These are new earphones from Maximo, a relatively new U.S. maker of in-ear phones. They offer good sound quality for the price and excellent attention to detail.

The outer box, as is shown above, is of a fairly clever design and, best of all, the headphones inside may be removed without the preemptive use of a chain saw. None of the normal military grade heavy plastic packaging for Maximo! As you can see with the box opened (below) there is just enough rigid plastic on one side to protect the components from impact abd crushing damage during shipping.

All of the pieces for the earphones remove easily once the inner box is folded open. And you would be surprised at just how many parts there are in the box. The manufacturer seems to have thought of everything. There are the phones themselves, shown hanging out of the clever zipper carrier, an extension cable for the phones, an adapter to the next smaller size jack, four sizes of earbud tips, an airline adapter, and a clothing clip for the phones. More about that clip later.

All of these earphone components are nicely done up, and the overall package looks like it all fits together perfectly as a set. I was surprised by the material of the earphone cables and the extension. They are of braided construction instead of the supple vinyl that I have become used to. I quickly found that the braided cable is very hard to tangle up, whereas the vinyl cables seem to specialize in tangling quickly and every time you are not watching them.

The quality is really excellent for earphones meant to sell for $59.99. I have been using a set which came from Sony at just under $100, and the Maximo earphones sound hands-down better. They are also several orders of magnitude better than the phones which come standard with the iPhone and most iPods. The midrange might be a little strong, but not distractingly so.

However, I kept hearing an annoying scratching sound in addition to the music. It was not very loud, but it was distracting. I finally traced it down to where the headphone cables were sliding over a rough button on my shirt. I had never had than problem with the vinyl cables, but those cables were both very soft and very smooth. The Maximo cables were neither. However, the manufacturer set up a very fine solution.

The clothing clip attaches easily to the small piece of plastic that acts as an adjuster for the length of the final run of cable to your ears, sliding like a string tie to make that final run longer or shorter. Although you will not notice a problem with soft shirts, or if you keep the cables away from buttons, simply attaching the clothing clip to the slider, and then to your clothing, damps out any noise from the rubbing of the cable. I think that I would rather have this problem with the braided cable than have to untangle my vinyl-cable set every time before I use them.

All in all, the Maximo IM-590 is an excellent value for the price, which is $59.95 MSRP. You can find full specifications at this web page. They are comfortable, perform very well, and have just about every accessory that you could ever expect in a set of phones. Unless I take to wearing a rigid suit of armor, I think that I will eschew my Sony headphones in favor of these from Maximo.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, July 19th, 2009 at 8:24 pm under Media players, Music, Reviews.

Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
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