Etymotic hf3 headphones review

So you've bought your iPhone or iPod and now you need a set of earphones to help you enjoy the music or people's voices a little clearer. In steps the Etymotic hf3 headphones from Etymotic promising to not only make everything sound rosy, but also to give you help in controlling your Apple device when it's still in your pocket.

For those that have been paying attention, you'll realise that the 3 in hf3 stands for the third iteration of the headphones and that means a couple of years experience knowing how to make these headphones work well. We will make no bones about it, we like the Etymotic/ACS hf2 custom fit headphones a lot, so much so that until the hf3's, they were the headphones that this reviewer used on a day-to-day basis.

Aside from two in-ear headphone drivers you get four noise-isolating ear tips to fit your ears to make the most comfortable fit you can. If that isn't enough you'll also get a voucher in the box to pay towards a custom made ear fitting from ACS that is well worth the extra £70.

The custom fit involves you getting a blue goo squirted in your ears and then ACS making a mould of them for you to then be able to wear. If you haven't seen the process, check out this video from last year when we were fitted for the hf2.

But the hf3 aren't just about listening to music, which we will come to in a minute, but about talking as well. As such, the hf3 headset features a three-button control pod with a close-proximity in-line microphone that lets iPhone users pause music and answer a telephone call. iPod, iPhone and iPad users can also adjust volume and skip through music tracks whilst on the go.

In our tests people we called could hear us clearly even in busy restaurants, although most claimed we were very quiet. This quiet problem was easily fixed by turning up the volume on the phone (in our test case an iPhone 3GS) and while that improved the noise levels so the person on the other end could hear us it meant that they became very loud in our ear - such is the quality of the headphones.

The only way to get a comfortable medium between the two was for us to either talk up a bit, to accept that we were to be deafened by them, or to rather stupidly hold the mic up to our face like you see so many people doing, which is a bit of a pain.

The controls are a lot easier to manage and don't come with any problems allowing you to perform basic navigation around your iPod's functions.

In terms of sound quality you get a sound that is rounded, well balanced, although slightly lighter on bass. If you've read our interview with Harmon Kardon's Floyd Toole, you'll know that being light on bass isn't necessarily a bad thing, with a more natural sound being created. Of course you can, and we did, bump the bass up via your device's equaliser setting, and the headphones are cope well enough.