Description
Working Up a Sweat
If you’re working out or engaging in any kind of strenuous outdoor activity especially during these summer months, there’s a good chance you’ll be working up a sweat. That might cause you to favor lightweight and sweatproof earbuds such as the SOUL Run Free Pro HD, balanced armature earbuds, designed to stay on with minimum intrusion.
But what if you could get your hands on a pair of over-ear or circumaural headphones, specially designed with athletes and outdoor explorers in mind? That’s what the SOUL XTRA Wireless offers. This is a lightweight, ergonomically designed pair of phones designed to fit snugly around the head in the most unobtrusive manner imaginable. Their full earcup articulation ensures unparalleled levels of comfort, and guarantees these phones will stay on during even the most hardcore of workouts. X-TRA also enabled with the Bluetooth v4.0 system, which gives you faster transmission speeds using lower power consumption, for a perfect wireless experience. Moreover, as we’ll see later, the pads on these phones are designed with those sweaty activities in mind.
Naturally, there’s also the signature sound quality you’ve come to expect from SOUL. Using advanced HD drivers and sophisticated circuitry design, the SOUL XTRA Wireless offer balanced bass with clear mids and highs. All of this makes for the ultimate user experience.
Play Hard, Play Long
Without doubt, one of the standout selling-points of the XTRA Wireless is its incredible Up to 24 hours of play time. No, you didn’t read that wrong! These headphones can keep your favorite jams on rotate for an entire day. And, it gets better. You’re probably getting accustomed to the fast charge facility that is part and parcel of SOUL products. The XTRA Wireless is no exception. By plugging these phones in for just 15 minutes, you’re assured an extra 150 minutes of power. You really can’t ask for much more than that: 2 hours on the fly. Finally, if push comes to shove and you completely run out of juice, there’s a line-in option to save your bacon! Whether you’re working out or just bowling through your neighborhood, you’ll never need to worry about flatlining.
Trust me when I say this play time claim is legit. I’ve been using the XTRA Wireless for well over a month doing my usual interval-sprint workouts down at my local track and they’re still going strong. If further proof were needed, I recently took the headphones on a four-day hiking trip where we were walking at least five hours each day and they showed no signs of giving up the ghost. Exemplary stuff!
Live in the Light
Now this next feature might not look like much at first, but it’s actually a really kick-ass element of the SOUL XTRA Wireless experience. You might remember from our previous unboxing blog that the SOUL Run Free Pro HD incorporated those neat reflective cables to make sure you’re more visible after dark. With the SOUL XTRA Wireless, we take things a stage further by including dual mode LED lights along the band of the headphones. These give you a greater degree of visibility than ever before, to guard against any nocturnal mishaps while you’re enjoying your night time workout or stroll. Comprising a dual setting of still and flashing modes, they can thus be adjusted to fit particular weather and climate conditions or personal requirements. With this feature, you’ll no longer have to worry about being visible to vehicles, cyclists or like-minded night time ramblers.
A Legend Unfolds
One of the biggest issues with over-ear headphones is that they can be clunky, unwieldy affairs. Not so, the XTRA Wireless. With their foldable design, the phones can be folded flat, rendering them perfectly compact for easy and convenient storage and transport. While there are other foldable headphones on the market, few can be reduced in size so efficiently as the SOUL XTRA Wireless. This compactness not only saves space in your napsack, it protects the phones from the wear and tear that they are often subjected to as the bump around while you’re on the move.
I’m a big traveler – I’ll be approaching 50 countries this summer – and this a big deal for me. I’m someone who likes to be on and off flights – or any type of TRAnsportation for that matter – at breakneck speed. For this reason, I haven’t checked luggage onto a flight in over a decade. With a trip to Spain, Romania and the UK coming up in a couple of months, I’m not about to change my light-and-mobile habits. The design of the XTRA Wireless means I won’t have to worry about clogging up my backpack.
Welcome to the Pads
I mentioned the pads in passing near the beginning of this article. Along with the LED lights and foldable design, this feature really sets the XTRA Wireless out from other headphone. There’s nothing worse than the sticky feel of a pair of pads that has accumulated months of workout sweat. Well, maybe one thing: the unholy stench that the pads are inevitably going to give off after prolonged usage.
With the SOUL XTRA Wireless, there’s literally no sweat when it comes to these twin perspiration-related issues. Firstly, the pads have been fashioned from a breathable sports material that allows for maximum moisture wicking. If you don’t know about this cutting-edge fabric technology, it’s basically a kind of polyster woven in such a way as to force moisture up through the gaps of the weave so it can find the outer shell of the material. This ensures the fabric itself does not act like a sponge, soaking up and retaining all that excess sweat.
For some of you sticklers for cleanliness and hygiene out there, that might not be quite enough. No matter how good that moisture wicking material is, there’s always going to be a certain amount of stickiness and odor, right? Well, we’ve thought about that, too, and come up with the perfect solution. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just pull the pads off and wash them? Well, that’s exactly what you can do. The SOUL XTRA Wireless comes with removable and washable pads that can be taken off and cleaned up as often as you like. The breathable headband is also one of most special feature of XTRA. Unlike other headphones, XTRA headband is made from rubber materials with breathable designed for maximum coolness during workout or running.
