Review: Jabra Rhythm headset

I’m a 3 customer. In fact, I just used my 3 MiFi dongle to start writing this blog post in the “cloud”, from my comfy spot in Boston Tea Party in Clifton Village. I’ve been using 3 for mobile internet for years, and I find them a lot more reliable than cafe Wi-Fi. And their customer service has been good, too.

So, when 3’s agency got in touch and wondered if I’d like to review anything running-related from the iPhone section of the 3 store, I couldn’t see any reason why not.

I chose this Jabra Rhythm headset. Running is hard on headphones and earbuds. They’re at risk from rain, sweat and repetitive strain on the cable, among other things. I’ve got through several pairs since I started jogging, so it’s always good to try out something new and see if I can put another option on my list.

The Jabras are my preferred type of headphones, noise-isolating earbuds. These also feature an iPhone- and Android-compatible remote control and microphone.

They arrived in a distinctive tube with the earbuds inserted into translucent plastic ears. I put them to one side rather than throwing them away; you never know when you’ll need a pair of translucent plastic ears.

First Impressions

The Jabras look good, and the plastics are a decent quality. The lead is nice and long, with a gold-plated 3.5mm jack. They certainly feel better in the hand than the standard Apple headphones that come with the iPhone, though not as good as my current headphones, the Sennheiser MM70. But given that the Jabras are £25 and the Sennheisers are £50, that’s hardly a surprise.

The soft rubber earbuds come in the standard three sizes. Luckily my ears are apparently average, so I never have to fiddle with the small and large pairs that come with this style of earbud. The Jabras fitted snugly and comfortably.

The microphone and remote control drop from the left-hand earbud, just like my Sennheisers, so even if the earbuds weren’t obviously-shaped, I could still easily tell the left from the right. The supplied clip grips clothes and cable fine.

The gold-plated 3.5mm jack looks nice, emblazoned with the Jabra name, though I’m not convinced that the cable’s strain relief is going to be effective.

One oddity was the adapter that came in the tube. It’s listed on the packaging itself as a “phone adapter”, but it’s not mentioned in the paper instruction sheets. Its plug is identical to the plug that’s already on the end of the cable.

The headphones didn’t need this adapter to work on my iPhone 3GS or my (Android) Samsung Galaxy S Wi-Fi – everything, including the remote control and the microphone, seemed to work just fine without it. Which is a good thing, as stacking the plug and the adapter makes for an ungainly and fragile-looking connection that might easily bend or snap in a pocket.

Sound

Being called “Jabra Rhythm”, I was expecting the Jabras to be a bit bass-heavy. There’s a big market out there for people who live in the bass end of their preferred music’s frequencies, and a lot of headphones are aimed squarely at them.

The Jabras didn’t fail to disappoint on that score, emphasising the bass end far more than my preferred Sennheisers. I won’t knock them for that per se; that’s more a question of taste than quality, and the rest of the sound was well-reproduced, with a detailed top end, to my inexpert ears, at least. I’ve certainly listened to £25 headphones that sounded a lot worse.

Since I’ve given up my commute to work, jogging is one of my chances to catch up on my backlog of spoken word podcasts, too (my long run of the week is often accompanied by Build and Analyse.) The Jabras were good for the spoken word; voices sounded rich and clear.

The noise isolation buds are comfy, and work just as well as the ones on my Sennheisers. They pick up some physical cable noise, but no more than any other similar earbuds I’ve tried.

Remote Control

One big disappointment is the lack of volume control. The remote control is a single button with the play/pause/next track/answer calls/etc. function of the middle button on standard Apple headphones. This single, multifunction button works great on the Jabras, with a nice positive click, but they lack the volume up/down buttons.

This is a real loss for runners, as running is one of those activities where it’s tough to reach the volume control buttons on the music player itself, which is likely in an armband or a tight-fitting shorts pocket, or an audio waist pack, or what-have-you.

Microphone

One vaunted feature of the Jabras – and presumably a reason that a phone company like 3 sells them – is the microphone. This has “wind-noise reduction” technology built in.

There’s a really good way to test a microphone’s wind-noise reduction around here, and that’s to take it for a jog down the open ground of the A4 Portway, by the River Avon. That has the bonus of adding road noise into the mix, too.

