Bluedio T3 Plus (Turbine 3rd) Wireless Bluetooth 4.1 Stereo Headphones with Mic/Micro SD Card Slot (Black)

Around Christmas I saw a good deal on a pair of Bluedio bluetooth headphones (the H+ Turbines), having not heard of the make I was a little wary, but saw some good reviews and thought I'd give them a try. I was a little disappointed with their appearance when they arrived as they looked a little plasticky. However I tried them out and found the pairing worked easily and the sound quality was pretty good, giving good bass, but also clear audio when watching TV/Films. They were also comfortable to wear. However after a few months of use the headphones snapped on one of the arms. On contacting Bluedio they were very helpful and offered a replacement, or the offer of "upgrading" to the newer T3+ model with a discount of the price I paid for the H+.Looking at the T3+ I took them up on the offer and when they arrived I was impressed by the better build quality of these headphones. Not only are the arms made from a metal alloy, they are also folding, whilst still having the 57mm drivers that give the good sound quality. Another improvement is the use of memory foam for the padding on the ears and headband that, although heavier than the H+ due to the metal construction, are more comfortable to wear.My only "con" on these headphones, at the moment, is the strange voice that informs you of "Power On" or "Pairing" etc. It's different to the one on the H+ and I find a lot worse and unintelligible for some commands. I've only used them whilst paired to my phone, so haven't tried the controls when using a SD card to play music.Apart from that, for their price, these are decent bluetooth headphones

The quick version: I've had mine a couple of weeks now and my love and respect for these wonderful headphones is still increasing daily. I have owned a few pairs of really expensive high-end professional studio quality headphones in the past and these blow all but one of them out of the water. I had reservations about buying them because I had to buy them without hearing them first, and I wasn't familiar with the brand. Some of the reviews here are REALLY unfair IMHO. You won't get better for the price.No, they're not quite perfect...but nothing ever is in real life. :-) They are, however, about as close to perfect as anything that costs £30 is ever going to be. -DIf you like bass, no headphones this side of 100 quid hold a candle to these. With a little tweaking of eq settings, they are capable of producing superb sound quality right across the spectrum though, not just on the bass notes. They are capable of kicking your teeth in with sound, and providing a lot of bass - but only if that's what you want... :-DOk, so here's the more detailed, longer version :-) :If your main gripe with headphones is usually lack of (clear) bass, or volume, if you're used to having a sub in your car, or just like the ability to go loud when u hear a favourite track, I guarantee these are the headphones you want! The bass can be as dirty or clear, loud or soft as you like. Yeah, they've got a fair amount of bass...if you set the EQ that way. But the bass doesn't have to be overwhelming. It just CAN be, should you wish! I still found the incredible 'bass booster' app by Desaxed Studios (Free from Google play store, or Amazon Underground app) helped to get the best out of these headphones (and every other pair of headphones I've owned for a few yrs) by boosting the sub-bass that bit more and letting me tweak levels to my heart's content. :-)I want to make it clear at this point that I'm NOT being paid anything for this review. I bought the headphones in an Amazon lightning sale. I did NOT get any further discount, or benefit in any other way by writing this review. My opinion is completely impartial. They genuinely sound, look and feel like a high-end pair of cans should. :-D If you're on a budget but want quality sound or loads of features like Bluetooth, playback direct from a memory card, audio OUT etc etc, just save yourself the money and time, take the plunge and order these now. Seriously. If you're not convinced yet, keep reading..After way too many dreadful experiences with 'cheaper ' headphones, (ie under £50) I'm happy to have finally bought the 'right' ones! They're way more than just 'one trick ponies'..and the trick they do is a really good one, anyway! Trials being conducted across the world are unanimously coming up with the same findings, time after time: bass is actually good for you. Seriously. Search it for yourself. :-)Short term exposure to low frequency soundwaves can relieve pain - reducing it by up to 100% in some cases. Bass frequencies can also reduce anxiety, ease symptoms of depression better than most anti depressants, help wounds and broken bones heal quicker...There's not much it can't do, it seems. I've known this for years. Nothing