Bass is the name of the game now when it comes to headphones. Everyone wants to hear their 808 kicks bang loud and considering that 808 kicks are in every song now, headphones need to deliver on that end. Skullcandy has attempted to offer the bass you so want with their Crusher headphones. The Crusher Headphones are designed to fit comfortably, look good, and bump killer bass to your ear drums without killing your wallet. Do they deliver? Read more to find out.
Style
First thing you will notice about the Skullcandy Crushers are that there isn’t much to notice at all. They are pretty slick with no real stand out features other than the skull on the sides and the small chrome grills. On the back left ear is a slider that controls the amount of bass being produced by the amplifier. It’s placed in an easy to reach place which will allow you to adjust it with ease. Being simple is not a bad thing though. This is a definitely a case of less being more. The headphones are not yelling for attention but are sleek enough to look good with anything that you wear them with. My review units were my favorite color, black, but they are also available in white and red as well.
Despite being plastic, the headphones feel like they will make it through everyday wear and tear without a problem. They can be folded for travel rather easily without fear that they will break. The wire with built-in control and mic is removable which is always a good feature to have. The leather was really comfortable against the ear without suffocating them. There has clearly been an effort made to make these headphones comfortable without having to worry about sweating all over them. As a glasses wearer, I hate when headphones that I wear press my ears against the handles of my glasses forcing me to have to remove them after an hour or so of use. Happily, I did not have this issue with the Crushers. they fit comfortably and I had no complaints, actually enjoying the fact that they cover my ears completely in this winter air. Skullcandy did a good job in the style department. You can sell headphones online at Gizmogo
Function
At the end of the day, headphones are only as good as the listening quality that they put out, and in the case of the Crushers the main selling point is the type of bass that you are going to receive from them. Too little bass and your left with a weak sound that doesn’t do your music any justice, but too much bass and you’ll have nothing but a muffled mess distorting in your ears until they bleed. How do you find the right balance? To an extend, the Crushers leave that up to you. At the cost of one AA battery inserted very easily into the left ear behind the leather padding, an amplifier is powered that provides the source of the bass these headphones are boasting to offer. As before mentioned, the amount of bass you hear is controlled by the slider allowing you to tailor what you hear according to what your listening too.
I ran the Crushers through a few different kind of albums to get a gauge for what kind of sound they produce and what I could expect from the bass in particular. We started with a few of the Kick heavy songs on Beyonce’s latest album, and then moved to Fabolous’ Soul Tape 3 due to the variety of mixes and kicks used in the production. I stuck with hip hop since that is the genre the Crushers seemed to be more geared for. Sometimes I didn’t touch the slider for songs at a time, but then a song came up and I would make an adjustment. Overall, I was very pleased. While I feel that the Crushers lack in the mid to high-end frequency range of most songs, overall I was happy with what I was hearing.
The ability to adjust the bass meant I could decide when I needed to keep the slider up or down. Having control over this function is a great feature. Too often I have found myself not using the extra bass features in headphones due to the overall muffled sound that it produced. With no way to decide how much bass was applied, the feature was useless to me in addition to consuming battery power. Speaking of which, a nice feature of the Crushers are that they forgo an off switch for the bass in lieu of a system that cuts the amp off after you stop playing music or disconnect the headphones. While not the clearest sounding headphones in this price range, the vibration from the bass and the ability to control it are really cool.
Verdict
Ultimately, the deciding factor for these headphones will be the price. At an MSRP of $99.99, these cans find themselves in a unique position of not being south enough of a Benjamin to be considered bargain price but not expensive enough to be considered “expensive”. The bass feature is nice, really nice but I do feel it will be a love it or hate it kind of feature. The vibration that comes from the bass will be something that you like and will prove the price despite the lack of dynamics that the headphones offer. If however you don’t really care about the feature, there isn’t much of a draw to these besides their stylish looks. I would recommend them if your music genre of choice is anything bass heavy, especially hip hop. They don’t disappoint in that regard and provide a feature that you would normally spend much more for. Overall, when it comes to bass on a budget, I would say that the Crushers get the job done and some.
You can purchase the Skullcandy Crusher Headphones for $99.99 here
