Bowers & Wilkins has departed from their high-end roots in speaker manufacturing to mainstream consumers with the C5 earphones. The company makes claims of a finely calibrated sound and a mechanism called Secure Loop that supposedly holds the earphones in place for the listener. Sounds promising, lets see what the deliver.
These earphones are quite well constructed boasting a high-end look and feel with an aluminum finish and tungsten trim. The structure is solid and the ear pieces are slim cylinder-like shapes which is a bit of a departure from the conventional L-shaped earphones you find out there.
The Secure Loop can be adjusted and the claim is that they ‘work perfectly with anyone’s ears’ however that doesn’t seem to quite be the case. If you can however get a comfortable fit, you might wonder why no one has thought of such a mechanism sooner. Here it works a little differently than just finding the tip-size for the earbud and plugging it into your canal. First you need to secure the loop and then place the earphone into your ear. The loop actually seems to be a little disruptive as it’s a bit of a pain.
The C5’s come with iPhone ready wiring that enables you to make phone calls, and an attached remote that lets you adjust the volume, switch tracks. However with Android devices and older iPhones you lose some functionality such as skipping tracks on the iPhone and volume control on Android devices.
The C5’s tend to carry an essential, even sound and can get the goods from many different kinds of music which works well with audiophiles that use earphones. The sound you get is neutral and has a balanced quality about it that doesn’t crash the bass into your skull by enhancing the lower-regions unnecessarily.
Actually there is a full-bodied sound that doesn’t quite smother your senses but rather massages them. Open is the word. Actually the stack up very well to full-size headphones as there is a clean sound and takes care of details nicely, assigning them to the regions where can be best appreciated.
Making telephone calls with this set is a piece of cake and they handle it well. You wont have issues with people not hearing you via the integrated microphone even on the streets of a busy metropolis with traffic noises all around.
The finely tuned, clear and clean sounf impresses, and the rounded out tones are wonderful. These are excellent earphones. However a drawback might be that the earphones dont quite fit your ear the way you like, or maybe they do. However with the different size tips that are available you should be able to find something there with the Secure Loop design. Essentially the Bowers and Wilkins headphones feature wonderful sound quality, but even still may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
