The mixcder ShareMe Pro headphones, besides being a pair of reasonably priced, bluetooth, full-size headphone, it has a secret feature: If you have two of these, you can linked them together, and two people and listen to the same music/sound source at the same time.
With two kids in my family sharing one iMac, there is a constant headphone usage dilemma going on. They need to plug and unplug their own personal headphones as they use the computer. Then if they want to watch a youTube together, they have to unplug the headphone to use the speakers. A lot of audio jack action reaching behind the iMac. Having two pairs of ShareMe Pro headphone may just solve my problem.
Unboxing and Construction
I am slightly spoiled by the mixcder ANC-G5 active noise canceling headphones’ premium packaging which I also have. The ShareMe Pro in contrast arrived in a simple box with a basic plastic tray holding the headphones. When I open the box, the included cables were placed in the bottom of the tray, promptly dropping onto the floor. One positive is that it does come with a reasonably length USB charging cable, as well as a 3.5 audio cable for connecting the headphones directly to a earphone out port.
The construction of the headphones however are very good. At this price point, the headphone is mostly made from plastic. The adjustable ear cups rides on a steel band with plastic rails in the middle. The ear cups are covered in a very soft padded leatherette ear pads. The headband is also covered in a similarly padded material.
Comfort
These headphones are very comfortable. The clamping force is low. The ear cups swivel just over 90 degrees — from flat for storage, to just over 90 to conform to different head shapes. I find that I can wear them for a long time without problem.
Sound Quality
These headphones uses 40mm drivers with 32 ohms impedance. Being bluetooth, I expected them to be driven nicely by the large internal batteries. I was slightly disappointed with the overall sound quality even after 20+ hours of burning in. I am listening via bluetooth using my Retina Macbook Pro playing iTunes music m4a files.
When I am listening to simpler jazz vocal pieces: Vienna Teng’s Eric Song, Autumn Leaves by Partricia Barber, Save Me by Aimee Allen, they sounded over during the quieter passages. Once the vocal and instruments play together, the over sound became muddled. I moved on to some classic rock tracks like Angie by the Stones, and With or Without You by U2. Similarly the headphones seem to get overwhelmed and lost clarity.
I also tried the same tracks with the headphone connected via the audio cable. There is no any noticeable difference.
I resorted to add EQ to the audio — boosting the 1K and 2K band fixes the sound enough so that it is passable. However I don’t think these will be my goto audio bluetooth headphones. But it is fine for casual listening. My kids find them perfectly usable for youTube listening.
Design Notes
I have some minor usability issue with these headphones.The headphones have volume and power buttons on the left ear cup, and track forward/backward/pause buttons on the right. These buttons feel a bit cheap when you press them. And the order of the volume buttons are: volume up / volume down / power. I really would prefer the power being in the middle. At the beginning I keep pressing the power button when I want to turn down the volume. Finally I realized that the volume buttons have little dimples on them, so I can to feel for them and not press the power button by mistake. But that is more work than necessary.
If you ever want to use the headphones with wires, the jack on the ear cup is at an angle, so the audio wire sticks out toward the back awkwardly. However I do not see why you would need to use them with wires as the batteries performance is great.
Batteries
I normally do a charge time and discharge time test. But these headphones have such large batteries that I have yet to get a measurable discharge time. That is, once charged, they play for days, which is wonderful. The only drawback is that there is no way to chat the battery levels. So sometime in the future I expect they will just stop working and I have to charge them back up.
Bluetooth performance
These are headphones with bluetooth 4.1. The range is similar to other bluetooth headphones that I have. With line of sight, 20+ feet is fine. With two walls in between, the headphones will cut out at about two rooms apart on my first floor. It is nice that the audio will simply stop when it is out of range, so you won’t get static or random sound. Once back in range, the audio will restart nicely. The headphones do not seems to support multi-point connection. So you can only pair them to one source.
The link two pairs of ShareMe Pro together, I find that the best way is to move away from all other bluetooth sources. Then I can put both headphones in pairing mode, and they did pair with each other automatically. Once that is done, you need to make a note as to which one of the two is the primary one, because that is the one that needed to be pair to your audio source.
This is important because there are times you only want to use one pair of headphones. In that case only the primary pair works.
Finally, perhaps because of the sharing feature, there is a noticeable delay in the audio stream. When I watch a movie, the audio stream is perhaps 100ms to 200ms slower than the video steam. It can be annoying for watching movies or TV shows. I tried re-pairing the headphones several times, as well as with different computers, and the result is the same. I hope mixcder will come out with a software fix in the future.
Conclusion
Given the sharing function and the price point, I think it is a unique product that has a place for a family wanting to share audio in private. My kids are using them as I write this review watching a youTube together.
Note: I received the product from the manufacturer at a reduced price for review, but the opinions are entirely mine.
