It’s been 14 months since I purchased this Isolator Earphone, purchased from Buy.com for $80 that time with free shipping.

I’ve been stumbled to find the best in-ear isolator earphone, and found out that this one is the best design that suits me most (in Noise-Reduction case).

I’m working in a very loud working environment (I believe it’s around 100 - 120 db), and I have to wear earplugs for all time. Exactly this one.

I work for 12 hours a day, and 75db is the longest time, that OSHA allows at one time. It has 33 NRR rating, so it does the job very well.

To listening to your MP3 player is the huge problem to work in such place. With standard earphone, you hear nothing, even if it sets to the max volume, and it will blows your ears before you realized.

I used to use headphones ear-protector, and put my normal earphone inside of it, but that makes you completely deaf when someone is calling you.

I’ve tried to use various in-ear noise reduction earphones, like JVC Marshmallows, Skullcandy, and couple series from Sony and Phillips; I returned them all (I love Walmart ho ho ho)

Etymotic ER6i

So, I found this after googling about Isolator Earphone. The earbud, at the first glance I thought it’s a solid soft sponge, which turned out it’s a 3 layered flange rubber.

(In my picture, I replaced it with 2 layers version)

How it looks when you take the flange off.

The Filter

That white and lime round thing is the filter. It works to prevent the dirt entering the earphones, and to filter the sound to create the best result. You can replace that with the provided tool.

Noise Reduction

I was practically afraid since it’s only a thin layers, it couldn’t block the noise that well; but I was wrong. It works like a charm. When you slide it into your ear canal, everything was squeezed and made a good solid layers rubber. It works better than sponge (since it doesn’t have pore).

It’s the best noise-blocker I ever know for earphones. Being able to listening to my mp3 with 10/25 volume level on 100db+ environment is amazing.

And since the music doesn’t have to compete with the outside noise-level, with reasonable level of volume, you still can listen to your music clearly, while talking to someone.

Sound Quality

I can not say the voice is so clear and crisp in such loud place (heavy machine is hard to beat). But in general crowd, traffic, mall, break room where everyone is talking, you really are in your own world with music.

The frequency range says 50 Hz to 16 kHz. The bass quality is pretty decent. Especially if your player has a manual equalizer setting (iPod doesn’t), you can boost the bass power yourself.

Other Things

How it says in-ear, it’s really INSIDE of your ear. The bottom tip of this earphone is really inside under the ear-helix. Most of earphones are longer than it should, which make them a little bit popped out, and it will hurts you when you’re using helmet, or anything for your head.

Not just a layered flange, it also has the foam tip.

It’s more comfortable, but it’s easily get dirty, and you can’t really wash it. Unlike the other one, you can rinse it with soap to clean all the dust and your earwax. The cord is 5 feet long (1.5 meter), and quite thin (3.5mm). That’s long enough for me.

One other thing that I really love with this earphone.

Yes, the shirt-clip. I always put the clip behind my neck (back collar), and let the cord goes down through my back under my shirt, connecting it to my mp3 player, put it on my left jean’s pocket.

You have extra few inches of cord from your ears to the clip. That way, you can move your head freely without being disturbed by the cord pulling out your ears.

However, it’s kind of fragile somehow. Maybe I used it too rough, since I’m physically working, but the left side of my earphone was dead. It was degrade from the volume level became slower, then it had a static noise sometimes, until it was completely deaf. It still under warranty so I got replacement.

Still, I love this earphone. If you really need a good isolator from noises, it’s a strong recommendation.

Why most of factory banning mp3 player?

Because the supervisor hates to say the same shit twice.