Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Updates on the Bottom I just wanted to add a quick review for now because I think this little device is fantastic and it’s a shame that more people don’t know about it. I will give it 5 stars for my first impression but will continue to update this review as I spend more time testing it. I have been looking for a Bluetooth solution like this for a while now and I had never heard of this company or this product before. Even after finding it on Amazon and seeing the impressive spec sheet, I was very skeptical that it was legitimate. What finally convinced me to give it a try was finding forums on it and seeing people’s experiences with it as well as seeing a strong presence from the company in the form of a representative from the company thoroughly answering questions. Although I’ve seen many pictures and the promotional video about this I wasn’t prepared for how small and lightweight this would be. The device looks very nice and has a simple but functional layout. One button to power on, power off, put into pairing, play, and pause. It also has a volume rocker and a back/next track rocker that is also used to turn on ambient mode. It was very easy to connect to my iPhone and get it up and running straight out of the box in a minute. I don’t want to get too much into sound, battery life, or the app because I haven’t had enough time to test any of them very much. I will say that it does sound great using the 3.5mm jack and AAC codec and I threw a wide variety of music at it. Previously the V-Moda Bluetooth was some of the best I’ve ever heard but I would say so far that this is noticeably better for me. The unit had 75% battery and while I haven’t tested to see if any firmware updates fix a battery issue, the app seems to show the battery life while the battery notification on my iPhone always shows 100%. I used it for an hour on 3.5mm high performance and it took me to 70%. I don’t think this is any real indication of battery life but will try to test it going forward in an update to this review. The app so far is fully featured and I added pictures of the app in this review. With only limited time in the app I will say that I really like the equalizer and the fact that it has a healthy amount of presets as well as what looks like customizable and savable presets but I will test this out more soon. I also briefly tried out the ambient mode and thought it was a very neat feature with a surprising amount of features. I don’t know how much I would personally use it but enjoyed playing with it and found the implementation well done. So far I have only tried it on two of my many headphones but it was a pretty wide range with the IE80S and the HD800S. While I expected it to drive the IE80S without a problem I didn’t expect it to drive the HD800S so well. To think I got that sound quality out of Bluetooth from my iPhone is just amazing and I do see a lot of potential to use my headphones with the ES100. It is a little too early to give any recommendation other than people should take notice of this little device because so far it is very impressive. I will continue to test the ES100 and update my review after a lot more use but if it holds up, I can definitely say it will be a deal at $100. [UPDATE] I’ve still only used this for a couple of days but I am very impressed with the sound this puts out. I’m using the balanced output now and it is hard to believe that this is Bluetooth. I’ve also tried to test the battery and although the battery indicator seems to be buggy, if it is anywhere near accurate the 14 hour estimation of battery life could be very accurate and that is with EQ on, volume at 50%, and using the 2.5 balanced output. [UPDATE 2} There has been a firmware update that seems to have addressed the battery life indicator issue. The ES100 has been working amazingly and it is still impressive how good the quality of the audio is. If I had to change anything about the ES100 it would be with the placement and style of the controls. They do work well but they could be a little better and easier to locate and press without looking. Overall this is a great device and is a must have for people looking for something like this.