Elgin Ruckus Earplug Headphones, 25dB Noise Reduction

Bought these for the Indy 500 to use with my racing scanner and they worked great. The ANSI-certified hearing protection helped cut down the track noise while still allowing clear audio from the scanner. Comfortable enough to wear for hours, stayed in place well, and the wired connection was reliable all day without worrying about batteries dying. Sound quality was clear, they handled the loud environment well, and the price point makes them an even better value. If you need hearing protection for races, air shows, mowing, or other loud events while still listening to audio clearly, these are a solid option.

First of all, these are $20 ear buds and this review is based off of that fact. If you want audiophile level products, don’t buy $20 ear buds. I feel like I’m writing a don’t drink the drain cleaner warning ⚠️! I bought these to use with my motorcycle helmet. I have just received them today and haven’t done any riding with them yet, but, I have put my helmet on with them in my ears and it was fairly uneventful. If you’re a motorcycle rider and have been looking for under helmet earbuds, you’ll appreciate that statement. I can feel a little pressure with the helmet on, but, I’m sure that will fade with use. As with any new earplug or earbud, there is an acclimation process. I work in the mining industry where hearing protection is mandatory. I know a little bit about the subject because of that. These ear buds do cancel out a good bit of noise. If you put them in correctly they work great as ear plugs. (To put them in, put your right arm over your head and with your fingers grab the top of your left ear. Pull up and back just a little and insert the earbud with your left hand. No need to jam the thing clear to your ear drum! Repeat for the right ear. Also use this same method to remove them. Do not grab the wire and pull. Grab the silicone sleeve the wire sticks out of and pull the earbud out.) Some reviews complain of poor sound quality. I disagree. I am quite pleasantly surprised with the audio quality of these buds. The bass is plenty good enough and actually quite good. The mid range is good, but, the highs are little lacking giving it just a hint of muffled sound. Still, overall these earbuds do sound good. I find these earbuds to be comfortable. As I have already stated, any new in ear device is going to take some time to get acclimated to. Having said that, these seem to be pretty good from the start for me. Some people have said that they are too big for their ears. That is understandable for some people. These have a speaker in them so the they aren’t quite as small around the base or as flexible as stand alone ear plugs of this design. So, I can see where some people might have a problem with that. I find the volume level to be more than sufficient. Some reviews say they are too quiet. Not sure what is going on there. Max volume on my Samsung Galaxy and My iPhone XS is a bit uncomfortably loud for me, however they are still clear and no distortion is noticeable. As I said, I just received these today and these are my impressions so far. I hope to do some riding tonight to test these out under riding conditions and add to this review how they performed. I hope to be able to come back to this review months down the road to say they are still working well. We will see! EDIT: After a couple of days of riding I am happy to report that these are incredible. Too incredible, as a matter of fact. The noise cancelling is so good that don’t hear some of the things I probably need to hear. Having said that, they perform quite well. The audio quality while riding is great. Without a helmet you get some noise from the wind blowing on the wires, but, it does not over power the audio. With a helmet it is a very quiet ride except for what ever music or audio you choose to listen too.

I'm going to lead with the fact that I work as a millwright and bought these for my work radio. It's a Motorola CP200d. That's less important for compatibility than your handset though, make sure yours has an audio jack before buying, not all radio handsets do. (90 day update at the bottom.) The sound dampening is good, they function as regular ear plugs and I don't feel like my hearing is in danger even in the loudest parts of the mill. The fit is decent, I'm not normally a fan of the flanged silicone style ear plug, I've always found them painful in my ears by the end of the day, but these are made from a very soft silicone that's grippy but not uncomfortable. The sound quality is decent but nothing to write home about. I would have rated higher, but there's a concussive burst at the start of each transmission that's distracting till you get used to it, which takes a few hours. Other than that I can hear pretty clearly and it's helping a lot with my ability to communicate when I'm working in high noise areas, particularly when I have to have muffs over my plugs. My actual cons for this are in the pic. The plugs stuck straight out of my ears. A bend at the end of the plug would be a huge benefit because it bumps into things in close quarters which is distracting, and I can't wear a beanie over my hears. The latter is my biggest issue, we're in the actually cold part of winter out here on the Washington coast and I have to work outside in the rain and sleet a lot, and my ears are getting cold. My other con is that the wire is super stiff, which makes it a little hard to route so that it stays out of the way and won't get snagged. If I were to give feedback to Elgin, I would say to add a bend to the plug end and use a more flexible cord coating like a braided sheath, you could probably lose the nice storage case to keep the cost similar to what it is. Several guys I work with also bought these, and since we have personal radios we don't have much need for the storage because they stay plugged into our hand sets while they're charging. UPDATE I bought 2 pairs so I'd have a backup. The first pair finally died, the speaker blew out. I switched over to my spare and out of the box it has a weird issue. The sound is clear and clean, but when someone else is on the radio it will start at full volume and then very quickly fade out to almost no volume, this is a QC issue so I'm not too upset and have ordered another pair. The first pair pasting almost 3 months of hard use combined with the price still makes these a good buy for me, even if there is an occasional QC miss.

