Scullcandy Crusher Wireless Headphones
The Skullcandy Crusher Wireless are a new kind of bass lover’s headphone. By giving the user a way to control the haptic bass response, the Crusher Wireless offers a user-configurable bass experience, like no other. You will always hear the bass but now you will feel it.
All consumer headphones are designed to have some kind of effect on the audio they produce. This is why some headphones are warm sounding or have sharp highs and others deep low bass. The audio passed to them is always the same but they are engineered to give it a specific kind of sound. It’s kind of like having an equalizer preset built into every pair of headphones. To my knowledge, giving users control over part of that equalizer is unique to the Crusher Wireless.
The Crusher Wireless comes in two color options, a white and tan and a solid black. Though I have seen the white model sell for less than the black model, they are identical in every other respect. I am using the solid black model for the purpose of this review.
The Crusher Wireless are all black with the exception of the metal extension arms and a faintly visible Skullcandy logo on each side. Their frame is primarily a matte black plastic with a matching black leather material covering the top of the headband as well as the well as the ear cup pads.
While most headphones I have seen pad the inside of the headband with a leather cover, the Crusher Wireless feature a very soft rubber material here. It provides very comfortable padding but it also grips your hair slightly and prevents the headphones from sliding around as you move.
One very noticeable ascetic design choice was to use a visible cable running from each ear cup, up into the headband. This allows the extension arms of the headphones to be just a thin metal strip where they extend to fit your head. It’s subjective but I think the external cable adds character and detail to the overall design of the headphones.
In my opinion, the Crusher Wireless has a very understated look. In an age of flashy, colorful, attention-grabbing designs, the all black color and minimal branding gives these headphones a stealthy professional look that I really appreciate.
With their plastic frame, the construction looks a bit flimsy but they stretch and bend a good bit without feeling like they are going to break. I always prefer to see more metal and less plastic but in this price range, I think these headphones are more damage resilient than most. The flex also allows you to comfortably wear them with one ear exposed… DJ style.
The arms extend, to fit the size of your head, and fold in to collapse into a very compact size, for travel. Unlike most collapsing headphones, the Crusher Wireless arms don’t lock into an open position. This makes picking them up with one hand a bit awkward as they can flop around a bit as the weight shifts. This really isn’t a big deal but I recommend picking them up by the headband or with both hands.
The ear cups have an over-ear design with ample interior room for large ears. The pads are filled with memory foam so they are very soft and comfortable to wear. The outside edge and the faces are covered with a leather material but the interior edge is a porous fabric that allows a little ventilation to your ears. Even after several hours of wear, they didn’t get hot or sweaty.
The arms rotate a few degrees, front to back, and the ear cups also swivel up and down to make sure you get a comfortable fit. The headband applies enough pressure to keep them in place but doesn’t squeeze your head too much. After 60 plus hours of wear, I am confident in saying that these are a very comfortable pair of headphones.
I’d also like to mention that these headphones are great for wearing around your neck. When I’m not playing music I frequently hang my headphones around my neck. This is convent when you need to have a quick conversation or just to carry them from place to place without tying up your hands. Though the over-ear design and substantial padding make the ear cups rather large, they don’t impede my ability to turn my head and look around. Sure, they do brush against my cheeks and are noticeable but they are far from bothersome. I drive with them around my neck all the time and I don’t feel like they get in the way of my ability to look around.
Thanks to the hinge on the arms it is easy and even comfortable to wear DJ style, with one ear cup tucked behind your ear. This allows you to hear what is going on around you without stopping the music. They stay in place and don’t feel like they are bending in an unnatural way. I often wear them like this, in my office, so I can hear if my office mate tries to talk to me.
On the back of the right ear cup, you will find a small multi-color LED that flashes blue to indicate the headphones are on and turns red when they are in sync mode. Below the LED are three very large buttons. A plus symbol for volume up and skipping forward, a round button for power, syncing, play, pause, answering phone calls and activating Siri or google assistant, and a minus button for volume down and skipping back. That is a lot of functionality for just three buttons.
Visually the button design seems excessive and unnaturally large. However, I found, in practice, their large size and distinctive shapes to be very helpful for knowing which button your finger is resting on. Their large size makes them very easy to locate and press without hunting around.
The circle button does most of the heavy lifting but its all pretty intuitive. To power, the headphones on or off you hold the button for two seconds. To sync you must turn the headphones off and turn them back on but continue to hold the button for five seconds. To play or pause you simply tap the button. When receiving a phone call, tapping the button will also pick up the call. Tap it again to return to your music. That all works very well and gives the most common functions quick and easy access while the lesser used functions take just a bit longer to execute. Unfortunately, though the plus and minus buttons don’t do as much, their use is a bit less intuitive.