So, on my jog last Wednesday, I took along the Apple earbuds that came with my phone, my favoured Sennheisers, and the Jabras. I spun the recordings into an Audioboo so that you could compare all three. Incidentally, if you think you have problems untangling your headphones, try untangling three different pairs that have been stirred in a jogger’s pocket for ten minutes. Not fun.

(If you want to skip the intro, the recordings of the three headphones start at 50 seconds in:)

listen to ‘Jabra Rhythm Headset Microphone Comparison’ on Audioboo

The crunching sound from the Apple headphones is them bashing around, unsecured by a clip. They don’t sound bad, but they don’t sound good.

The Sennheisers did better, with less rubbing noise, and the voice punching through more clearly through the background.

The Jabras, however, were pretty bad. Muffled, with a lot of obvious wind noise. My voice didn’t come through anything like as crisply as it did with either the Apple earbuds or the Sennheisers.

That’s a real shame, especially when the microphone is a important selling feature of the phone (“For Music and Calls”, it says on the tube.)

This isn’t a big loss for me, mind you. I’m never going to be that guy jogging along in the Apple adverts, adding “to-do” items to his task-list with Siri as he goes. I’m self-conscious about talking to myself in public, plus I don’t normally have enough breath or concentration to jog and talk at the same time.

But if you bought the Jabra Rhythms to take advantage of their call quality, I think you’d be pretty disappointed.

Verdict

Pros:

  • Good quality materials for the money.
  • Good sound reproduction, though a little bassy for my taste.
  • Generous cord length.

Cons:

  • No volume controls.
  • Poor microphone.
  • “Headphone adapter”, whatever it’s for. If you need to use it, you won’t like it. And it could do with a mention in the instructions.

I’d have liked these headphones much more if they’d spent the money sucked up by the wind-noise reduction technology on fitting them with volume buttons instead. At £25 they’d have been a tempting option compared to spending twice as much on another pair of Sennheisers when my current set die. But without the volume controls, they’re nothing like as jogger-friendly.

That said, the Jabra Rhythm headphones aren’t bad. They seem well put-together, and they sound fine, especially for speech and music from the dancier end of the spectrum. But the microphone is poor, so don’t buy them if you want to make calls from them, especially not while jogging down the Portway in Bristol.

Full dis­clos­ure: I reviewed the Jabra Rhythm headset after being sent it, for free, by 3’s media agency. No conditions were attached apart from a link to the 3 store appearing in the review. 3 didn’t pay me to say nice things about them in passing, either 🙂

Bath Half Marathon 2012

I approached this year’s Bath Half Marathon with more than a little trepidation, and rightly so, it turned out. Since the Bristol Half, I just haven’t trained enough. Partly that’s due to winter, and partly because my routine’s been knocked off-kilter by quitting my day job. I also put on some weight over the last half of 2011 that I’ve not managed to shake off yet.

I mused on this during the approach to Bath, in a coach from Bath Racecourse. I really recommend their Bath Half park-and-ride service, by the way. You park at the racecourse, then wait in a nice warm room with a bunch of other runners (and decent toilet facilities – very important before a race!), then get taken into town in a nice coach. The shuttle service back after the race runs until 5pm, and it was only £9 including the booking fee.

Bath Racecourse Coach

Anyway. Yes, I was underprepared. The longest distance I’ve done since September was 10km, and that’s just not enough distance training for a half marathon.

On the other hand, everything else was going well. I’d made sure to eat right and get enough sleep for the few days before the race, and I woke up feeling refreshed and pretty cheerful on Sunday morning. On the way to the start, the weather seemed ideal for running, cold and overcast, but not too cold. Also, because this was my second Bath Half, I knew a lot more about what to expect, from where to find the Runner’s Village to the course itself.

Grey and Overcast

Standing in the long queue for the start line, there was the usual chit-chat with other runners. The nerves of starting and a shared purpose mean that people are happy to natter to complete strangers and compare experiences. I forgot about my lack of training, and just got into the running mood.

And that was the way I stayed, for the first lap, at least. The grey skies lifted and the sun came out, which is good spiritually, but not ideal for running – a lot of people I’ve spoken to since said it was too hot for them, and I agree. I was feeling distinctly overheated by the sixth or seventh mile, and starting to lose some of my chipperness.

