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Ears-on with the Jays s-Jays earphones

We've gone ears-on with the new Jays s-Jays earphones, and were impressed with the sound quality and value from these £50 sound isolators

Nate Lanxon
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Can't afford the smashing q-Jays earphones? Well turn that frown upside down, little poor person, because Jays has a more affordable pitch for your coins: the s-Jays. This addition to the range lives alongside the q-Jays, j-Jays, d-Jays, m-Jays and c-Jays.

Oh man, someone really should warn them not to release a pair of o-Jays.

Anyway, the s-Jays feature sound technology that the company promises will "deliver a roaring sound, featuring Jays' most powerful bass system so far". We've just received a pair from sunny Sweden and took that statement for an exhaustive walk around the park.

Just one lap around said park (it took about an hour -- it's a large park), and we realised these earphones are a decent contender in the £50 earphone market. They're reasonably clear and produce a solid sound, for the price, from their single-armature drive system. But, while they may offer the most powerful bass Jays has achieved, we have heard deeper lows at this price point, such as from the Sennheiser CX 500s.

The s-Jays, however, are the better earphones. In terms of sound quality, they're what we'd call 'all-rounders': they're suitable for most types of music, from rock to pop, and country to dance. They deliver a warm, solid bass, with a punchy mid-range for driving instruments into your ears, and respond to frequencies between 20Hz and 20kHz, with an impedance of 69 Ohms.

To test the bass, we usually give Pendulum's In Silico record a spin. We heard a beefy bass and, compared to the Sennheiser CX 95s, a much more enjoyable overall sound quality. The s-Jays aren't a patch on the q-Jays, or any pair over the £100 mark, of course, but, for £50, these will make a superb first upgrade from the earbuds that come with your MP3 player and, to be honest, even from the Sennheiser CX 300s.

They're also comfortable little sound-isolating earphones that block out a great deal of the noise around you, plus they come with a great range of accessories, all wrapped in the beautiful packaging we've come to respect Jays for.

The s-Jays are on sale from Amazon now, or you can buy direct from Jays. In a nutshell, they're brilliant with dance music and good value. They're probably most suitable for you if you mostly listen to stuff in the charts. A big fat gallery of close-ups follows over the next few pages.

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The s-Jays feature a curved chassis, which we found to be very comfortable.
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An extension cable comes in the box, adding about 1m to the length of the short earphone cable.
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The extension cable is just a 3.5mm-to-3.5mm lead, with standard headphone plugs and sockets on either end.
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Jays includes a great selection of accessories, including silicone tips of varying sizes, an airline adaptor, a stereo splitter (for using two pairs of headphones with one MP3 player) and a zip-closing carry case.
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The s-Jays are significantly larger than the dual-armature q-Jays, seen here on the left.

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