Tough and Flexible Cans from Philips O’Neill: The Stretch

Philips Philippines sent us a demo unit for one of their consumer lifestyle headphones, the Philips O’Neill Stretch Headphones. Let me just clarify though that Philips and O’Neill are two separate brands. Philips is known for their consumer electronics products while O’Neill is known for action sports. They came together to create a line of headphones that’s a marriage of good acoustic sound and the action sports lifestyle brand. The Stretch Headphones represents that vision pretty well.

Our unboxing photos and initial impressions below. As usual don’t forget to read the captions on the pictures since that’s where we put our comments. By the way guys sorry if it’s not the usual high quality photos. I was only able to just my iPhone 4 for the pics (they still look ok though).

Unboxing

Initial Impressions

So what about the sound quality? I was actually very excited to review this because the internet is filled with conflicting reviews. There are people who actually love and appreciate the acoustics while there are some who relentlessly trash it and say that this is just a marketing gimmick. I used this as my primary headphones for a day and I can say that while it does sound okay, it might not pass the taste of hardcore audiophiles. The mids are recessed which takes the level of clarity down. The bass though is pretty good and thumpy. I’ll know more in the coming days when I spend more time with this.

Thanks again to Philips Philippines for the loaner unit! We’ll abuse this as much as possible as per your instructions (since it’s supposed to be durable, hehe).

PS: There’s no official price yet for this product. I’ll post it as soon as I find out.