The headphones which came with my iPod started giving up the ghost a while back, with the rubber earpieces starting to fray and a couple of weird noises showing up occasionally, so I started looking around for a replacement pair.

I listen to music almost all day, wearing my iPod to work and usually while in work too, so I wanted decent headphones. I liked the sound quality of the Apple ones, but they let way to much noise in from the surrounding environment, which meant the volume on the iPod had to increase to compensate, so I leant towards in-ear headphones which slot right into your ear canal.

Our local one-stop-shop, London Drugs, had a pair of Shure E2Cs on special back in August, so I bought a pair but didn’t like them. The sound wan’t bad, but I couldn’t get them to fit my ears and, as a result, they were really uncomfortable. Luckily, London Drugs took them back with no questions asked and refunded my cash. Then, when Tom headed back to Ireland, I noticed he had a pair of Shure E3Cs which he’d left behind, so I tried them out for a few days. They were a much better fit for my ears, but a good bit more expensive than what I was prepared to spend, so they were out too.

EarphoneSolutions.com in Florida have a good range of in-ear headphones, with decent comparisons of the different models available, and I’d been checking out their site to see what my options were. After failing with the E2Cs, I’d emailed them to ask for some advice, and they’d recommend both the E3Cs and the Westone UM1s as being suitable for smaller ears, while still maintaining great quality. Since the E3Cs were out on expense grounds, I ordered the UM1s.

They finally arrived last week and I love them. The cable is nice and light, and the earpieces themselves are extremely comfortable so it’s easy to forget you’re wearing them. Sound quality is fantastic and they block out almost all environmental noise. I can walk beside a busy road without having to turn up the volume and, sitting here at my desk in work, I’ve got the volume on my iPod at less than 10% of max. In short, wearing them is like having a personal soundtrack to your life.

I’ve been thinking of buying an iPod Shuffle for a long time now, ever since the new clip-style design came out in fact. Although I already have an 80GB 5th Gen iPod, it’s just too big for taking running, using in the gym, etc.

With the weather taking a turn for the worse here in Vancouver, outdoor running is going to take a back seat, so I’ll be on the treadmill or the rowing machine in our gym. There are a number of podcasts which will be perfect for the gym, such as CBC’s Quirks and Quarks and NPR’s Science Friday so I figured now would be a perfect time to stop procrastinating.

Last night I took the plunge, went down to London Drugs and picked up a green one, mainly because Nathan already has a silver one, which would have been the logical choice. Once home, I left it charging overnight, then loaded two podcasts for the walk in to work this morning. I was a bit worried when it refused to play the podcasts, claiming there were no ‘songs’ available, so I left it at home.

A quick check of Apple’s support site revealed that it doesn’t play podcasts in ‘shuffle’ mode, so once I’d set the slider accordingly all was well. The only downside is that the headphone cord is quite a bit shorter than the one on my regular iPod, so I can’t plug it into my desktop at work and kick back in my chair. However, that will be an advantage in the gym, which is what I bought it for anyway, so I can’t complain.