At a retail price of $49.99 US, the Radius Atomic Bass Earphones for the iPhone provide a very reasonably priced upgrade to the ubiquitous white buds that come with your iPhone. It’s hard to believe that anyone would spend Apple’s $29.00 US asking price to replace the rather horrible stock buds. What do you get for your $49.99 US? Let’s find out in our first of many MEGATech Mini-Reviews!

Construction

Immediately, the weight of the Radius earphones is noticeable. Made from aluminum and loaded with 10mm neodymium magnets, the uniquely angled drivers are attached to the wires with a collar that helps them resist getting separated from each other in an accident. A microphone, which doubles as a control for the iPod functions, is attached to the wire for the left driver. The 3.5mm jack is gold plated for a touch of quality. You get plenty of slack (about 120cm) which is nice for routing through a tech enabled piece of clothing like one of them fancy ScottEVests. The small diameter of the cable though can still lead to the same tangling issues you had with the stock iPhone buds.

Comfort and Fit

Compared to the vague generic feel of the ubiquitous white buds, the Radius earphones are like a fitted leather glove. Silicon ear pieces provided in three sizes allow you to customize the fit and the unique angled construction of the earpieces allows the drivers to stay put even during spirited dance sessions. They continue to feel good past the one hour mark in my testing and do a great job of limiting listener fatigue.

Sound Quality

If you are a total bass head that is into sloppy and continuous helpings of the deep stuff, then these earphones are your stairway to iPhone audio heaven. For anything pop, rap and dance, these headphones really excel in giving it to you, without the thumping chest palpitations that you may experience in front of a stack of Marshalls at a concert.

For any critical audio listening though, I found the mid range a little on the muddy side, but overall the warm and full sound was enjoyable. Highs were also decent and quite listenable. They won’t slay my pair of Futuresonics Atrios In-Ear Monitors when it comes to detail, but they also aren’t over $200.

Call Quality

The mic that is fitted to the left wire is surprisingly good quality. I used the Radius earphones for a lot of my calls and never once while wearing them did anyone ask me to repeat myself or comment on my voice quality (or lack thereof). Calls were received with a very positive click of the mic which doubles as a multi-task remote for the iPod functions (play and stop with a single click. Double click to skip a song). The headphone also worked well with my BlackBerry Bold as I was able to directly go to voice commands by simply holding down the clicker till the prompt came up.

MEGATechie Good? Or MEGATechie Awful?

At $49.99 US, the Radius Atomic Bass Earphones for the iPhone are only matched by products that start to approach $100 and totally destroy the $29.00 US crap that Apple passes off for earphones. Let’s not forget that at $49.99 US, they also provide remote functions and double as a headset for your iPhone. You simply can’t go wrong for this price!

More information on these and other Radius Products can be found on their website.