but the play button just recently stopped working. I've had earphones that shorted out after two weeks, so for this to be the only problem after that much time, I'm still satisfied.

I am not sure why other people are leaving negative reviews. I have only good things to say about this product. The ear piece is just heavy enough and sounds fine for anything you throw at it. The fact that the cord is rigid and coils up is great for car use because it can be wrapped up and put away quickly. The button on the mic portion works great with my phone. By holding down the button for about 3 seconds I can do voice calling, send prompts, answer calls, end calls and it rests in a comfortable place near my lower neck.I have owned other brands that claim to do what this brand does and they were all absolute junk. Cords ripping out, ear pieces falling out, microphone stops working just to name a few.I just ordered a 2nd one because sometimes I use this at work. It's nice to be able to hear what going on in your other ear while listening through the ear piece.

Works fine and seems to be well-built to last, definitely an improvement over my computer's built-in microphone, but this microphone records more background hiss than my computer's built-in mic or my hand-held mics, and the earbud seems to re-equalize the sound to be too heavy on the bass and is not as pleasant to listen to as my headphones or my computer's built-in speakers or my powered external speaker.

Recently, I was doing a lot of hotel room, laptop based Zoom calls, and the sound from the built in little laptop mic isn't great. If I used a lav mic, that's tiny and easy to carry, but it would turn off the laptop speakers, so that's not an option. (2) I'm not gonna wear a big earmuff headset in my hotel room. (3) I wondered about a single-sided headset like this (less geeky than having double cords dangling back and forth).On my main office laptop, on dedicated video recording software (OBS), the XDU earpiece had a bit of buzzing, noticeable. The mic sounded good although quite a bit less gain (volume) than my $50 lav mic.On my small travel laptop, recording into Zoom software, the XDU earpiece did not have buzzing. However, instead, there was noticeable crackling and intermittent mild buzzing in the Mic channel.Overall, with my goal of using this for better mic sound on Zoom calls on travel, it probably doesn't hit the mark because it seemed touchy or buzzy on the mic channel on my travel laptop.On a final test, listening to music on an iPhone adapter, I didn't have high expectations, that's not the expected use of a budget mono earbud, but anyway, it was "average" or "meets not very high expectations" sort of like good AM radio.##If I wanted better sound on hotel Zoom calls, and avoid the internal mic, I could use a little 3.5mm mic/audio splitter and plug my good $50 lav mic in the lav plug and plug a mono earbud in the audio plug.

I am very pleased with the quality of this product. The sound is great. It is very durable and rugged. I read in another review that there was a problem with the cable not straightening out after it came out of the packaging. It just stays curled up. This is true. I resolved the issue by taking my wife's hair dryer and blowing it on the cable while pulling it out straight. It resolved the issue. Only took 3 minutes!

I wanted a single ear bud and mic setup with a 3.5mm plug (I have two from previous phones, but they're both 2.5mm plugs). There aren't many to be found. Among the few available, this seemed to be the best choice, so I bought it. The ear bud (hearing the person on the other end of the call) worked fine. However, the person on the other end of the call could literally not make out any words I said. They said they'd hear a slight sound now and then, but nothing they could understand. So I called from my cell phone with the ear bud/mic setup to my home phone's voice mail so I could "hear" it for myself. Sure enough, even with total quiet in the room, I could only make out a few words now and then. I even tried shouting into the mic; this allowed me to "hear" enough to make out most of the words, but was still totally unusable. I contacted the manufacturer and they were super helpful. They immediately sent out a new one, one on which they said they tested out the mic, and also sent a prepaid label to return the old one. On the positive side, this one did work a little better, but it was still unusable due to very very low sound levels from the mic. I contacted the manufacturer again and they wondered if it was my phone, which was reasonable. I never did get to try it on another phone though, as I had ordered a different one from JLAB (J6MS) and returned the XDU to Amazon. The JLAB one works perfectly, as it should. There is no difference in volume between the JLAB's mic and the phone's mic, as it should be. And it was half the price of the XDU. I really wanted to like the XDU, especially given the EXCELLENT customer service, but customer service doesn't help if there's a design flaw in the product. So bottom line, if you want to use the mic and have people on the other end of the call be able to hear you, look somewhere else besides the XDU.