Sunday, June 23, 2013

Got Wood? Griffin sends us their Woodtones

Griffin has provided us with their latest headphones, and this is a first for me but these cans come with a real wood housing. The Woodtones come equipped with the wood housing to provide both a stylish look and a unique sound for the 50mm drivers to resonate off of. With three different options to choose based on your preference of wood, Griffen has crafted the Woodtones in Walnut, Sapele, and Beech wood housings. Aside from the wood housings, the rest of these over ear headphones have a soft satin finish, made with lightweight materials, soft cushions, and a removable cable with in line remote also equiped with wood accents.
Now that the fact sheet has been covered, it is time to rip into the packaging and see how Griffin’s Woodtones perform when put up against my music library. Surprisingly the Woodtones are more that just a novelty appearance, I immediately noticed how light they were as it was barely noticable when they were on my head. On top of being shockingly lightweight, the comfortable ear cushions and elastic strap on the top work hard to minimize what little pressure there is during long periods of use, also making longer listening sessions easy with no discomfort. The sound quality was right in the middle of the road for me, They did sound clear but did not stand out in terms of quality and amount of mid rage or bass. This isn’t a bad thing, it is just standard sounding to go with such a loud design, but being that they are right at the hundred dollar mark, most of that amount is going into the design and not so much the internals of these featherweights.
When all is said and done, these headphones stood out to me in two big ways. The first being the design and materials, using real wood for a unique look and easily being the lightest pair of over ear  headphones I have experienced. The other is that for a headphone that has such a unique look and quality to them I was surprised by the sound quality, they do provide a nice, subtle sound when listening but other than that, there was not anything particularly impressive or disappointing about them either. These are definitely for the fan of natural looking cans and less targeted to the audiophiles. My Sapele headphones were always making a statement as just about anytime I had the  headphones on, someone would ask me about them.