In case you were wondering, there isn’t actually some fashionably minded, tech-savvy Asian woman behind this name, although it does make me giggle a little bit for obvious reasons. Fanny Wang was started by two guys out of Silicon Valley who saw an exciting opportunity to blend fashion and technology in the earphone marketplace. The result is a line of high end over the ear headphones that retail between $249.-299. and ear buds, called WangBuds, which retail for $79.95.
Monster Beats sued Fanny Wang in 2010, not for any technology theft but over a design patent, and tried to get a restraining order to prevent Wang from not only selling their product but also from appearing at CES 2010. After a year both parties settled with no money passing between them and Fanny Wang is still in business.
When I was at the recent CES 2013, I tried out the 3000 series noise-cancelling over the ear headphones and they were amazing. They fit comfortably over your head and ears and the sound quality is great. Where some brands of speakers tend to favor treble or bass, Fanny Wang manages to find a natural balance between the two resulting in an amazing mixture of sound where crisp, high trebles seem to dance somewhere along the center of the audio spectrum, radiating out through insulating layers of bass lows. The noise-cancelling feature does just what it says: with the push of a button it cancels outside noise .
The WangBuds are not your usual earbud. Immediately upon looking at them you will notice that they’re larger than their predecessors. They come with four pairs of ergonomic socks that fit over the speaker end and help them not only fit more comfortably in your ear but keep them from falling out as well.
I have small ears so I can never find any that fit right. For me, they were a little big as well but I used the smaller sock and this helped them stay in. I just wished my ears were a little larger on the inside so I could get the full effect. While the sock does a great job of funneling the sound into the ear canal, for me the sound was that much more incredible when I pushed on them; almost like over the ear headphones. Even so, the sound still is amazing for ear buds. My only suggestion: the mute button is unnecessary on earbuds and only heightens the risk of the wire getting pulled out of the control box rendering the earbuds useless. A solid product overall. Rating: A-
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