The Ink’d range is the entry level range on offer from the relatively young company Skullcandy. They self proclaim that this range is one of the best selling earbud ranges in the USA today. Will the budget S2IKDY-010s perform well in our headphone review? Read on…

Features

The Skullcandy S2IKDY-010 Ink’d 2.0 Earbud Headphones with Mic… phew that’s a mouthful! are available in Black/red and in black with blue. They come with a lifetime limited manufacturer’s warranty.

The headphones incorporate some features which Skullcandy proclaim such as “Attacking Bass”, which should offer a more powerful bass, “Natural Vocals”, technology which should ensure that vocals are no longer tinny and “Precision Highs” which should mean the higher range of frequencies are not muddled and more clear.

The headphones come with three different silicone gel earbud sleeve sizes which should ensure these stay in your ears fine, however some users simply don’t get on well with earbuds no matter which sizes would be available. Everyone’s ear shapes are different. Of course it is great that Skullcandy at least tries to accommodate a wider range of users with these different sleeve sizes in quite a budget product. The three different sleeve sizes provided with the product are small, medium and large. This should hopefully mean that in the vast majority of cases consumers don’t need to buy other sizes or sleeve adapters when purchasing these headphones.

These headphones are available to buy for less than $20 and with many competitive offers around you can probably pick these up even cheaper than that. Certainly a worth while consideration as I will try to point out for you.

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Style

The style of these headphones is simple but effective. The two tone colour has been used well and of course Skullcandy’s logo is present on the sides of both earbuds. The Left/Right indicators can be found on the inside of the “bud”/speaker housing. The mic button is also in the shape of the Skullcandy logo to good effect.

Sound Quality & Comfort

Skullcandy are renowned for relatively good sound quality and the same can be said about this pair of headphones. The bass as is often the case with Skullcandy seemed particularly good to me. The overall sound quality I think is quite rich and even at high volumes these earbuds do not seem to distort at all which is quite impressive considering the cost. They seem to cancel out background noise quite well although this may have more to do with the fact that the earbud sleeve size I tried this with fitted my ears relatively snug (medium). For the price I think the sound quality is excellent.

I think these earbuds were quite comfortable although I did not try them for a long extended period I must say. Earbud shapes and sleeve sizes are all different and this might mean these won’t agree with you if you have perhaps had trouble with other earbuds in the past. However I could not find or feel anything out of the ordinary here at all.

Build Quality

Initial reports on build quality have been quite positive, however recently there has been some concern from verified purchasers about this product. Whether there has been a genuine faulty batch recently or if the problem lies with  a fraudulent imitation is unclear. I certainly would recommend purchasing these headphones from a reputable seller.

Some users have reported that they have been using the earbuds for a while and not necessarily have been too careful with them since these are a relatively budget item. It is easy to forget about earbuds in your clothing and they sometimes might even end up in the washing or more likely outside in heavy rain. Still in many of these cases users have pointed out that these Skullcandy earbuds have in fact been quite durable and resisted these types of harsh treatments.

Note that there have been some reports of the Mic failing early but again I are not sure if this is due to cheap replicas.

The cord provided is 1.3 meter long, which is just over average for earbuds. This can be useful in many situations if you want to thread the cord through your jacket or bag or if your phone or MP3 player will be further away from your head than usual.

The Mic feature

The Mic with button supposedly allows you to take and make calls and to even pause and play your device. This should work with most Smartphones. However there have been some reports of users not being able to get this feature to work well or consistently. Compatibility with Samsung and HTC phones seems mostly fine however, but I have seen reports of incompatibility with certain apps even. Therefore I would offer a word of caution here if you are interested in specifically this feature to perhaps consider a different model or maybe sift through some more user reviews to ensure compatibility with your own device.

Verdict

For the price these earbuds from Skullcandy seem quite good. The build quality seems fine and the additional ear sleeve sizes included along with the decent sound quality and mic functionality makes this a viable option for someone in the market for a new set of earbud headphones.

The mic with button feature is a great addition but I see this more of a bonus feature as there are some reports of incompatibility with certain devices or apps.

Whilst there have been some reports on units which fail quickly this might be down to cheap imitations and not something that Skullcandy is responsible for themselves. I therefore recommend you buy these headphones from a good recommended seller if you are interested.

Good, but perhaps not great or anything special here but the Skullcandy S2IKDY-010 Ink’d 2.0 Earbud Headphones with Mic are certainly worth the money and definitely worth considering if you want some relatively good earbuds in this price range.

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