Have a very poundland christmas!

It's that time of year. What was the Halloween aisle is now the Christmas aisle and you know you need presents. But you browse through it and realise that it's obviously got nothing to do with Christmas presents. Instead, it is full of wrapping paper, hats and decorations. I didn't buy anything in this aisle, but instead bought a set of fake moustaches as a "gift", you know, that you give to people to show that you know they exist and that you got slightly annoyed thinking about them because all you could think was that that person would probably expect a present from you despite not knowing what they would want, and given their very specific interests or perhaps even their lack of interests, you have a 1 in 100,000 chance of getting them something they will enjoy. Anyway, that's what I assume when people get me things. So why am I reviewing the christmas aisle if I haven't bought anything from it then? Well in work the other day someone mentioned that the santas hat I had worn on 5 separate occassions over the last month, came from poundland. And yes...it was £1.

Santa Hat

Since i didn't really pay attention to my hat, not just because it's a stupid thing to pay attention to, but because I didn't know it was from poundland, I found it doing what a hat should do; make you forget that it's even there. I do actually remember a couple of occassions where I went to scratch my head forgetting it was there, so that backs up my point as proof! Its comfort rating is perfectly acceptable. 

What was I wearing the hat for in work? I was supposed to be an elf, for the purposes of keeping children occupied by pointing out reindeer made of foam for example, before they meet santa, get a present and fuck off. However they had no elf costumes. I assumed that if you were going to keep the whole idea of me being an "elf" up, you would need me to actually look like an elf. But no one questioned this. Not one. So did this seemingly ordinary santa hat with a flashing light (i will get to that) actually make me look convincing as an elf. I don't know. I am left unconvinced. Other people were wearing them and they didn't look like elves to me. But since it didn't cause me any bother when I was wearing it, I would highly recommend this £1 hat for similar purposes.

The flashing light is a great added gimmick. It has an indiscreet button on the outside of the hat to switch it on and I never had the problem of it stopping working.

But the best thing about the product? Well, I never guessed it was from poundland. Yes, it doesn't show any of the normal signs of being from poundland. Something that Red Mountain coffee and various types of egg timers never achieved.

So, overall, this product has far exceeded its £1 pricetag. And you could even claim you weren't in poundland if you're feeling extra sneeky. They won't even know.

NEXT...I will be reviewing a christmas album full of all your favourite christmas covers, which on first listen makes it seem like steel drums were the only type of drum available to them. Check back around the new year! But in the meantime... Merry Christmas!!!  

Diamante in-ear earphones

I had originally said this blog had a solitary motivation of helping you figure out which products in your local poundstore are worth their £1 pricetag and which ones are not worth even that. I may have misinformed you slightly. Indeed that would be a genuinely helpful purpose for the blog once it starts, but why did I feel like starting it? Well I bought a pair of £1 earphones...

Walking into poundstore, I was skint but I knew I needed earphones. I had spent too long using a pair of sennheiser cx 300’s with only one fully working earphone. I had recently figured out that taking the bud off the earphone with shitty sound was advantageous if you were to cup your hand over your ear whilst you were wearing them. This was only feasible in bed when I could just lie on my hand, as cupping my ear while I was walking not only makes my arm sore, but other people could also have assumed I wanted to listen to music way too badly or that I was pretending to be on the phone to avoid conversation. I felt that buying a pair of £1 Diamante in-ear earphones was something I really wanted. I chose them over the other ones on display because I don’t like wearing outer-ear earphones and because they couldn’t possibly brag about their earphones so much only for them to end up being incredibly shit. “A new, more exciting sound experience” as the product blatantly assures us it will be.

My experience didn’t start off well when I realised they didn’t actually work. Perhaps this was the “new” experience. But not to worry! Everything was fine when I realised I just simply had to rotate the earphone connection in the socket until it started producing sound and thereafter completing the puzzling level 1, you were required to repeat this process every few minutes. Needless to say, I was relieved and realised “silly fucking me”.

Sound

At first, it sounded like I was listening to music through a mobile phone but with some amount of bass trying to get out but never quite managing it, wavering in and out of actually being where it should be. Yes, it does warn you on the packet that “the rubber earbuds block external sounds and enhance the bass impact”, or at least it should be warning us. I can’t help but feel that it is stating it as a positive point. That wasn’t a great idea. For people who bothered to look at the description of the earphones before they bought them (people who aren’t me), elation is the first feeling that will overcome them, knowing how fucking excellent these earphones are BOUND to be, only to gradually become more and more disappointed as they realise that everything that could potentially have been “fucking excellent” about that product, e.g. “specially designed”, “bass impact” and of course,”a new, more exciting sound experience”, actually made it really fucking terrible.