can relax me, cheer me up and enable me to cope, like a drive with my sub pounding does. :-DThe fact you've continued to read this far into my review gives me a deeper insight into the person you are. Although If I'm honest, I knew quite a lot about you already.Mainly because I've been stalking you for weeks. :-D You look better in the flesh than in my photos, but I suppose that's cheap night vision binoculars for you... (!)I feel compelled to make it clear that I was just joking there......You actually look exactly the same through binoculars.:-))(...Just bigger...):-))I'm sorry, I'll try to return to serious mode now... :-) The levity is a side effect of the rigorous standards demanded by my 100% scientific headphone-testing regime. To standardise proceedings, the tests require me to be completely and totally off my mash before, during and after listening. ;-) Im talking old-school Wasted here. Smash up.To quantify the required level of inebriation, take Bez from the Happy Mondays, times him by the sum of Keith Moon, Howard Marks, and every member of The Shaman and you're getting close. :-DSee, shopping CAN be fun!Knowing you as well as I now do (!) enables me to write the rest of this review with you in mind, and tailor it to suit your personal requirements more.I know you're too much of a sceptic to believe that last sentence, for example... ;-)You're nobody's fool. You're discerning enough not to believe everything you read in Amazon reviews but you remain open to evidence, even if your first impressions are proven wrong in the process. Very wise... :-) You don't want to be ripped off or misled, but you appreciate the difficulty of accurately conveying information in words about something as inherently varied, subjective and indescribable as audio sound quality. :-) You've read a fair few of these reviews because it's hard to know who to trust and you want a balanced spread of opinion before blowing /investing a chunk of your hard earned cash.No matter how many people end up reading these words, I'm speaking directly to YOU, the one reading this right now. Yes, YOU... you're the person reading this right now, right?!I'm going to switch things up a little now and make this probably the most valuable review on Amazon. Prepare yourself for this...:'Audiophiles' do not exist.For a start, it's a word created relatively recently by grafting the Greek word for sound (audio), onto the suffix -phile, from Philo, which means 'lover of', I believe. So 'audiophile' would technically mean a lover of sound, had it been a word in ancient Greece. (It wasn't.)Now, there probably will be sounds that you love. Children's laughter, perhaps. Water gently trickling along a stream...There will also be sounds that you hate. It might be a badly tuned motorbike that does it for you, or the sound of rain on your windows... whatever. :-)Personally, I hate what I like to call the sound of Disappointment. It's the sound sometimes made - or omitted - by most cheap headphones, awful midi-hifi's, phone speakers and most standard -fit car systems that don't have a subwoofer. It occurs most often after a big build up in a track, especially those in dance music. At the point the bass is supposed to drop and give you a tingle of satisfied pleasure, you get a distorted mess, or else the feeble, watery, treble-led screech that remains after a high pass filter has clinically removed all sound below a designated frequency. It's the horrible, flat, hollow, empty sound of the 1980's, if you were too poor to afford better equipment or too ignorant to know that the compromise wasn't necessary. (I.e. 90% of the population.)Almost as bad is the bating call (see what I did there?!) of the self-professed Audiophile. Self-important, over-opinionated, so-called 'experts' who can apparently distance themselves from the brain's influence on what they are hearing, and hear it somehow more 'pure' than the rest of us. Trust me, they cannot. :-) Yes, a sound engineer or decent musician probably will be able to discern certain bits of information from sound more effectively than Joe Bloggs, but again, it's really a trick of the mind, not objectively better hearing, that provides their ability. Sound dynamics are very complicated. Most people who understand the subject properly are unable to accurately explain it simply enough for us non experts. Sound reproduction involves a variety of fairly simple factors which combine into a very complicated whole: the soundwave that we hear as music. Again, the brain is always the final and most important filter. The standard measurements performed on audio equipment as a kind of baseline (geddit?!) comparison show things like frequency range, distortion, (thd), sound pressure, dynamic (volume) range etc. All that tells you is the spec of the equipment, without saying too much about the quality of the sound.A good analogy is cars. Two cars made