- As one of the Internet's most prominent style icons,
AirPods?
More like poverty pods.
Abyss?
Ew,
where's the Gucci logo?
But Louis Vuitton your phones.
Ooh, my wallet senses are tingling.
At $1200, I can rest assured that if I buy these,
not only will I be getting the best of the best,
but I'll know that I am the best of the best, right?
- They specialize in cutting up leather
and sewing it together.
What exactly makes you think that any of that translates to
designing electronics?
- Oh, shut up poor Linus, you're just jealous.
- Jealous?
You're jealous of me and my segues to our sponsors.
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(upbeat music)
Like most of you,
I'm skeptical that the LV Horizon earphones
can live up to both their lofty price tag
and the bold claims on their product page.
But let's give them a chance.
Okay?
Right out of the gate,
you have to give credit where it's due.
When you buy something this expensive,
you expect an experience
from the moment that you open the box
and Louis Vuitton delivers.
The outer box opens to reveal...
Wait, is this real leather?
Got to admit, that's pretty extra.
You unzip your little luggage and
woo, wow,
this charging case
is quite the statement.
The earphones themselves are beautifully displayed
through a sapphire glass top
bearing the iconic Louis Vuitton monogram around the crown,
the body is made of this sandblasted steel
that has a reassuringly, expensive feeling weight to it
and it features
what feels like a basically seamless ceramic bottom
for wireless heat charging.
If your top priority,
is making sure that everyone knows
what brand of your phones you bought,
then boy, howdy did you ever come to the right place.
The lid opens with a satisfying springiness
and closes with a nice clack
or at least it did.
After only a few days of gentle use,
the case now has kind of a grainy
and looseness to the hinge that
frankly speaking, feels more H and M than Louie V
and for all its external niceness,
the plastic on top where the earphones actually reside
where you're kind of like,
fumbling and putting them in
was so easily scratched by my gorgeous painted fingernails
that it made it look all scuffed and abused
after just two weeks.
Thankfully the same is not true of the headphones,
which still look exactly as luxurious
as the day my assistant wired them the money.
As for whether the luxurious look transfers to the owner,
well,
I'll let you guys, be the judge of that.
(camera shuttering)
Gorgeous baby,
but I'm more concerned with how they function.
In terms of features,
they have everything that you'd expect from a pair of
premium, true wireless earphones.
Bluetooth 5.0,
active noise canceling
and proximity sensors for auto pause and play.
And I gotta be honest with you guys,
I love the interface.
There are physical buttons on both earphones
that you press down from the top,
which is way better than inconsistent touch controls
or buttons that cause you to mash the earphones
ever deeper into your ear canal.
The right one has a single button
for pause, play and change tracks
and the left has two buttons for volume control.
Thank you
LV
for not forcing me to engage with the voice assistant,
just to change the volume of my music.
You can also use these buttons to toggle
between active noise cancellation and transparency mode.
As for how they sound however,
truthfully, they're mediocre at best.
They feature a strong V-shaped sound signature
and while the highs do have nice detail
without crossing into harsh territory,
the base is an absolute ruddy mess,
I believe is the term for it.
Very low frequencies get boosted
so much more than the mid base,
that low instruments that sit
above the thump of the kick drum
get completely lost in the mix
and if there's a baseline that moves up and down the neck,
it becomes really distracting
how much that instrument can vary in volume.
So if you're someone coming from a mid forward headphone,
like Apple's AirPods pro,
you may find your music sounding a little bit hollow
and this trend continues looking at the quality of the
Horizon's active noise cancellation.
It's serviceable,
aided significantly by the strong noise isolation
of their in ear canal design,
but it falls really flat
compared to the competent Galaxy Buds Pro
and the excellent AirPods Pro.
Both of which
and I can't believe I'm saying this,
are cheap in comparison.
Thankfully, the ANC isn't unpleasant to use.
Like I didn't get a strong pressure sensation
on my eardrums,
but there is a noticeable background hiss when it's active
and it also didn't manage to do much
to minimize constant background noises
like an airplane engine or a GPU fan,
let alone a maniac on a rooftop,
screaming about the incredible products at lttstore.com.
The headphones feature Qualcomm app decks
for low-latency content consumption
and mobile gaming though,
how much content you'll want to consume is
tough to say because
they're really that comfortable.
