Pamu Scroll the Anti OF Airpods?
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The Pamu Scroll I believe are among the most talked about wireless headphones of the moment. Presently overwhelmingly in video-reviews. Driven by the curiosity of the product, according to the positive feedback they had, I decided to buy them between August and September. After a very slow and cumbersome first shipping phase, after about two and a half months, I had them in my hands.
Packaging:
The pack presented beautifully, with an old-fashioned, massive, bubble wrap casing, designed to protect the small white box inside it. The same shows the beautiful image of the product in the selected color. Everything is well boxed, with good quality plastics to hold everything. The Pamu headphones firmly housed in the stops. A skimpy manual in Chinese and English completes everything.
First approach I would say neither good nor bad. The build quality of the cup returns a pleasant feeling to the touch. Resistant, qualitatively acceptable and above average. Truly excellent finishes, such as the metal edging of the side parts that recall the chosen color. In the house where I have everything in wood, they make their slutty figure, a pity they are not a piece of furniture. I extract them from it and the Pamus activate. Technological magic of the new millennium!
All cool so far.
I observe their shape, I already knew they were in-ear, my very personal beast. The type of headphone that makes me swear most for the level of discomfort / frustration in wearing them. But as it was for IconX 2016, I found my square with the smallest rubber pad. I have shit-shaped ears probably. But back to us … I put the smaller rubber pads (three different standard sizes), taking a good ten minutes to understand the right way to insert them in the ears. After several personal magheggi I arrange them so that they do not escape a sneeze or rapid movement of the head. Very good! I appear on the smartphone (Android), a connection that happens in nothing, probably thanks to BT 5.0.
But let’s move on.
Start with the test validating for me: The call.
I start the dialer, I call my partner (holy woman) and the first thing I hear from the other side is: I feel quite metallic and low. Blasphemy starts, which even the devil from Hell applauded. No problem, I take and I begin to move, imagining it was also a problem of line, especially the low volume, so much so that, in fact, the question is partially solved. The metallic noise no. (no it is not a defect of my product, I gave the most feminine version to my partner, we are always, but in the end it is cool to talk to us like two Autobots).
I go on with the tests, meanwhile the headphones from time to time try to escape from my ears (cursed in-ear). Launch Spotify, which notoriously has the worst musical quality of the three streaming platforms I’m going to use (Tidal and Amazon Music supplied). Bon volume quite good, with that metal notes that I hear very well in calls. I play a little with the volume itself, without getting stuck with equalizations etc, and bringing it to a low volume, that metallic note seems to disappear, but the sound comes out so weakly that I hear my thoughts grind in my head more than the text of Indistructible of the Disturbed. But excellent so I would say!
Postilla: My partner, with different sounds (read, different musical genres – Imagine Dragons) that metallic note, even at acceptable volumes, does not overwhelmingly notice it.
The level of discomfort begins to rise as my desire to send them to the shelf of my bankruptcy purchases (BlackBerry Priv will have a new subject I know). I then remember the price paid, and the level returns to acceptable gradients, at least for the time being. I start to compare them with three other pairs of headphones that I quickly have at hand. My dear 1more Vr, the AKG headphones of the Samsung Note 9 (which at the level of comfort we are at levels that border on crap) and the Aripods. I repeat the two previous experiments. The 1More win easily, but I expected it, having used them for some sporadic live on Twitch I knew very well what the microphone performance was like. AKGs do less well, but still make better than Pamus. After pairing the Pamus with the Iphone 8 Plus, and even here they come out with some well-aimed slap.
The level of discomfort begins to rise as my desire to send them to the shelf of my bankruptcy purchases (BlackBerry Priv will have a new subject I know). I then remember the price paid, and the level returns to acceptable gradients, at least for the time being. I start to compare them with three other pairs of headphones that I quickly have at hand. My dear 1more Vr, the AKG headphones of the Samsung Note 9 (which at the level of comfort we are at levels that border on crap) and the Aripods. I repeat the two previous experiments. The 1More win easily, but I expected it, having used them for some sporadic live on Twitch I knew very well what the microphone performance was like. AKGs do less well, but still make better than Pamus. After pairing the Pamus with the Iphone 8 Plus, and even here they come out with some well-aimed slap.
Another factor for me quite destabilizing. Matching to the device, whatever it is, if it is already connected to another one. Let me explain. Having both the Iphone and Android devices (I have not and I have not only had Note 9) a smartwatch (Apple Watch series 3) and (Gear S3 Frontier first, and now the Galaxy Watch), punctually flap out the same problematic. If they are connected first and then I connect the headphones, if I start the music, obviously this is addressed to the Pamus, if I answer a call, or the audio is started from the normal earpiece, or is turned on the smartwatch (inexplicably at times) .
But there was once it started directly on the Scroll headphones. I found the gabola, between angry curses and teasing in the car. Disconnect the smartwatch, reconnect them directly, activate the call, wait for the ringing noise, attack the smartwatch again. You understand that this thing is unnerving if done during a trip, or in a rapid emergency to answer the phone, where maybe, you walk and you have headphones on which the music flows.
This never happened with Airpods, nor with wired headphones, or with 1More. But on this point I reserve the right to use them again (and God forbid, I paid them), and see if with a smartphone equipped with BT 5.0 the thing goes better. But I strongly doubt it.
Another crack is, without a smartwatch attached, going to answer a call directly from them or extracting them from the cup. Inexplicably, even if they make the mating pling, only one of the two always starts, indifferently whether it is the right or the left. To reconnect the other one, at least I personally, I had to insert it in the case and let it click out again, pling to the background and then the call is heard in stereo.
Summing up
They can go as far as replacing the Airpods (I have read from many quarters how their competitors are or can be, or at least they can compete with other headsets of the same category (don’t take into consideration the initial launch price of the $39 campaign) but well $79 (I go to memory) at the end of the campaign?
For me no.
The reasons are obvious. For a final price of that range, it would be optimal to insert in addition to the rubber pads of different sizes, also the ear-hooks, precisely because the in-earphones are more difficult to find in one ear, the bow helps, regardless of the type of ear structure that one has. Lack of an application that can manage them directly from the smartphone (few headphones have them to tell the truth, but it is a very useful thing). The inability to mate and pair in sync with extraction dilated over time. The fact that the tap on the touch part is such as to drop calls or stop songs accidentally (a problem not encountered with the IconX).
One thing I wondered, would I recommend it to someone, perhaps to give a gift at Christmas or in general, or if maybe they are used to replace a pair of headphones now? At the launch price of the campaign, a very partial yes. At the end of the campaign ($79), a smart buying too.
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