by different manufacturers may each have 2 litre engines and, say, 150 brake horsepower. If one of those cars is a large heavy estate, and the other a sports coupe,they will be very different beasts, despite sharing the same specifications. But you already knew that, right?! Headphones are the same. 2 pairs can share identical specs but still sound totally different.Sound quality is highly subjective. Meaning, what sounds good to you may not sound good to others. It comes down to preference and personal taste in the end, and no one knows better than you, what sounds good to your ears. Chegwin.Surprisingly, and quite strangely, I don't recall reading a single review of these headphones that mentioned the point I'm about to make. It's surprising because it's possibly the most obvious and most important thing you need to know: The headphones sound completely, drastically different through Bluetooth, to the way they sound when you connect them using the cable. The difference is so great, I can only assume other reviewers wrote their reviews without ever thinking to try plugging them in. I almost made this mistake myself.The headphones arrive pre charged, and since a charge lasts ages, I used them for a week before the battery finally gave up the ghost. By that time, I'd already written most of my review. Luckily, I forgot to put them on charge, so the next time I wanted to use them, I had no choice but to use the (supplied) cable.I was astounded. Suddenly the mid-treble ranges had a lot more clarity and depth. Vocals (especially female voices) had a tremendous presence that's largely absent through Bluetooth, yet still retained a lovely soft, precise delicacy above the (boosted) bass. Strings and electronic beepy noises in the mid ranges sounded much clearer and more subtly textured, with a tighter, more precise overall delivery. On certain tracks, these cans are capable of an extraordinarily refined and detailed performance. They retain most of their silky-smooth delivery up to volumes louder than even I can tolerate for more than a few minutes. They can do all this, AND they can kick your face in with waves of sub -bass when you want it. :-D The sound is much more 3 dimensional via cable than it is through Bluetooth, whether or not the 3D mode is switched on. 3D mode can only be used when connected through Bluetooth, but it's really not needed anyway when connected via cable. The soundstage via cable is wider than I've ever experienced through any closed-back headphones, and the sound isolation is brilliant, which makes for a full-immersion, engaging surround sound feel that beats the pants off the 3d mode.The difference between Bluetooth and cabled modes is less profound for things like audiobooks where it's predominantly spoken words. For everything musical, using the cable gives a much crisper, sharper, clearer sound.It's possible that my phone (Sony Xperia Z3 compact) is something to do with the difference. Maybe it uses the older standards for Bluetooth by default, or compresses the sound too much before transmitting it? I don't think this is the case, but it is a possibility. Whatever the cause, through a cable, the headphones sound incredible. Through Bluetooth they don't sound half bad, just nowhere near as good as they sound through a cable!For my part, I adore music. :-) I play quite a few instruments relatively well, have used headphones pretty much daily for the last 32 years, and between the ages of 5 and 19, I sang in a (decent) church choir. That meant I learned to read and understand music, on a variety of deeply -ingrained levels. I 'feel' and 'get' music. It has access to every bit of me. Music can make me spontaneously cry at the sheer beauty of it, or send a bigger shiver of ecstasy than any drug could ever manage, straight down my spine and through every fibre of my body. I LOVE music. Without it I'd have been insane many years ago. :-D I have worked in a number of music-related jobs in my time; producing all kinds of electronic music, working as a dj, a karaoke compare, a pub singer... Etc. Im not just 'showing off' by mentioning that. My point is that I feel at least as qualified and knowledgeable on the subject of audio dynamics as any so called audiophile, and possibly better than most.If headphones don't sound good, 99 times out of 100, it'll be a problem with sounds in the lower frequencies, ie bass. It's hard to make a single speaker, as small as 20mm in some headphones, produce solid bass. If the same speaker is simultaneously trying to output mid and treble sounds as well, distortion is the most usual result. That's why most full sized stereo systems (as opposed to headphones) have speakers with bass cones separated from the tweeters. (Tweeters are the smaller speakers, at the top of most speaker cabinets, specifically for producing treble. There will also sometimes be an intermediate -sized cone for