Review: Review: VerveRider+ wearable Bluetooth earbuds by Motorola.

I’ve been a fan of wireless headphones for a while, for sport and working out in general they make so much sense – but only when executed correctly, and the VerveRider+ bluetooth earbuds by Motorola certainly are that!

Bluetooth headphones are so hot right now! Since Apple decided to ditch the cable in favour of tiny headphones which will be lost in the first week, the internet has been awash with opinion pieces about wireless (but as is the norm with Apple, they didn’t invent wireless headphones, but this will make them even more mainstream).

As far as the sound is concerned, they are as good as any in-ear buds I’ve used, a good audio range for such tiny speakers and they don’t leak sound out to the rest of the world!

“AptX technology provides HD sound over a wireless connection by delivering the entire music bandwidth to the earbuds, preserving the audio quality over bluetooth”

Surely next to sound in importance is battery life? And once again the VerveRider+ do a stand-up job, I’m getting several days of usage out of them, thats including music, training rides, and watching TV whilst I do the washing up. When they start to get low there’s a small beep to alert you, at that stage there seems to be about an hour left of usability, so it’s not the end of the world. Charge time is around an hour so you are back up quickly.

They are billed as waterproof, which is obviously handy with winter coming, and if you are going to be using them in the gym then you can rest assured that they won’t be corroded from sweat etc but it’s worth mentioning that they are not designed for underwater swimming, so don’t even think about a cool swimming pool selfie….

With them being attached to the phone it stand to reason that you can use them for calls, and I may be wrong, but it seems that the call quality through the VerveRider+ headphones is better than the native quality from the phone, so much so that I have them connected around the house for calling and the phone on the window ledge out of the way.

There are few buttons to complicate things, start/stop, dial/endcall,  and volume buttons are all present – the volume buttons also double up as skip back and forward – handy! 

A small feature, but one that shows that some considered thought has gone into the VerveRider+ is that the two main buttons also serve as magnetic attachment points for the buds, this means you can fix them in place and not have them bouncing around potentially irritating you and/or getting caught on other things – like I said, it’s a small touch, but I’ve found it really useful for those times I’m listening via a single ear.

The buttons are housed in a plastic body which wraps around behind the neck via flexible plastic – and it’s here that i can find the only significant issue I have (and even here it’s a quibble really).

The VerveRider+ buds are priced around the £80 mark, which is fairly steep for headphones, but not so bad for decent wireless kit. But the housing doesn’t really scream £80’s worth of value to me, it feels a little cheap in its implementation  – however, and I feel this is with stressing, this is purely based upon the aesthetics of the housing – the actual buds are very nice, both in use and aesthetics!

All things considered however, despite the plasticky housing, the VerveRider+ earbuds are a nice bit of kit, with strong sound quality, great functionality, and a good price for the spec, if wireless is on your mind then these should be at the top of your list!