They were correct about the bass impact, as it impacted on me being able to listen to anything without hearing the shitty bass rattle the earphones, overpowering other more distinct, subtle sounds. So perhaps change the volume then?

Volume

The range in the volume is excellent. It goes from what I would describe as “quiet” to “piercing” so there are no complaints there. Basically, it has a good average sound. It’s sort of like being constipated one day and not shitting enough to having diarrhoea the next and shitting far too much and then telling someone that there’s nothing wrong because I shat the average amount of shit over the past 2 days.

All I can think of when they say “a new, more exciting sound experience” is that the earphones tend to produce their own noises while you aren’t listening to anything. It’s a soft hiss that becomes more evident as you move the earphones about, however when you move the connection slightly while it is connected to a device, it crackles. When you are on a bus, moving along a bumpy road, there is a lot of crackling going on. It certainly gives you the full experience of surround sound. You end up being convinced that invisible flies are buzzing around you with speakers as eyes, sending out static messages to each other. Then you catch yourself on, because, haha, what would be the point in evolving speakers to replace eyes. Can you imagine humans evolving amplified voice boxes? Anyway, this is completely off topic. On a positive note, if you are a fan of the arctic ambient genre, then you can buy these and get ready for your listening experience to be “enhanced” like it says.

Appearance

The earphones describe themselves as “stylish earphones with fab bling”. Now. When I think of bling, 2 words that come to mind are “flashy” and “excessive”. Assuming this was the way in which they were using the word “bling” and not using it to describe the sound of the earphones (which was something the earphones did have), then they have made a very poor attempt at it. They are black and not very shiny. They also don’t look like jewellery and I would be hard-pushed to find anything different about their appearance to an ordinary pair of inner- ear earphones. When you are selling a product for £1, your customers are not going to be people who give a shit about what the earphones look like when they are wearing them, especially customers who were having to cup one of their ears wearing their last pair.

On second glance, perhaps I’m being critical and really quite rude, because I realise they were describing the bling as being “fab”. You see, I was just looking at the earphones from the point of view that they had to encompass the whole idea of being “bling”. But no! These earphones are promoting themselves as being a particular type of bling. Lets look deeper. The word “fab” seems to be short for “fabulous”... Ok, so I was right the first time. These earphones do not have fabulous bling.

Other relevant points I haven’t already made

Are they comfortable? Yes. But are they as comfortable as they make them out to be. They certainly set themselves an extremely high bar. I mean, I was fine with them being comfortable but apparently there’s a new type of extreme comfort. In fact, these earphones actually describe themselves as having the highest possible amount of comfort. Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you... “ULTIMATE COMFORT”. I don’t know what that is, but I reckon these earphones don’t possess ultimate comfort. Ultimate comfort in your ears would surely be not putting anything in them at all.

Conclusions

So, I have established that these earphones are not what they say they are. They seem to think they are ground-breaking, possess ultimate comfort (which is just a ridiculous thing to suggest) and they do not resemble pieces of needlessly large, shiny pieces of jewellery. They are however, worth £1. Considering I was wearing earphones that didn’t totally work and would make me look ridiculous if I were to try and better the sound, then I guess they are worth it for me. I leave it up to you to decide.

I took my own snazzy, angled pictures of the earphones in their full naked glory, however, so fabulous was the bling, that my camera has had problems uploading the pictures. The following picture taken from another source will have to do.



A disappointing picture showcasing the packaging more than the earphones. Look at them - just raring to get out!



UPDATE: It is 9 days since i bought the earphones. One of the earphones cut out last night, however, moving the cord about, I was able to get it work for a while. It became increasingly difficult to find the exact positions it needed to be in, so much so that I couldn't find it. I felt like it was probably not worth the effort anymore and, with much frustration, I had to switch my ipod off and listen to something that didn't necessarily require 2 working earphones...AM radio. I fell asleep soon afterwards (a couple of hours later) from boredom. So, anyway, my opinion of the earphones haven't changed. They are still worth £1 in some situations. My target was to gradually fall the fuck to sleep that night and it still happened, but from boredom instead, so there you are. Nothing has changed.