the mid-ranges.) Distorted trebles are more obvious than distorted bass to human ears, so treble becomes the main focus of most Headphone manufacturers. Bluedio have tried hard to address this problem, but gone about it in a number of different ways. In this pair of headphones, they concentrated on stopping the bass clipping or distorting in the first place, meaning fewer 'harmonic' distortions in the treble range. They achieve this by employing the biggest cones I've ever seen on any pair of headphones (57mm). They also make a pair of headphones with 7 different speaker units for each ear - another quite revolutionary solution to an age old problem that has never been adequately remedied before.Respect has got to go to Bluedio for trying to go one better in the pursuit of audio excellence. I wish them all the best, and I look forward to the 4th, 5th and 6th generations of the turbine headphones, which I'll be first in the queue to receive. Reviews suggest they are improving and actively trying to get more right every time.In the meantime, I look forward to enjoying many more happy hours at the golf driving range, listening to liquid drum and bass, and wincing and giggling at how impossibly large it sounds when the bassline drops each time. It's hard to believe that everyone else cannot hear such a huge sound, but they can't, so I probably look a little strange as I suddenly cackle out a loud "Yes!" and start dancing around like an excited 5 year old high on blue smarties, cos it's so powerful and satisfying, I literally, physically, cannot stop myself moving with the music. :-DTurn off my car subwoofer, and music is only just worth having on in the car. All the intensity and engaging involvement disappears and it stops being such an active process. Music through headphones has been a similar compromise for me, to a lesser or greater degree, for most of my life. These headphones mark the end of that period. The Sound of Disappointment is now nothing more than an unpleasant memory to me, and for that, I'm willing to accept the bit of minor discomfort the headphones may cause at first, the fact they need to be used wired and may require 2 mins of eq'ing to sound their best, and the fact they have the word 'turbine' emblazoned across the headband.I've used these headphones for hours every single day since they arrived. Id buy more like a shot. For the price, which is the unfortunate priority for most of us when buying non-essential items like these, they are amazing. If you're really on a tight budget, keep an regular eye on them and get them when they appear on a lightning sale. That saved me an extra £10 at the time I bought them, making them an gamble I could afford to take. Im really glad I did.

First: I already have a pair of Sony BT headphones I use at work, so my expectations are set quite high.These are solidly built items, which gives the appearance of a quality product. Pairing was straight forward and the instructions decent.However, I found them to be a little bit too heavy to be comfortable, and the headband pressed the pads into my ears too tightly to be very comfortable. This wouldn't be pleasant if your wore them for a long time. Worse yet, the BT audio had a low background hiss, which my Sony ones don't have (as they support apt-x), which once I noticed it I found myself unable to stop noticing. In the end I decided to return them. Not because they are not good headphones, but they are not good headphones for me.

These looked to have a decent spec, so I took the plunge, mainly for the integrated SD card slot. Unfortunately, I hadn't really thought that through, as the functionality is extremely limited, to the point of being merely better than nothing.All you can do with the SD card is go one track forward or back, nothing more. You can't change between folders or albums, so if you have 1,000 songs on it and want to play one near the end of the presumably alphabetical listing the headphones uses, you're stuffed. You might as well just stick with the Bluetooth connection to your phone, which defeats the whole purpose.Other than that, the headphones are comfortable to wear, if a little heavy. The sound seems clear enough, and because the earphones cover your ears, there's an element of noise reduction.I'd much rather have had active noise reduction on these than the SD card, but you live and learn.Another negative is when your battery runs down. An extremely irritating voice keeps saying "PLEASE CHARGING" every flipping 10 seconds, with a fade in and out, so you can't even use what little power you have left to listen to stuff, only her constant drone. That really needs to be sorted out. Every 30 seconds is plenty, as at least you could keep listening then.So, the two negatives aside, they're decent headphones and I'm happy enough with them. At least next time I'll be more clued up and know exactly what to look for.