Why You Can Trust CNET a-Jays One earphones review: a-Jays One earphones
Jays entry-level headphones have a flat cable and anything but flat sound.
a-Jays One earphones
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Design
The most interesting thing about the a-Jays One design isn't so much the ear buds themselves, which are an ordinary bud style only enlivened by the presence of sets of different-sized silicone sleeves, but the cable, which rather than the customary round, is instead 115cm of flat black cable. While the a-Jays One represents the very bottom of the rung of the ladder of Jays headphones, with prices increasing as you go up the quality scale, it's a nice feature to have at a budget price point, as it makes it very hard (but not quite impossible) to tangle up the headphones themselves.
As with other entries in the Jays line, the a-Jays One ships with a large plastic case to house both headphones and silicone sleeves. It's good for home storage, but we'd strongly argue that it's too large to realistically be carried around for terribly long.
Features
Inside your choice of silicone sleeves lies an 8.6mm dynamic speaker with a claimed frequency range of 20-18,000Hz. Jays claims that these entry-level speakers are particularly tuned for bass frequencies. If you step up the range to the suitably named (but pricier) a-Jays Two or Three you get slightly different performance characteristics and a range of accessories including airline travel adapters, a full travel case and a stereo splitter.
Performance
The flat cable might seem gimmicky, but if you're forever spending minutes at a time untangling headphone cables after popping them in your pocket you'll quickly appreciate how simple the flat cable makes it to disentangle. It doesn't make them the most subtle headphones, however, as it's immediately apparent to all that you're wearing headphones.
The wear was mostly comfortable once we'd fitted the correct size ear buds. Like most fully in-ear buds, there's a modicum of noise cancellation in play here, simply because other sounds can't entirely get past the buds. We weren't expecting great things from the a-Jays One headphone simply due to the fact that they sit at the bottom of the price range, but we were pleasantly surprised at how generally punchy they sounded with most music types.
Conclusion
As basic headphones at a basic price, the a-Jays Ones acquit themselves well. The inclusion of the flat easy-to-use cable makes them particularly easy to recommend for everyday use.