That said, the friendliness of the Bath Half course did a lot to keep me buoyed up. The rock band out on the pavement, the people cheering from windows, the drummers in Queen Square – all great for keeping you going.

But, sadly, with my lack of training, something had to give. Looping back past the start to begin my second lap of the course, I was already feeling like I’d run out of steam, physically at least. My feet were starting to feel sore (I ended up with some nice blisters), the heat was getting to me, and my muscles were running on empty.

Neither plenty of water nor the gel food thingy I ate helped much. I was tired, and getting more tired by the mile.

Time to start running on sheer bloody-mindedness, then. I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, and keeping up a jog of some kind. It didn’t matter what kind, or how fast, as long as I kept up something that looked and felt like running rather than walking.

And I carried on. I got slower as the miles went on, as you can clearly see in my RunKeeper track, and I wasn’t enjoying myself much, but I tried to keep my mind off that as best as I could. I thought of other things, I counted how many times I passed the bleach-blonde woman who was alternating walking and running, I enjoyed the comedy outfits.

The safari team who (by dint of clever costumery) included one member being carried in a cage by a gorilla got my “costume of the race” award, by the way.

And, eventually, I made it to a point where there were only five kilometres to go. That was an important psychological point, because I can always run 5K. 5K is my default distance. 5K is the distance I’d run in my sleep, were I prone to somnambulation.

In the last couple of miles before the finish line, you start to get more personal encouragement, too, especially if you’re back with the rest of the straggling, thinned-out crowd. “Just two miles to go now!” wasn’t too helpful, as two miles sounded like a hell of a long way, but the regular “Keep going!”s and “You’re doing great!”s were welcome.

As were the “It’s just around the corner now!”s (which started, truth be told, about a mile away from the final corner, but hey.) Once I was on “final approach” I knew I was going to make it without walking, and I just kept plodding on.

In the end, I crossed the finish line overheated, astoundingly tired, and with very sore feet, at 2:58:44. That’s a whole ten minutes slower than I managed the Bristol Half, and pretty disappointing.

On the other hand, I was bloody happy to have not given up, and I still felt like I’d accomplished something, once I’d recovered a little. I did it. I jogged all the way around, albeit slowly, and at least I came in under the three-hour mark.

So. Another medal, and another finisher’s t‑shirt that doesn’t fit (one size for everyone this year, Bath Half? Really? But I forgive you, because you were really well-organised and because you have more toilets than the Bristol Half.)

It’s also, so far, £126 plus Gift Aid raised for Bristol Mind. Looking back over my past Just Giving donations – which have all been for running – that means I’ve now raised well over £1,000 for charity by getting out there and hitting the streets. Thanks, all my lovely sponsors, for giving to good causes for the Bath Half, for all my past races, and, hopefully, for races to come…

20120312 IMG 1412

What I’m Taking to the Bath Half Marathon

My array of equipment for running the Bath Half Marathon
Gear

I’m prepared for the morning. I thought a glimpse into the array of stuff I’m dragging along with me might be interesting, especially for those who’ve never raced. So, from roughly left-to-right, top-to-bottom:

