After owning an ipod nano 1st generation, ipod nano 2nd generation and now an ipod touch, I have used a considerable amount of apple headphones. All of which have been pretty disappointing.

The headphones do have a sleek and modern design, matching the style of the ipods themselves. And although the plain colour of the headphones (grey/white) is quite boring, it is an advantage as it matches the colour of your ipod and would easily match anything you are wearing. From this point, the headphones could even be considered quite stylish. Saying this though, being sold for £26 on the apple website, you can most definitely find a different pair of headphones at the same price, with a better, more stylish design of your choice, including a different range of colours.

The actual sound quality isn't bad, and overall you can hear your music clearly and in detail. The volume limit is also good. I have had headphones before which are so quiet you can't ever hear anything when travelling. In contrast the headphones are loud! But this also has a downside on public transport. If you like listening to music at fullblast, you have the ability to, but its disruptive to every else, as they can also hear what you're listening to. The headphones leak a lot of sound!

The headphones themselves are made of a flexible, rubbery material, on a plus point making the product very light, but there are some flaws. With all my headphones I have had a problem with the wires getting tangled and knotted. Now you might think this sounds silly, but it is true! I have noticed with some of my friends as well, often when they get their ipod out their bag, a tangled mess comes with it. I'm not quite sure why this happens, but it must be to do with the material used to create them. Whatever the cause, it is of great annoyance, especially when you can't listen to your music cause the wires won't reach your ears.

The material also makes it extremely hard to clean, as it can mark easily and it's pretty impossible to get rid of. After a couple of months of usage, the headphones hardly look new at all.
The flexibility of the wires is also a problem on the actual earpieces, this rubber-like material covers half the earpiece, making it very temperamental. I have had issues of the ear piece with the cover come off on a number of my headphones. This results in the size shrunken, so they'll no longer fit in my ear, and in general looks messy and broken.

I have also had problems with loose wires. Every pair of apple headphones I've owned, eventually I have had to bin. Problems I've experienced: the wires connected to the ear piece have come loose, on another pair one earpiece had a loose connection and the music became fuzzy, one earpiece was at a louder volume than the other and the actual connector plugged in the ipod snapped away from the wires, so it was stuck in the ipod (however on this occasion I did accidentally drop it from quite a fair height! So this is probably my own fault). But in general I have found the headphones to be very unreliable.

I mentioned before that you can buy a new pair of apple headphones for £26. This is definitely money not well spent. If you still wish to buy any, ebay and amazon sell headphones for under £3, much more suited for the quality of these headphones.