I'm excited to try out any product that requires me to dump it into a pot of boiling water. It's an opportunity that sadly doesn't present itself too often. In the scrum of preperation ahead of CES 2016, however, Decibullz offered it up, and I happily jumped.
The startup is a Kickstarter success with an extremely compelling pitch: what if there was a way to get custom molded headphones into the hands of consumers that didn't run a few hundred or thousands of bucks.
The centerpiece are two thermoplastic ear pieces that start off flat. Attach the earbuds, bring a vat of water to boil and dump them in (one at a time, mind, so they don't stick to one another). You let them cool a bit, put them in your ears and and mold them flat like a lump of clay. After about five minutes, they're good to go.
And you know what? It works. Once cool, they're solid, and they slip nicely into your ears, forming a tight seal. They're pretty comfortable and do a good job sealing our ambient noise - on fact, be a bit careful removing the things, so you don't hurt your ear removing the seal.
Of course, they're not full-on replacements for truly premium custom earbuds - and then there's the disclaimer on the case warning you not to leave them in the car, lest you melt them back into an amorphous blob. Still, with a Kickstarter pre-order price of $89, they're a reasonable way to satiate some of that consumer envy over the premium version.
Decibullz has also done a good job keeping the hardware as minimally invasive as possible. Aside from small control panel and counter weight on opposite sides, there's nothing separating the wireless version beyond a thin cord.
The pairing process is fairly simple, as well. I can't really speak to the sound quality at this point. The unit Decibullz sent was pre-production and as such sounded pretty terrible. We'll check back in when we get our hands on something for final.