Even with the smallest ear tips,
you've got to really push these into your ears
to get a good seal.
Though again, credit where it's due,
their claims of long battery life,
appear to hold water.
I fell asleep wearing them on my flight to Tel Aviv,
and I woke up pleased to find out that they were,
A, still running hours later
and B, that my ears didn't hurt though
I never forget that I'm wearing them
like I do with my Daily Driver AirPods Pros.
Oh,
excuse me.
My quality is decent,
but I got to say it falls apart a little bit
if you're surrounded by noise or traffic.
(loud screeching)
With that said,
nobody chooses the Horizons
for any of the stuff that I just talked about.
Even for shoppers in this price band,
they could never justify
how much these cost based on how they perform.
You can only justify their cost
based on how they make you feel.
So let's get back to the packaging.
The box is huge and
we've actually only explored half of it.
I'm sure for $1200 they've
got all kinds of little premium goodies in here.
We've got a braided USB C to C cable,
along with an A to C adapter and
what appears to be a leather cable tie,
classy,
cotton baggy full of bits and bottles,
with some extra ear tips,
we've got some extra ear wings and
each in
individual plastic packages?
Wait, that's it?
Why is this box so big?
I mean, here's a box for AirPods Pros,
(loud banging)
here's a box for an iPhone 13 now with 100% less charger
and this is the box
for the Horizon earphones.
This is a problem.
At lttstore.com,
we've put significant time into making our packaging
more sustainable and to see LVMH,
a multi $100 billion corporation
claim on their website that this
is somehow eco-friendly,
it's frustrating.
I mean it does appear to be mostly made of cardboard,
which is good,
but it also comes with a leather case
that serves no purpose other than
to slow down your access to your earphones,
not one but two of these non-recyclable cotton bags
and unnecessary plastic waste
in a massive box filled with mostly empty space,
meaning that when you ship a crate of these things,
you're shipping mostly air.
I'm not saying it's the worst packaging we've ever seen,
not even by a long shot,
or I'm not even saying that we're so much better
to be very clear,
I'm just saying that calling this eco-friendly
is disingenuous greenwashing
and they need to stop fronting
and that's kind of the main issue with this product.
It's all fronting.
Louis Vuitton wants you to think that this product
is better than it is
so that people who want to look
and feel richer than they are,
can spend exactly 472% more than these are worth.
How did we come to that figure you might ask?
By dividing $1180
over $250
The price of these,
the Master and Dynamic MWO7 plus earphones.
Why these ones?
Hmm, let me think.
The shape, identical,
the sound, identical,
the controls, identical,
the materials, features, accessories,
identical, identical, identical,
the case, different.
Also the design on the earbuds themselves
is a little bit nicer in my opinion
and the packaging is far more reasonable.
So Louis Vuitton is charging you about $900
for their admittedly nice carrying case
and their design work here,
and a little leather pouch with a zipper on it.
Though that's not really that strange actually, is it?
What is strange is that Master and Dynamic
are a reputable headphone brand,
known for their quality products
and yet their name is absolutely nowhere to be found
on the Horizon earphones.
Nowhere on the product, packaging or website
do they even hint at the partnership like you might see with
LG'S with Meridian
or Samsung's sound by Samsung, excuse me,
I mean AKG.
Maybe they don't want to confuse their potential customers.
I mean, I'd be confused if I was spending $1200 on
18 grams of goods and getting something other than
solid 24 karat gold.
To be clear,
I don't have a problem paying more for high quality stuff.
That's totally okay.
I bought cinema cameras back in the day
to elevate our content for $50,000 a piece.
There's a reason that LTT products
aren't as cheap as a lot of other merch,
I care about quality and I care about longevity.
I just also care about value
and these earbuds,
they're going to be so worthless
in a couple of years when their battery dies,
that they will almost certainly end up in a landfill
at that point.
So while I will not go as far as to say,
never buy anything from Louis Vuitton, it's stupid,
I will say that if you really want
to buy something from Louis Vuitton,
buy a bag or a watch,
something that could last you a long time conceivably,
that you could pass down to your spoiled children
or at least resell later
or better yet actually just don't
and buy something sensible,
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If you guys enjoyed this take down
of an overpriced audio product,
maybe you'll enjoy our
Streets by 50 Stormtrooper edition video.
I think that's the last time I
dunked this hard on something this unnecessary.
Vuitton.