Ultimate Ears MetroFi 170 Noise-Isolating Earphones

I have been putting the MetroFi 170's through their paces and I must say I'm impressed. For comparison purposes I used a similar quality set of Altec Lansing earbuds and a pair of Shure 110 earbuds. The Shure 110 earbuds are typically regarded as excellent and the Shure name is highly regarded. With that being said these Ultimate Ears actually sound better to me than the Shure set. The mids and highs seem crisper and clearer. Bass is about the same between the two. The biggest difference here is the price. The Ultimate Ears cost about half of what the Shure's cost and for that difference alone I recommend them over the more expensive Shure's. The Altec Lansings are very good earbuds as well but can't quite keep up with the Ultimate Ear's.

The MetroFi 170's are made with high quality materials and I would imagine they will take some abuse. I dropped them several times from about 5 feet onto hardwood floors and they came out unscathed. Two things I particularly...Read more

I bought these headphones in June, and 2 months later, one of the earbuds stopped working. That's fine, I figured. I went on the Ultimate Ears website to get warranty support, and I saw they had a link to Logitech (which owns UE now). Again, that was fine, so I contacted Logitech. After numberous emails and weeks of no responses, I finally heard back from Logitech, and they mentioned that I would need to call Ultimate Ears in order to get warranty support.

I've spent too much time trying to get a replacement set, so I just decided to give up. It's not clear who to contact when you need warranty support, and perhaps that's why they have it set up that way (to discourage people from warranty claims). These headphones were good while they lasted, but I will never buy another Ultimate Ears or Logitech headphone set ever again.

I used to travel for a living, and had an expensive, large, and cushy pair of Sony sound isolating headphones - huge rubber earcups, and some nifty sound neutralizing technology. They were a pain to travel with, as they took up a lot of room and only really worked with batteries in. But they made it possible to hear music or podcasts on the plane, and reduced travel fatigue to a manageable level.

Unfortunately they were delicate. So rather than replace them, I tried a series of other phones. Most of the big ones were either more expensive than my Sonys or worked less than half as well. Earbuds, even the ones with variable-sized tips, just popped out of my left ear. Still I wanted a pair of convenient, lightweight headphones with enough sound isolation to be useful on a plane.

I was pleasantly surprised when I tried Logitech's MetroFi 170 earbuds. They work. Music and podcasts from my iPod were audible on a plane without cranking the volume up to...Read more