BackContemporary and clever
Headphones that take on Sennheiser and Bose, and a drive that seamlessly shares with mobile devices
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It is never easy to take on established rivals. US-based audio company V-Moda has come out with a new range of headphones but hasn’t been able to crack the Indian market so far.
Meanwhile, we have been receiving a lot of queries about how to connect a hard drive to a Wi-Fi router, to share files across multiple devices at home. Western Digital has launched a product that helps answer this question.
We tested the retail-worthiness of both.
V-Moda Crossfade LP
₹ 12,063
The bold styling grabs your attention the moment you unpack the Crossfade LP headphones. There is generous use of chrome on each earpiece, with a glossy black finish.
Maintaining these may be a problem, however. For the chrome and the gloss are likely to attract fingerprints and scratches.
The headphones are also available in all-black and black-and-red colour combinations, which do away with the chrome inserts.
A lot of thought has gone into the design—the headband leather wraps all around, but on the inside (the part that directly sits on your head), there is an additional cloth insert. The earcups are big enough for most ear sizes.
Some headphones tend to push down on the ears, making it uncomfortable to wear them for long durations, but the Crossfade LP doesn’t have that problem. The full metal finish makes these headphones slightly heavier than those which use plastic. All in all, the industrial design is eye-catching, but the focus is clearly on comfort.
The cable attachment is well thought out too: It is removable, which is good because it can be replaced if damaged. Second, the cable provided with the Crossfade is Kevlar-reinforced. Simply put, it can take a lot of abuse.
The Crossfade does not have active noise cancellation, but the snug fit blocks out ambient noise quite effectively. Though we would not recommend using these while walking on public roads or anywhere near vehicular traffic, bass fans will love the sound. The low frequencies do not sound sculpted or doctored, as was more than evident with the test tracks we played. Most headphones that offer powerful bass tend to compromise on vocals, but not the Crossfade.
South African band Seether’s single, Broken (featuring Amy Lee), perfectly illustrates the vocal handling capabilities of any audio product. The Crossfade handled it brilliantly, as it did other rock-genre tracks. But if you play some low-quality tracks on it, like 128 kbps tracks from a music-streaming service, these big headphones will struggle to reproduce the expected audio richness.
The Crossfade LP is only available on ShopYourWorld.com, with a price tag of ₹ 12,063. The Bose SoundTrue and the Sennheiser Momentum On-Ear have similar price tags.
If you don’t mind the slightly bigger footprint of the V-Moda headphones, then this is our recommendation. If you want something smaller, the Momentum On-Ear would be a better option.
Western Digital My Cloud
₹ 10,999
This is not your typical, boring hard drive. My Cloud has a sleek design, offers a lot of flexibility, and isn’t complex to use. The idea behind this product is to have an uncomplicated set-up which lets you access files stored on multiple devices—including smartphones—at home or remotely.
All that’s required is to hook the My Cloud to your home Wi-Fi router. Since the drive has to be hooked up via the Ethernet port, there is no need to worry about whether your hard drive has a USB port or not. WD’s setup software will detect the network and run you through the initial steps. It’s simple enough even for the most technologically challenged.
Once done, you will see it as any other drive on the PC or Macintosh. Interestingly, the WD has the My Cloud app for your smartphones and tablets, which let you access the files for Android, iOS and Windows Phone. This is a rather handy feature, because most people these days consume media on tablets and phones. The WD’s dashboard for monitoring the drive can also be used to install firmware updates. The My Cloud app is much better than the one Seagate has for its Central-connected drives.
While there is 2 TB local storage for data, My Cloud also connects you to the DropBox, Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive accounts. It’s extremely useful for those who want to access all their files from one place. The mobile apps also offer the ability to move files between the drive and the cloud, and vice versa.
Within the home, the file sharing and streaming speeds are quite quick—a 4 GB folder transferred from the laptop to the My Cloud in about 9 minutes. If you are accessing these files from outside your home, the transfer speeds will depend on the upload speeds of the home broadband (the router this is connected to) and the 3G speeds you may be getting on your mobile device.
The drive has a dual-core processor which powers the features and streaming capabilities. We copied some movies on the drive, and accessed them on a WD TV Media Player, over the network. The playback is smooth for most video files, but Full HD videos will sometimes stutter. There is a USB 3.0 port on the My Cloud drive, and that is useful if you want to extend storage by plugging another drive to this and sharing it over the same network. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support printers.
At ₹ 10,999 for the 2 TB version, the My Cloud is a rather useful device for those who have multiple laptops and tablets at home that need to access the same files—for example, the media library. The simplicity of set-up and use just increases its appeal. The fact that it works with your existing Wi-Fi router is a bonus.
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