ISOtunes LINK Aware bluetooth earmuffs

Enter the ISOtunes LINK Aware Bluetooth Earmuffs, model IT-34. Why are they shouting “LINK” at me? Is that some kind of secret acronym?

Description

It’s a battery-powered bluetooth-enabled noise reduction hearing protection earmuff stereo headset with outside audio pass-through and independent volume controls.

Narrative

Ah, the description and the technology hold so much promise, don’t they? First of all, they’re earmuffs, so they protect your hearing. Then they have bluetooth so you can listen to music or make calls while you wear them. And, as an extra bonus, they pass through outside sounds to your ears using the built-in microphones. This means you can control the relative volume of the bluetooth audio and the real world, from all the way up (I haven’t tried this) to all the way off (completely muted). Plus, they’re oh-so-fashionable! Love that fluorescent green.¹

And then there’s the implementation. But first a little backstory. I purchased these because my 3M bluetooth earmuffs bit the dust after a few years. And by that I mean one of the speakers stopped working so I disassembled it in an attempt to fix it and realized that it was irreparable (not something to which I frequently admit defeat), so I gave them to my kid and purchased these instead, vowing never again to purchase such a flawed product. I also used to have a pair of Peltor earmuffs that had a built-in microphone and volume control, and their electronic mechanism was excellent. So I previously owned two options for hearing protection: one with bluetooth and the other with pass-through audio + protection from loud impulse-type noises. I thought to myself, “surely there must be a product that combines these two functionalities.” There was. And don’t call me Shirley.

So back to the implementation.

Functionality

The bluetooth functionality works fine. You can listen to music or make calls or do whatever a bluetooth headset can do, only better, because it blocks out much of the outside noise due to the nature of its design.

It also passes through outside audio. You can turn the volume on this up and down independent of the bluetooth audio levels. Consequently, it has five buttons: on/off, bluetooth up, bluetooth down, pass-through up, and pass-through down. This must be the “Aware” part.

Quality

The audio is halfway decent, again thanks to its size (try getting any bass out of ear buds and you’ll know what I mean).

The shortcomings arise when I compare the impulse noise dampening feature with my old Peltor earmuffs. It just doesn’t compare. The Peltors were so much better. Now both earmuffs mute quickly with loud noises, but the Peltors activated seamlessly and recovered by gently fading back up over a second or two. They also only activated with loud noises. The ISOtunes have problems: first off, there’s an annoying “bump” sound when the muting activates. It’s jarring. Secondly, they seem to activate at too low a level, nothing that would harm my hearing (while wearing them). It’s so bad that if I’m in an environment that may trigger the hearing protection function, I simply do not use the pass-through audio. It works okay enough to increase your situational awareness in quieter environments that don’t trigger that function. Essentially, it does what it says it does, but not in a very pleasant way.

Now I’m quite sensitive to sound and noise, so I’m a bit picky in this area. Others not so much, so it may not bother you. But in my opinion they needed more development time on this one. Get their version without the “Aware” function and save yourself some money. Or get the 3M version, which was better anyway, but just know that the cord will likely get frayed or damaged at some point. I wish I could still get the old Peltors, but it looks they were bought out by 3M. Maybe I’ll have to try their new ones at some point. Maybe their Peltor line is more durable than their WorkTunes line. Who knows? I don’t. Not yet, at least.

Oh, and one more nit: when they’re getting low on battery they produce an incredibly annoying beep, made especially more annoying usually because when I’m wearing these, it’s to help me concentrate on something that would make me angrily distracted by an annoying noise in the first place. So make sure you keep them charged up.

Reliability

So far it has reliably performed as designed.

Durability

So far it remains in one piece and fully functional. Time will tell. The battery life is not as long as the 3M ones.

Conclusion

To sum up, they’re okay but not perfect. Would I buy them again? Not these exact ones. But something close. Perhaps these are still the only product yet available that meets my requirements. But meeting requirements and making an excellent product are two different bars.