Skullcandy Full Metal Jacket earphones review

Skullcandy earphones are renowned for being brash, bold and the sort of thing that kids who speak almost exclusively in colloquialisms would wear. So, given the name of the Full Metal Jacket earphones, it’s no surprise that they’re big, shiny and made of metal - or at least coated in it.

We tested the silver version of the Full Metal Jackets - with a built-in microphone designed for use with the iPhone - but if these just aren’t quite as loud and ugly enough for you, there’s a bright pink version available too – and a positively sober black edition if you’re after a classier look.

The silver buds lie somewhere in the middle. They’re eye-catching, but not quite reaching into fully-fledged attention-seeking territory.

While the metal layer, under which is presumably a standard plastic body, gives the Full Metal Jackets a robust feel, they’re not genuinely heavy-duty earphones. Their build quality is just fine, on par with rival earphones at this price point, but any hardcore pretensions are much more to do with aesthetics than real durability.

The Skullcandy Full Metal Jackets’ sound is much more in line with what you might expect though. It’s all about the bass with these buds.

Unfortunately, while there’s a lot of it, it doesn’t sound all that great. The low-end is bloated and flabby, with bass drum beats degrading into rumbling earthquakes rather than the fast, tight thump any self-respecting basshead should really be after. If you’re upgrading straight from bundled earphones, these earphones will most likely still sound like an improvement, but you can get tighter bass for this sort of money.

More serious than the chubby low-end is how the rest of the sound suffers as a result. The treble is seriously lacking in detail, sounding at best like its just compromised by the bass boom, and at worst as if the whole upper-end of the sonic register is just a disconnected afterthought. Vocals can sound oddly far-away, lost in a fog of bass.

The type of music you’re feeding the Full Metal Jackets does alter quite how bad this effect is, but we found the sense of disconnection between highs and lows – not a rare occurrence with this earphones – frequently spoiled the listening experience entirely.

Even if you are a bass hunter, we’d recommend taking a serious look at rival Sennheiser and Denon headphones before considering these Skullcandy buds. They may not be hugely expensive, but they’re not the cheapest earphones around either and you can get more sound for your hard-earned pounds.