Shure SE110 Earphones review

Not quite as stylish as some, the new SE110 earphones from Shure look large and bulbous at first.

The casing on the buds is a mix of hard black plastic and rubber, and the rubberised cable feels reasonably sturdy. The supplied extension cable is 91cm long - possibly too long, as it needs coiling up to avoid trailing, though a shorter 23cm extension is available separately.

Aimed at owners of portable music players who want to upgrade from their bundled headphones, the SE110 uses Shure's Sound Isolating technology, which Shure boldly claims blocks 90% of ambient noise. In practice, we found vehicle horns and rumbling traffic noise still evident on busy London streets. On the other hand, if you need to be alert to sound information from the environment, you'll experience mixed results: in an underground station we found trains and platform announcements were audible, but in the office colleagues had to wave frantically to attract our attention to a ringing telephone.

The main issue we encountered, as with all good earphones, was the highlighting of compression flaws even in some 192kbps AAC tracks. Most flaws exhibited themselves when the volume was pushed towards uncomfortable levels that were unsustainable for more than a few seconds.

Issues were even apparent on some tracks in their original CD form - the crescendo in Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill and the moody intro to Chris Isaak's Blue Hotel both produced some crackling noise, as did the saxophone at some points in a track by jazz musician Chris Botti.

At sensible volumes though, most 192kbps AAC files sounded superb, with genuine clarity of instruments and vocals. On a few of the tested tracks, which sounded muddied and indistinct with other earphones, we were startled by the separation of instruments the SE110 produced. It wasn't necessary to turn up the volume to hear the quieter parts of tracks whose volume varied throughout.

If you are looking to replace the headphones bundled with your iPod and are willing to spend a bit more , the SE110 is certainly worth considering. In general, you'll find the sound quality from these headphones excellent, as a result of which listening in noisy environments becomes a much more comfortable and rewarding experience.

Just be aware that you might need to re-encode some of your music for best results - using either a better encoder or a higher bitrate - which owners of small-capacity MP3 players might find frustrating.