FLARE AUDIO® - Flares® Jet 3 Earphones

I've had this FLARE Headset a good while now and they are really good, worth the money and cannot really fault them, the cord length is great and it doesn't tangle, Not much to dislike and recommended.

[update] 3 August 2022Completely refurbished 2 pairs. In fact, the only original part of these headphones is the titanium shell. Brand new drivers. New cable and plug with full remote control. Skip, play, pause and volume up and down.[Read updates for my repair]I bought these directly from Flare and they quickly became my favourite earphones.However, I can't recommend them. My pair have now had 3 plugs. I've sent them back to Flare twice and while the turnaround has been quick, I don't see any point of sending them back again for repair.Each time they've been repaired, the wiring in the plug fails within 2 months causing a channel to cut out or the wire for the button on the mic to cause the device to skip tracks where it connects and disconnects because it is broken. It behaves like the button is being pressed when moved around.I'm in the process of replacing the plug myself, but Flare refuse to give me the wiring scheme. Why this is some trade secret I have no clue. I wouldn't care if I could rely on their repairs, but I can't.I've got headphones with plugs I've replaced that are still working 5 years later.While the customer service is good, the repairs I've had don't last, so don't waste your money.[Update 1]I still don't recommend these, at all!You know what.. I absolutely love the sound of these, so much so, I went against my own advice and bought another pair, from Amazon this time. Well, just in case my original pair were, I dunno, from a bad batch or something. Nope. The trigger button wire has failed again after 2 months. Move the cable, the "Assistant" of my Galaxy Note 9 will start, or the track will skip, or the volume will lower. All equally annoying and frequent.The buds are amazing.. but you won't enjoy them for long.[Update 2 and DIY Repair]Well, after going back to an old pair of headphones and not really enjoying them, I decided to attempt to replace the plug again. Flare Audio still refused to give me the pin-out of the headphones, so I wrecked my original pair to figure the pin-out for the new pair.I've attached photos and a diagram I made to help others. If you want to try and replace the plug on your Flare Jets, you will need: A good soldering iron that can reach a high enough temperature to cut through the coating on the wires. Solder with flux. A replacement TRRS (Tip, Ring, Ring, Sleeve) plug. A vice, or some other gizmo to hold the plug.. and a steady hand!My base station soldering iron reaches a temperature of 480°C. It cuts straight the coating of the wires. I bought 3 plugs, one for experimentation, one to use and the other as a spare. Obviously, I can't teach you how to solder in a review, but hopefully this information will help you.And if you were wondering, yes, they now work perfectly :]

Good sound quality for the price. The size/weight and shape of these meant the earphones had to be regularly adjusted in my ears to hear properly. The aux cable which goes directly into port is straight (instead of L shaped) and clearly not very strong, through mild and non intensive use, after just 6 weeks of use the cable internally fractured stopping one of the earphones working, in certain positions the sound would return. I contacted amazon who allowed me to return and have a refund.

BrilliantRecommended

I don't normally write reviews for products, but I had a very mixed experience with this that has left me feeling like I want to get my thoughts down on paper!Skipping to the "end" of this experience, these headphones broke after about 3 months of heavy use (left bud died completely). This is obviously quite bad, but I'm always cautious to use my own singular experience as definitive proof of if something is poorly made; some things will break and that's inevitable. Mine broke quite quickly. Make of that what you will.The sound was obviously pretty good. I say obviously because these are quite expensive headphones and it's not exactly a surprise when you get a certain quality of sound past a certain price. They didn't completely blow me away though. I'd previously been using some similarly-pricey Sennheiser's (lasted about 1.5-2 years) and to my ear I preferred them over these Flare's. The Flare's seemed to be very enthusiastic about bass tones and I found it overpowering at times.My main issues (apart from the breaking) were with a few ergonomic things that didn't sit with me well:1. The metal buds look the part, but they're quite heavy and chunky. If you want to lean your head / ear against something like a pillow while having these in, it's very far from comfortable.2. The ear suction cup things (don't know the proper name) were generally fine but had a tendency to sometimes create a bit of an airtight seal when sitting in my ear. This would mean when I took them out there'd be a briefly unpleasant experience as the pressure dropped and "pulled" on my eardrum a little (until the seal breaks and the air normalises again). This sounds more extreme than it was, it was at worst a minor discomfort but still annoying to deal with on the regular!3. The wire part looked almost fibre/fabric to my eye in the pics, which is what I was expecting. It's actually a kind of odd plastic/rubber texture that's sort of... spongy and sticky? It will stick to itself which was a little frustrating and tended to make tangled wires a worse problem than it needed to be.Not a complete disaster but I'm not going to be buying Flares again!