  • Clothes, including:
    • Shorts, a little on the large side. But better than running in the now-quite-clapped-out pair I’ve been running in since I started running. One day I’ll find another pair of running shorts that fits me and has pockets, damn it.
    • Race shirt, with number already attached, and the form on the back (next of kin, so forth) all filled out.
    • X‑Socks, technical running socks, with nice soft non-rubby patches in all the right places.
    • Disposable top-shirt. At the Bath Half, they collect and recycle clothing discarded just before the start line, so you can keep warm until the race starts by wearing an old top.
    • Pants. Just ordinary boxer/trunk style things; I’ve heard people object to cotton-based underwear for running, but specialist running undies are (a) expensive, and (b) unlikely to come in my size.
  • Light running hat with a big peak to keep off rain and shade my eyes. This will fit in a pocket if I don’t want to wear it all the way round.
  • Garmin ForeRunner GPS watch, charged. Much longer battery life and generally more reliable than an iPhone app for GPS tracking.
  • Little Sony camera.
  • Contact lenses. I generally only wear contacts for exercise. I’ll put them in before I set off in the morning and leave the case at home.
  • Sunglasses, because it looks like it’s going to be a pretty nice day tomorrow. If it’s not, I’ll just hang them off the neck of the shirt.
  • Money, for (a) emergencies, and (b) grabbing a celebratory post-run milkshake, or whatever.
  • The minimum of car and house keys that I’ll need.
  • Directions and ticket to the parking (I’m parking at Bath Racecourse and taking a shuttle bus in. It was a good service last year, and I’m very happy to use it again.)
  • Race information leaflet. Nice and pocketable this year.
  • Lanacane anti-chafing gel. I will be putting this in several places, including on my feet to help prevent blisters. You probably do not want the details of where else I put it. I won’t take the tube with me, just apply it before I get dressed.
  • Painkillers, just in case.
  • Spare safety pins. Handy if a zip or fastening goes on anything.
  • Chap stick
  • Two small, round plasters. One per nipple. If you’re wondering why, you may want to check out the “nipple shots” post from 2010’s Bristol Half Marathon, for example. As you can see, this is even a danger for skinny men. As a fat bloke who runs, I take no chances.
  • Phone. You can’t wear headphones on the Bath Half (being a two-lap race means there’s always a danger of faster runners coming up unexpectedly behind you, for starters) so this isn’t for music, more for tweeting before and after, and emergencies.
  • (Next row) Energy gels. Despite the fact I didn’t like the taste of the ones I’ve tried in the past, I found that more food-like stuff (flapjack-style bars, etc.) weighed my stomach down while not doing any apparent good for my energy levels in previous runs. So, I’m trying them again, but a different brand. I was only going to buy the Mule brand one, but then I noticed that the other one was rhubarb and custard flavour and I couldn’t resist it. I’ll probably only take one tomorrow, depending on how much pocket space I’ve got.

    UPDATE: This stuff really did taste like rhubarb and custard. Recommended!

  • Kitchen towel. For general use, and as emergency toilet paper. The loos at races often run out of paper quite quickly.
  • Shoes, with the timing chip already fastened on.
  • Water bottle, because I normally run with a water bottle and it feels strange not to have it on a race, even though there are plenty of drink stations.
  • Nuun “triberry” hydration tablets. I’ll drop half of one of these into the water bottle when I fill it, then leave the rest at home.
  • Bum bag. Sorry, I mean “Nike Audio Waistpack”. This will hold much of the little loose stuff, the rest will go in the pockets of my shorts.

If I took more stuff with me, I’d have to leave a bag in the secure area at the race village. Travelling “light” saves me queueing for that before and after the race. I could probably take less stuff, but this lot doesn’t weigh me down too badly, and I’d rather have something and not want it than the other way around.
I don’t think there’s anything I’ve missed. If you run, what do you take to a race?

Two Minds

I’m in two minds as to whether to run tomorrow. I should probably do a last bit of practice for the Bath Half — I haven’t run more than 10km in ages.

On the other hand, my right ankle is feeling quite odd at the moment. It’s possible I did something to it yesterday, when I foolishly accompanied the five-year-old whose birthday party I was at into the clambering-around-rigging-and-dropping-through-pipes bit of the soft play centre we were at.

It’s not feeling too painful, but it does feel like I’ve done something to it such that it might be better left alone, rather than have me put 10km+ on it tomorrow morning the week before an organised race I’m signed up for. Hrm.

Think I’ll just see how I feel in the morning. In the meantime, if you’d like to sponsor me and my odd-feeling ankle for the Bath Half, my Just Giving page is here. This time I’m running for Bristol Mind.

Quick and Simple

Spring is in the Air

The weekend before last, I ran 10K. Last weekend, I ran 7K through rain and mud to review those Adidas shoes. Both runs involved climbing from river level up to above the height of the Suspension Bridge.

Today, I looked out of the window at the spring sunshine, and decided to give myself a break. So I just did a quick 5K along the towpath. Sometimes, it’s nice just to go for a little jog! I might get out for something longer during the week.

Review Run: Adidas Kanadia 4 Trail Shoes

Last Saturday, I thought about jogging, looked out of the window, and saw it was raining. Then I went out anyway, because it was a good chance to test out my new Adidas trail shoes.

New Adidas shoes? Didn’t you just buy a pair of Mizunos, Matt? Yup. But Sports Direct’s media agency (hi, Lucie!) had seen that I was looking for new shoes, and offered to send me a free pair, in exchange for a (free-from-editorial-influence, honest) review.

