Hi!
Welcome to Lachlan Likes A Thing, a show where I take a thing and see whether or not I like
it.
Now the thing we're looking at in this video is the Skullcandy Navigator portable on-ear
headphones.
Now before you say anything, yes, I know, Skullcandy has historically not had the best
of reputations when it comes to audio quality.
However one thing that made me start paying a bit more attention to the brand was the
article over at Tyll Hertsens site, Innerfidelity, where he interviews Skullcandy's new head
of audio engineering, a Doctor Tetsuo Oishii.
The guy does seem like he knows what he's doing, they've done more testing and they
do seem to be listening, and as part of that new effort towards improving sound quality
they've released new revisions of a lot of their products including the Skullcandy Mix
Masters and the Skullcandy Aviators.
And the new revisions all say "Supreme Sound" on the box so you know that they're new versions.
I'm actually a bit of the fan of the Skullcandy Aviators.
I've always thought that ever since I've heard a friend's pair that they have a warm but
a pretty nice, tight and balanced sound.
So I got the Skullcandy Navigator's out of curiosity, because I wanted to know whether
they could get the sound in a smaller package.
But first off, let's look at the design.
So the Skullcandy Navigators have what I think is a really well thought out design for a
pair of portable headphones.
You have all these solid metal parts throughout the frame of the headphones.
So even though it's light weight it feels very solid and durable.
You have relatively subtle Skullcandy branding here which I actually think is quite a nice
little touch.
Now one thing to note about these earpads is that they are not replaceable, so if you
do wear them out unfortunately you might have to get a new pair of headphones.
Now with the Skullcandy Navigator unlike the Logitech UE 4000 which is another headphone
I looked at with a similar price they fold up into a smaller shape for storage, so that's
really quite convenient.
Another thing cool about the Skullcandy Navigators is that they have a detachable cable with
iPhone remote.
Now one thing unfortunate about the detachable cable is that it just does terminate in a
- sorry - it's pretty stuck in there - it does terminate in a 2.5mm jack and the socket
is fairly recessed so it might be hard to use any other aftermarket cables.
If you break the cable you might have to ask Skullcandy for a replacement.
Now I don't know if the Skullcandy Navigator was designed for people with smaller heads
or I just have an unnaturally large head because I found that I actually basically had to use
the largest size of the headband adjustment to get them to fit right on my head.
So if you have a bit of a bigger head it's worth checking out to make sure these will
fit before you buy them.
The Skullcandy Navigators just pop on here, they're quite comfortable, they do a good
job of blocking out external noise, they do a better job than the Logitech UE 4000.
However they are a bit less breathable than the UE 4000.
So if it's hot weather you might find that they get a bit stuffy.
So how do the Skullcandy Navigators sound?
Well unfortunately they're not nearly as balanced sounding as the Aviators.
They have a really thick, warm, bassy and kind of wooly sound to them.
They're even less balanced than the Logitech UE 4000's which at least had a bit of energy
to the vocals.
These just have a slight dryness to the treble, but not particularly any great amount of energy.
It sounds fairly dull actually to my ears.
The only time I found myself enjoying the sound of the Skullcandy Navigators is when
I was on the train, because of all the external noise I didn't have to turn up the volume
very high on the navigators to get a good sense of the rythym.
But apart from that overall I just found them a bit congested.
And I feel like Skullcandy could have aimed for a bit more of a balanced sound like the
Skullcandy Aviators or even something like the UE 4000.
This is a real shame because I was really relly - sorry - I was really ready to love
these headphones especially because I quite liked the design, it's all quite nice and
portable and it's really well thought out.
So do I recommend the Skullcandy Navigators?
Well unfortunately just like with the Logitech UE 4000 I couldn't really recommend these
if sound quality was your main priority.
However if you do do a lot of travelling in noisy environments these are a really good
option because they do fold up into that compact shape, they are very isolating from external
noise, so they're a good little package and they're quite reasonably priced.
If sound quality was your main priority I'd recommend looking at something like the Audio
Technica ES88 or the Audio Technica ES10.
Now those are two portable headphones that I'm currently making reviews for.
So if you subscribe to my channel you can get an update for when those videos are uploaded.
Anyway thanks for watching this video, thanks to everyone who's Liked my other videos and
subscribed to my channel.
If you want to talk to me about gear I'm on twitter @lachlikesathing - and happy listening!