I'll start by stating that I wanted to give these 3.5 stars so was generous.
They are superb quality headphones, the build would rival anything. The sound clarity is excellent. As apple states, you can hear new details, and I find it is much easier to hear individual instruments. There is far less background noise and more music which is brilliant. Overall, the driver end of them is great. But...
The silicone ear tips: They don't seem to come in S,M,L, instead they come in large, extra large, and extra extra large. Also, the tips extend over the main driver (this can be seen in apple's pictures of them). This mean that the silicone ear tips can't compress to fit the ear size, like the silicone is designed to. All of this means, if you have remotely small ear canals, it is very hard to get a good seal, and because of this the bass suffers greatly. If you shove them firmly into your ears (not a desirable requirement) and hold them there, they sound great, flawless, but then they won't stay there. However, they won't ever fall out and are very comfortable; they just can't give a good enough seal.
The casing: As we all know, these earphones have two drivers each, which is a great feature. But, I reckon that the two drives are mounted one in front of the other. This makes the headphones very long. They are actually 1.9cm from the mesh to the back, not including the silicone ear tip. This means they stick out more than other brands. This isn't a problem unless you like listening to music in bed, in which case it is slightly uncomfortable.
The wire: No problems with the wire. Some manufacturers ignore the wire and treat it as an afterthought. Apple has always been different. The wire is made from the same stuff as always (like the stock earphones you get free in an iPod). There is no reason to change this, as it produces no cable noise, which if you've experienced it in the past, you will no there is nothing worse. The mic and buttons are about 9.5cm down the cable from the right earphone and the mic itself is a bit less than 3cm long. I haven't actually used the buttons or mic as I am listening on the old 3rd gen iPod nano. However, the buttons press is Ok, except that the volume buttons are quite close to the middle button and I think it would be possible to hit both by mistake. Other than that, the unit is a nice addition and would be very useful. Like most apple earphones, the splitter can be moved up the cord towards the earphones. The moveable section can also detach from one wire. I don't know what this is for but I expect it is so that you can arrange the cable in some weird and wonderful way, so this could be useful to you. As you'd expect the headphone jack is in-line not at right angle. I prefer this, but others may disagree. The wire has no clever arrangement, it a simple "Y" shape.
Carrying case: I'm glad apple have brought one out. It is useful although I've used better. It fits very easily in your pocket and in my opinion is quite stylish. The only drawback is that the cable is a bit hard to wrap correctly. They can't be wrapped very quickly and I find the jack only fits well if you wind it slightly slack and then pop the jack in vertically with the headphones (you'll understand if you get them). I expect this will become easier in time, as you grow accustom to the movement. They unwrap fairly quickly, although I find other systems by Philips much faster and easier. I am glad they included it though.
Overall, I'm not sure they are worth the money. I have a pair of Philips SHE9500 I got for £10 and they deliver very similar sound quality. The do have the benefit of fitting my ears very well though. These headphones would be miles in front of the competition if they had decent tip and would produce a good seal. If you have larger ears, get them – they may fit very well and would be exceptional if they did. If not, you may want to think twice. Unfortunately, most other tips won’t fit onto these, so you can't swap for another pair.
Dimensions: Earpiece diameter (no tip): 8mm
Length of earpiece: 19mm High of earpiece: 27mm
Length of buttons/mic: 28mm
Thickness of buttons/mic: 3.5mm
Width of buttons/mic: 5mm
Large tip diameter (at largest point): 14mm
Medium tip diameter (largest point): 12.5mm
Small tip diameter (LP): 11mm
P.S. Make sure to screw in the mesh caps, mine were loose.
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