Heading to Sports Direct’s running shoes section, my first reaction was choice paralysis. Four hundred plus pairs of men’s running shoes. And, sadly, no indication of which ones might suit people with flat, wide feet and a tendency to over-pronate.

So, there’s my first observation — don’t buy shoes from the web unless you’ve already been to a good running shoe shop in person and found out what you actually need. And bought at least your first pair of shoes from them; fair’s fair. Take it from someone who’s suffered from plantar fasciitis, you want to make sure you’re wearing the right shoes.

I decided on trail shoes because they’d just get occasional use, and I’ve heard there’s less need for motion control when you run on uneven ground. Plus it gave me the chance to try something quite different from my normal shoes.

Overcoming my paralysis, I opted for the Adidas Kanadia 4. Aggressively styled in red, black and orange, the bobbles of their “TRAXION” soles make it very apparent that the Kanadias are designed a muddy hill rather than a smooth pavement. Definitely more showy than I’d normally go for, but quite fun to look at, I thought, as I took them out of the box.

Trying them on, I was disconcerted by how small the Kanadias felt on my feet. My everyday shoes are an 8, so I’d have thought a 9 would’ve been big enough, length-wise, at least. These felt borderline, especially on the right foot.

Looking around the web, I see warnings from a shoe shop, and several of the reviews on the Adidas site and on wiggle.co.uk that these shoes seem undersized. Adidas, that’s really not very clever, especially when so many people are shopping on the web.

Still, I couldn’t tell for sure if they were actually too small, or just feeling a bit constrictive compared to my Mizunos, so I figured I’d take them out for a test run. I had nothing to lose, after all.

The Kanadias were interesting during my urban warm-up (the grass and mud only starts about a half-mile from my house on my normal routes.) They were skittish on my stone front steps, but calmed down out on pavement and tarmac. You could definitely tell those bobbles were there on the soles. It was reminiscent of being on mountain bike tyres on a normal road. Comfortable and safe, and fine to run in, but obviously not moving on the surface they were designed for.

They cheered up once I hit the south side of the Avon and got off the tarmac. I took a few shortcuts across wet, muddy grass to try them out, and felt very sure-footed. The Kanadias held my feet well, with very little movement around the ankle.

Then onto the next test — the towpath puddles. After a decent amount of rain, the towpath ends up with plenty of pretty much unavoidable puddles, standing water from side to side across the path, several strides long.

There are a couple of approaches to designing running shoes for water incursion. One approach is to try to waterproof the shoes, and maybe add some stylish running gaiters. I’ve heard that it’s hard to make this approach effective and non-overheating, no matter how “breathable” your waterproof membrane.

The other approach is, literally, to suck it up. Accept that fact that you’re going to get water in your shoes, and deal with it, by using materials that wick it away as best they can, and don’t start rubbing badly when they get wet. This is the approach the Kanadias take, and it seems to work pretty well, as I found out after about the fifth large towpath puddle.

Yes, my feet got cold and wet when I splashed through a puddle, but they warmed up pretty quickly again afterwards (helped by my X‑Socks, too, I’m sure.) After their soaking, the shoes still felt pretty comfortable, and there wasn’t a big increase in weight.

Out of the gravelly towpath and into the mud of Leigh Woods, and the Kanadias really came into their own. Up steep hills, through slippery grass, plodding through mud and on gravel paths, I stayed secure. On my last Leigh Woods run, I’d noted my Mizunos sliding around at the boggy start of one of the paths; in the same spot the Kanadias gripped well and I felt much more stable. The shoes also kept their bounce, despite being pretty soggy, and there was no sensation of any rubbing that might have led to a blister.

Finally I broke out of the woods and back onto tarmac for the cool-down jog to Clifton Village, back to the slightly “mountain bike tyre” feeling, but perfectly reasonable to run in. The only place I had problems again was on the wet paving stones of the hill back down to Hotwells. There the Kanadias felt slippy and slidey again; not deadly, but enough to make me want to take extra care.

On the downhill stretch, I also felt my toes pushing up against the front of the shoe, reminding me that the Adidas sizing was a bit screwy. Presumably I’d be better off in a size 10. But that would be the first size 10 shoe I’d ever owned, so I’d conclude that Adidas definitely have got their size wrong on the Kanadias.

