Rocketfish RF-MAB2 Bluetooth Headphones

Introduction:

My quest for Bluetooth headphones found me browsing Amazon’s reviews this weekend, where I made a strange discovery: an in-house brand of headphones from a major brick-and-mortar retailer was actually getting decent reviews.

The fact that a Best Buy product would even show up on Amazon was odd enough, but reviews for the Rocketfish RF-MAB2 headphones were pretty good. I checked several other review sites and they all said the same thing. Color me intrigued.

The design looked attractive, but they were a little pricey on Amazon ($65), so on a whim I decided to see what my local Best Buy wanted for them. I went to the Mobile section and saw the same headphones on the shelf for $49.99. I immediately wondered if I’d just misread the price on Amazon.

I scanned the headphones with Google Shopper, and found that my memory hadn’t failed me. I had officially stepped into Bizarro World. I have trouble coming to terms with the idea that for once, Best Buy actually had the best buy. I purchased them immediately, and went home happy.

Retail Fail:

My jubilence was short-lived however. After waiting the compulsory 3-hour charge time (more on that later) I paired the phones with my LG Optimus and started testing, only to find I wasn’t hearing anything out of the left speaker.

At first I thought it was just a setting somewhere that needed tweaking, but after fiddling with the audio settings on my phone, iPad, laptop, and the device itself I determined that I’d just picked a defective pair.
Normally I would have asked for a refund and called it a failed experiment, but the quality of sound I got out of the right speaker (and the relative comfort of the phones on my head) made me want to give it another shot.

Bright and early the next morning, I marched back into Best Buy and exhanged them. The customer service rep didn’t ask questions, which could mean she was just exceptionally nice or this sort of thing has happened a lot. She politely suggested I might want to purchase their $8.99 2-year extended return policy (they call it a “Replacement Plan”), and for once I agreed.

This time I was not going to leave the parking lot without testing the phones, even if that meant charging it with my USB car charger for half an hour. Thankfully that wasn’t necessary, as the second pair had a charge right out of the box.

Sound Quality:

I hooked them up to my phone and immediately tested for sound in both ears. So far so good. Next came the stress tests. I tested the bass response with these tracks:

• 10,000 Days (Wings Pt. 2) by Tool
• Indigo Children (JLE Dub Mix) by Puscifier
• O Fortuna from the Carmina Burana by Carl Orff
• Teardrop by Massive Attack

I was also curious to see how quieter tracks fared, so I chose these:

• Carnival of the Animals: Aquarium by Camille Saint-Saens
• Mr. Nagano’s Foolish Proposal by the Yoshida Brothers
• Preludio by Curandero
• Love Theme (from True Blood) by Nathan Barr

I was pleasantly surprised at the very nice bass from these headphones. They were close enough to my Sony earbuds that I didn’t feel I was taking a technological step back. The volume output was pretty good too, and the headphones themselves had independent volume control from the device they’re attached to.

This actually led to a bit of an awkward incident when I got home and hooked up the RF-MAB2s to my iPad. Apparently the iPad puts out a significant bit more sound than the LG Optimus. I was sitting in my comfy chair in the living room when I tried it, and my wife snickered at me when I suddenly jerked to attention and ripped the headphones off my ears.

Speaking of which, the RF-MAB2 didn’t have any problems connecting to my devices. Phone, laptop, and iPad all detected and synced up just fine. All the function buttons (Play/Pause, track advance, Call Initiate/Hangup) worked like I expected.

According to the manual, the RF-MAB2 is capable of syncing with two devices at once, so in theory you could listen to music on your laptop and field a call from your phone when it rang. I’m not sure I care to do that much bit-juggling (and most of my music is on my phone anyway) but it’s a nice option to have.

There’s also a set of “3D sound” options that do some strange things with the sound. I didn’t play with this much, since it had a tendency to make my music sound either way to tinny or like I was listening in a large, empty room.

Hardware:

I haven’t used the headphones very long, so I can’t comment on battery life just yet. I am pleased to report however that the charging cable is just a standard micro-USB (wall adapter included), so I already had several on-the-go charging solutions handy.

The buttons on the RF-MAB2s have a sturdy feel to them. They didn’t click or shake when I moved, and I even tested them jumping up and down (much to my wife’s amusement). So far so good.
Sound isolation is surprisingly good for these phones. I was able to listen to them while walking to my office through a busy downtown without having to jack up the volume. Most can-style phones are basically useless in situations like that.

The headphones still beep from time to time (when they’re reconnecting from sleep mode, or when I hit the Play/Pause button) but they don’t beep every time I press something, which is good. I can adjust the volume and swap tracks without a beep. The volume of the beeps seems to correspond to the volume of my headphones, which is also good.

Comfort and Look:

The RF-MAB2s aren’t quite as bulky as the Motorola S-305s I played with before, so I feel a little less like a Star Wars character wearing them. My wife was a little put off by the shape of the ear phones (they’re triangular, not round).

I’ve worn the phones for several hours at a time. They’re actually pretty comfortable, which is unusual for wrap-around, non-earbud phones. Usually my ears feel hot and constricted wearing can-style headphones after a while, but there’s pretty good ventilation on the RF-MAB2. The pressure behind my ears isn’t too noticeable (although I’d still recommend periodic breaks).

The band on these phones is pretty small (more in line with the Motorola S9/S10-HD), but unlike those devices it’s much more flexible. I didn’t have any issues with the phones pinching my head, and the problem I had with the S305 where the band kept rubbing against my collar is much less pronounced. This is probably due to the fact that it doesn’t stick out as much.



Conclusion:

Provided these headphones can stand up to the abuse of my everyday music-listening, I think I might have found what I was looking for in the RF-MAB2s. The sound quality is good for what I listen to, and they feel pretty good on my head.

At $50, they’re pretty mid-range between the cheapest Motorolas ($35) and the exorbitant offerings from Bose or Sensenheiser ($150-300). If you can get over the idea of buying something from Best Buy, you might want to give these a try.