OK -- this isn't my first rodeo folks. I suffer from hearing loss and tinnitis, which leaves me with a hearing protection problem. When I put in earplugs, the tinnitus kicks in. For a llong time my workaround has been noise isolating earbuds that allows me to play some music at a volume that masks the crickets in my head. I have had a number of inexpensive or moderately priced earbuds. In fact, the immediate predecessor to this set was pretty similar. The difference is that the stem on the earplug was too short, so I ended up removing it by pulling the cord. Eventually, the cord stopped connecting and I had a dead 'bud. These promised to be more rugged, too. That appears to be true, but I'm not going to pull them apart to find out. As you can see from the photo, the stem is longer, so I can remove the 'bud from my ears by the stem as I'm supposed to. Fit and comfort is good. The material is soft, and seals well. There's no discomfort when I pull on my motorcycle helmet. They're compact, so I'll be using them on airplane flights too. Sound quality is great -- if it were any better, I doubt that I could tell the difference. OK, I know that Bluetooth earbuds are the in thing and really sexy, but there's a lot to be said for a simple cord that doesn't need recharging and keeps an earbud that falls out of your ear dangling rather than falling to the ground. So as long as my assorted devices continue to have 3.5 mm. jacks, I'll be using these guys!

These are built tougher than other earbuds near the same price. Sound quality is comparable. On to the bad, the flange cannot fit in my ear at all. Combined with the long tube sticking out over the wire (see their pics), they constantly pull out of my ear when putting on a helmet. The rubber that makes up the flanges split on mine after just a few uses, overall good attempt but has problems.

This is my second pair. The first lasted 3 1/2 years of almost daily use, listening to podcasts. I've tried them with music but not great bass response. Fitted into the ear, they do a good job of blocking out lawn mower/weedwacker/chainsaw noise. Wires are delicate, which is what broke on my first pair after 3 1/2 years of use.

Look, to jump straight to the elephant in the room, people where I work on the factory floor only know plugphones. Competition is good though, right? I've used both Plugphones and Elgin products and as of today I will recommend Elgin Every. Single. Time. Ear protection is fantastic. Cuts down on high decibels like a charm, but I can still hear voices near me quite well. The isolation/protection is fantastic, much better than Plugphones. Sound quality: Holy crap this blows Plugphones out of the water! Because of the better isolation, Elgin will give you a much better low response. Also, these get much, much louder than Plugphones! Whether that's a good thing or bad thing depends on your perspective, but I love it. Just stay safe and know your limits. Fit and issues: I have EXTREMELY small ear canals, and these were distinctly uncomfortable when I first bought them. Kinda like my steel toe boots though, they break in and after one or two weeks then they are fine and feel great. If that's you too, just hang in there. They are worth it! My one qualm is there is no way to clean these. You will notice ear wax building up inside them and while you can squeeze some of it out I haven't found a way to clean them thoroughly. Also while squeezing them I knocked the protective screens off of both drivers, so that's not good. They still work well, but it is disconcerting and I wish I could clean them better regularly since they are not disposable ear plugs. Oh well, still a 5/5 product for me!

The value for the money? Is non existent. DO NOT BUY THESE PIECES OF CRAP. I bought two sets of these. Neither lasted more than a week before one side went out. The product is clearly china crap. I wore these for a package handler position. Phone in my pocket. Never had anything happen that would damage them in the week before they quit working. Elgin makes poor quality products. But who else makes ear buds that look like hearing protection? IF ANY OTHER COMPANY DOES BUY THEM!! DO NOT BUY THESE. But I am going to try to use the wireless earbuds from Elgin next time. Hopefully they will still pass for hearing protection so I can wear them at work.

Rode 2000 miles around Europe with these under the bike helmet. Cuts down the roar of the road and bike by about 50% , so you can still hear enough of what’s around you , while getting a feed of music and directions from your phone too. Used in conjunction with a little APEKX Bluetooth receiver in my inside pocket , so my phone could be charging at the same time on the handlebars.

Excelentísimos aparatos para poder trabajar y escuchar música a gusto solo que no hay refacciones para las gomitas por lo que cuando se acaban dejan de servir los auriculares por completo como quiera le doy un 9 de 10 porque sí me hicieron un gran favor mientras trabajaba cuánto duraron las gomitas

these seem to be good. I haven't gotten to use them much yet but when I have they performed well. Time will tell on the overall quality and durability of this product.

Si calidad de sonido es muy buena y el aislamiento es adecuado, aunque no he podido probarlo en mi trabajo. Deben considerar que la longitud del cable es algo corta comparado con audífonos similares (es una tercera parte más corto que los plugfones básicos y un poco menos que unos audífonos Sony in-ear baratos), por lo que si lo van a usar con un celular o un reproductor MP3 deben tenerlo a la altura de la cintura como mínimo.

Super on entant très bien et tiens bien dans les oreilles.merci