Which is a shame. Because — even though the “mud-release surface” of the “TRAXION” soles really did work, leaving the underneath of the Kanadias surprisingly clean by the time I got home — you really can’t return a pair of trail shoes after you’ve given them a proper test. Because they look like this.

Overall, I like the Kanadias. They look good, they’re very grippy on the trail, they cope well with being waterlogged, and the mud-release soles do just what they say. I’ll definitely be trying them out some more, especially when I’m heading fairly directly for mud, grass and gravel.

But if you want to give them a try, I’d recommend starting in a pair one size bigger than you’d expect.

Thanks, Sports Direct, for giving me a chance to try them out!

Full disclosure: I reviewed the Kanadia 4’s after being given a choice of any sub-£50 running shoe from Sports Direct, for free. No conditions were attached apart from a link to their running shoes section appearing in my review, which seemed fair enough.

Stretching my Legs

20120212 DSC02443On Sunday, I felt pretty good, and the weather wasn’t quite as damn cold as it had been on Saturday, so I set out to do a respectable distance. I did my first 10K training jog the year, though Leigh Woods (handily, my normal Leigh Woods route plus a loop of the “purple path” works out as pretty much exactly 10K.)

It wasn’t fast, and I had to stop for a minute or two to get my breath back halfway through the really steep bit, but it was pleasant and I felt pretty good all the way round. It’s nice to run through the woods at this time of year, though it’ll get even nicer as we head into spring.

I also made sure I took a route through some of the muddier, more slippery bits of the woods, so I could see how well my shoes gripped and how easy it was to run in them. I did that for a very particular reason, which will hopefully be revealed later in the week 🙂

New Shoe Happiness

New Mizuno Wave Inspire 8

It has been pretty nippy in Bristol recently, though we escaped the blanket of snow that covered the majority of the country last week. It’s 2C outside right now, in the middle of the day, and I was told that there’s more cold weather on the way.

I took advantage of a slight gap in the weather on Sunday to wander out for a quick jog in my new shoes.

I didn’t go very far — after all, the last time I went running in a new model of Mizuno Wave Inspires, they gave me a blister, and I ended up limping home from Leigh Woods. So, learning from my mistake, I did a 5K that didn’t take me too far from home.

As it turned out, the Mizuno Wave Inspire 8s feel far nicer than the 7s did, and I agree with the nice man in Moti that they seem to be a return to the Wave Inspire’s previous good form. So, hopefully that’ll add some extra encouragement to get out and run, even if it is a bit nippy…

Resolution Run 4: Time for Some New Shoes

My admiring hordes (hello, Margaret!) have been wondering whether I made it out for my fourth “resolution” run of January, and the answer is a resounding “yes”.

I didn’t enjoy the first kilometre of Friday’s run, despite it being a nice day. I hadn’t slept that well, and I wasn’t really in the mood for running. Nevertheless, I plugged away down the towpath, turned into Leigh Woods at the far end, climbed the steep hill without too much ado, albeit very slowly, and kept going until I was nearly back at the Suspension Bridge.

I stopped at 7km, making it my longest run of the year so far. Doesn’t seem bad for a day where I wasn’t really feeling it.

It’s been raining a bit recently, which tends to flood sections of the towpath. When I got back home, my shoes looked like this:

Towpath Mud

…and that made me consider buying a new pair. 

Sadly, these Mizuno Wave Inspire 7s have been, well, a bit rubbish. I had trouble buying a pair at all, then I had to send the first pair back because they gave me a blister, and I’ve never felt that great in the replacements. Which was a shame, after the Wave Inspire 5s and 6s were so good for me.

Then I did a bit of searching on the internet, and found that pretty much everyone who bought the Wave Inspire 7s seems to have disliked them, or at least those who’ve blogged and commented about the things. So it wasn’t just me.

The good news is that everyone who then took a punt on the new Wave Inspire 8s seems to think they’re a return to the good form of the earlier Wave Inspires. So, I will probably take my chances with Mizuno once again, though my faith is a bit shaken.

Hopefully a pair of new shoes will put a bit of bounce back in my step, even if it’s only psychologically-speaking…

Anyway. Enough rambling for now. I should be running later on this week, so I’ll see you then!