Philips ActionFit Sport Earhooks review

Philips has introduced its new 2015 ActionFit Sports Headphones range for sport and running, which come in three deferent styles. We take a look at the ActionFit Sport Earhooks, which are middle of the range at £39, come in orange, green and pink, and take them thought their paces. See also: Best budget headphones under £50.

The first thing you will notice when taking them out of their packaging is how light they are. At just 21.5g, once you put them on you forget that you have them on. Which is a big plus, especially if you’re going for a ten mile run. Although the official RRP is £39 you can buy them from Amazon for a cool £19.

The ActionFit Sport Earhooks come with 3 different ear-tip sizes, for optimum fit. This is nice, but pretty much a standard these days. The Kevlar reinforced cable is also a nice touch and does make the cable more robust which should last a while. Unfortunately, we found that the cable kept getting tangled, which is a little annoying. Also, after trying out some other wireless sports headphones, it was difficult to go back to having a wire always getting in the way. It is worth pointing out, however, that not only do decent wireless headphones cost more, they also drain your phones battery quicker while using Bluetooth connectivity. In our experience wired headphones will also sound better.

We used the ActionFit Sport Earhooks over a month, testing them while running outside as well as mountain biking. We found that the adjustable ear hook make a big difference in keeping the headphones snug in place. To us, this is by far the best feature of the ActionFit Sport Earhooks. We found other, way more expensive, in-ear headphones without ear hooks, that just kept falling out and were very frustrating to use. The last thing you want is to be frustrated when you’re doing a long run, or cardio workout. We found the ActionFit Sport Earhooks hassle free in this respect.

Philips claims that the ActionFit Sport headphones give “High-performance sound”. We found this not to be the case. The sound was okay at best. With light bass, muffled highs and not much in the mids department either. Saying all that, we do appreciate that these are low cost headphones. And in all honesty sound quality is not top priority, at least to us, when we’re rushing down a hill on our Trek. And that’s coming from an audiophile who is obsessed in getting the best sound from my high-res album collection.

Sound isolation is okay, but this will depend on your environment. Keep in mind that when running outside you don’t want to completely isolate your hearing, especially near busy roads. We found sound isolation just about right, we were able to hear our music tracks and the running app voice commands, while still keeping aware of cars approaching and such like.

One omission from the ActionFit Sport Earhooks is a lack of an in-line control, which would have been very handy, especially when you’re in the middle of an activity and want to change the volume or skip a track. For that feature, you will need to spend a bit more on the next model up. And we suggest you do.

The ActionFit Sport headphones are sweat and moisture proof. We ran them under a tap after every run and left them to dry. They still work, and look as new.