Sony Ericsson LiveSound Headphones – Review

We’ve had a number of headphones sent our way to review recently. These are the Sony Ericsson LiveSound hi-fi headphones and they sell for around £49.99. They don’t work with all phones or MP3 players, these are designed to work with Sony Ericsson Xperia handsets like the Xperia neo, Xperia PLAY and Xperia pro. We tried it on another non-compatible phone and there’s pretty much no sound.

Handset manufacturers are becoming increasingly aware that music quality through good headphones is important. HTC have got their Beats headphones and now Sony Ericsson got these LiveSound headphones. They double as a hands-free kit and are designed very well indeed. Not only that, but you get great audio quality and a special “LiveKey” which lets you fire up apps or do special tasks. Apps are available within the Android Market that’ll let you fire up the camera, video and much more when you whack the LiveKey.

Then there’s the LiveWare Manager – this will let you fire up certain apps, like the music app, when you plug your headphones in. Nice.

The control unit was a little far up for our liking, and it meant that we couldn’t see what buttons we were pressing because it was right next to our ears. You can turn the volume up and down, but I’ve filmed a hands-on video below…

Sony Ericsson took the headphones out on the streets so that students could experience the audio quality themselves..

In the box you also get a selection of ear buds. These can be swapped out when the original ones get grubby or waxy. Theyt’re various different sizes too, so you can find the ones that suit your ears.

Overall we were very impressed. If you have a compatible phone (there’s a list here) then we’d definitely recommend getting these headphones. They complement the Xperia phones extremely well indeed.

Link – Sony Ericsson