Review: Boomphones Phantom
If you walk around the International CES show in Vegas you will see a lot of people selling headphones. It is a real zoo – with each company trying to do something to make themselves stand out from the others and regretfully most of the time the approach is more stylish than functional. The moment I saw the Boomphones Phantom however, I knew I was going to love them. They are big headphones. I love that. Very comfortable on the head and really cover the entire ear with soft ear cups. Just plugging them in you get a nice sound even before you add the bells & whistles.
And these are impressive bells & whistles – these really are some gee-whiz headphones. First, they have an internal lithium battery pack (recharges via USB) that when switched on gives an amazing bass boost. In fact everyone I demonstrated them on has asked if they were noise cancelling. Nope – hey are just well insulated and very loud (potentially crazy loud). But wait there is more. If you take the headphones off and hit the bomb symbol that is over the left ear cup they turn into pretty good speakers. I don’t mean to downplay the quality of the speakers – the headphones themselves are just SO good that the speakers are just speakers (also nice and loud). And then you remember that a moment ago they were just headphones! It is the ultimate in multifunction audio device. Headphones bundled with speakers. Brilliant! While I am sure that they were designed for younger and hipper audience than myself (kids sharing their tunes) I do enough work on a laptop to see the instant advantage of having loud speakers bundled into really good headphones.
But wait there is more! The headphones are attached via a removable cable – and it comes with two cables: A regular 2-pin cable and A 3-pin cable that has a microphone and volume control which makes it phone friendly. Even better in speaker mode the Boomphones Phantom can be used as a speakerphone – one that you can actually hear! The only thing that could have made this product better would have been Bluetooth but they sell another product (the Pocket Speaker) for that purpose and I will have to be sure to review it soon!
At $150 you really can’t beat the price for the quality.