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 going to look at in this video is the Logitech UE 4000 portable on-ear
headphones.Now for those of you who don't know the UE in UE 4000 stands for Ultimate
Ears, which was Jerry Harvey's high end earphone company which was acquired by the computer
peripheral maker Logitech in 2008.
Now for a while we didn't hear much about about Logitech UE and we didn't see many new
products so for a while a lot of people were worried that Logitech killed off the brand.
But just recently Logitech released a whole set of new products including a bunch of portable
headphones, the high end earphone the UE 900 and this headphone here that we're looking
at, the UE 4000, the $99 portable on-ear headphone.
So starting with the design you can see that I got the black pair, but you can also get
them in a white or a flashy purple kind of colour.
First thing I want to say is that for a $99 dollar portable headphone the build quality
is really quite good with the UE 4000.
You get these black gloss plastics here so they do pick up fingerprints pretty easily,
you get lot's of nice soft touch plastics on the inside of the headband, really supple,
soft synthetic leather earpads, and also a very nice rigid metallic - or actual metal
- headband mechanism.
So that all feels really solid, it all feels really nicely put together.
Another neat thing about the UE 4000 is that it comes with a detachable cable with iPhone
remote but the best thing about this cable is that it just terminates in a standard 3.5mm
audio jack so if you break the cable there's no need to get a special cable that only Logitech
makes.
The socket isn't recessed in any way.
You can just plug any after market standard 3.5mm cable into the headphone jack and it
will continue to work.
So I think Logitech should be applauded for really making it better for consumers this
way.
The UE 4000 earcups are on this ball pivot mechanism which makes it really easy to get
a comfortable fit.
So you just pop them on your head, they're lightweight and quite comfortable, they offer
a degree of isolation from outside noise.
Just about the only bad things I can say about this design is that even though it's a relatively
compact and small headphone, it doesn't fold up into any kind of smaller shape for storage.
This is unlike the Skullcandy Navigators, which is another $99 dollar portable headphone
that I'm looking at at the moment.
And the other thing is that the earpads are not replaceable.
So if you wear out the earpads you're going to have to get a new pair of headphones, which
is a little unfortunate.
But overall I would say this is a pretty textbook example of a good design for a pair of portable
headphones.
So how do the UE 4000's sound?
Well I can say that they have a really thick, warm and rich signature.
It's got a definite tilt towards the bass and the mid-bass frequencies, the highs are
fairly rolled off.
They don't have a complete lack of energy in the mids so the vocals and the singers
and singers don't sound completely flat but overall the signature is fairly muffled.
They have a surprising amount of bass punch for such a small headphone and I find that
these kind of signatures do work best when you're on say a noisy train because you don't
have to turn up the volume so high and wreck your ears just to get a sense of the rhythm.
But the sound is fairly congested and it's definitely not as balanced as the bigger brother,
the UE 6000.
So that's a shame it's a bit congested sounding.
So would I recommend the Logitech UE 4000's?
Well I think they're a good design and if you're going to go travelling a lot in noisy
environments I think that they're worth checking out.
However I do think that the sound quality was a little bit of a letdown for me personally.
Now it's also worth checking out my review of the Skullcandy Navigators which are again
a pair of portable headphones with a similar price and I think a better design for portable
use.
However, they have similar issues with the balance of the sound.
In terms of sound quality I'm currently looking at a pair of Audio Technica ES88 and ES10
headphones which I think are some of the better headphones on the market in terms of sound
quality.
So if you want to see when those videos go up just subscribe to my channel and you'll
be notified.
Anyway thanks for watching this video, thanks to everyone who has liked my other videos
and subscribed to my channel.
If you want to tweet at me about gear, I'm @lachlikesathing - and happy listening!