A quick tap will adjust the volume as you would expect but to skip tracks forward or back, you have to hold down the buttons for two seconds. I found this to be very annoying. It wasn’t too bad if you just wanted to slip a single track but if you wanted to skip three tracks you had to hold up for two-second, let go, then repeat that process two more times. The end result is that skipping three tracks takes a minimum of seven-seconds. That may not sound like much but after doing it a few times it feels like a huge waste of time. I would have much preferred double tapping the volume buttons to skip tracks. I feel like that would be more intuitive, less distracting and less time-consuming.
The entire back of the left ear cup is a dedicated slider that is used to adjust the enhanced haptic bass level. Slide it to the bottom to deactivate the bass enhancement and slide it up to increase its effect. There are no notches or steps in the slider so it moves smoothly up and down. This means you can fine-tune the bass level with fluid accuracy.
At the very bottom of the left ear cup, you will find the micro-USB charging port and the 3.5 mm headphone jack for cabled use. I do need to note that these two ports are recessed into the headphones. I didn’t notice at first but I tried to plug a standard audio cable into these headphones and the jack is so close to the edge that I couldn’t plug the cable in. You will need to use the included audio cable or one with a very small housing around the plug. This was a big disappointment for me as I couldn’t use my standard headphone cable. The included audio cable does have a small controller but it only has one button that allows you to play and pause your music. There is no way to skip tracks or adjust volume from this cable. This limited control seems a bit strange in this day and age.
Since I mentioned the pairing feature before, I’ll just say that once I knew what I was doing, the pairing was simple. Power off the headphones and then hold the circle button for 5 seconds to enter pairing mode. Once paired, most headphones will automatically reconnect to their paired device when powered on but I have had a few issues where they wouldn’t connect until I went into Bluetooth settings and selected them, forcing them to reconnect. This isn’t a big issue but it would be a lot more convenient if it wasn’t the cases.
Signal reception is very standard at about 30 ft. Inside this distance, I had no issues with dropouts but when you do finally reach the edge if their range it drops hard. That is fairly common behavior for most decent Bluetooth headphones and is preferable in my opinion. I would rather have perfect signal inside their range and a hard drop at the edge than have things get spotty when you are only a few feet away.
Skullcandy advertises the battery life at 40 hours and in my testing that is a very accurate estimate. When the headphones begin to run out of power you will begin hearing a female voice chime in saying “battery low.” This will repeat every 5 minutes until the headphones completely run out of power. The Crusher continued to play for 50 minutes after the first low power notification occurred. One way to look at this is that your music will be interrupted 10 times before they finally die. I consider that to be a reasonable number of interruptions for the given span of remaining time.
50 minutes is quite a bit of warning time. Long enough for most people to finish a commute or a shopping trip and get back to where they can recharge their headphones. I personally consider this to be a very reasonable fraction of your total playback time that is disrupted and a very respectable time from an initial warning, allowing you to return to a power source. The BOHM headphones I tested in 2015 beeped every 5 minutes to indicate the battery was low but they started beeping at 50% battery. That is annoying.
When the Crusher Wireless battery does finally die you can continue to use them in wired mode. Alternatively, if you can get just a few minutes with a USB charger, Skullcandy claims that their fast charging feature will allow you to charge them for only 10 minutes and they will offer 3 hours of listening time. I found this claim a bit hard to believe. So, once the headphones were completely depleted, I connected them to a standard USB port and left them with a 10-minute timer. At the end of that timer, I unplugged them, powered them back on, and started playback again. To be completely honest, I expected to hear “battery low” within the first 5 minutes of playback but that wasn’t the case. It was another 3 hours before the 50-minute warning occurred. That means that the Crusher Wireless did get almost 4 hours of play from a 10-minute charge. Skullcandy’s claimed 3 hours would have been wonderful but almost 4 hours was just jaw-dropping.
Since the battery was fully depleted again, it was time to see how long the Crusher Wireless would take to fully recharge to their full 40-hour playback. To do this I had to keep a close eye on a tiny red LED and time while I waited for it to turn green. I really need to find a better way to do this test. Maybe I can wire up some Raspberry Pie apparatus with a timer and a photosensor… I don’t know, something scientific.
Anyway, I propped the headphones on my monitor, so they were in my line of sight, and started a timer. Just 2 hours and 5 minutes later, the light turned green, to indicate a full charge. That’s 40 hours of continuous audio playback, with haptic bass enabled, in just over 2 hours. Color me impressed. I have reviewed other headphones with up to a 50-hour charge but they didn’t have the 10-minute rapid charge and they took notably longer to fully recharge.
One last note about battery life. Thanks again to fully implementing the Bluetooth 4.1 spec, both iPhones and Android phones will display a tiny icon in the status bar that shows a headphone symbol and a battery level indicator. Since it is so small, it isn’t very accurate but at least you can tell if the headphones are fully charged, half charged or nearly dead from the status bar of your phone. This feature is very inconsistently present in Bluetooth headphones. I’ve seen $50 headphones with it and $400 headphones without, so it‘s always nice to find.
Thanks again to the implementation of Bluetooth 4.1, the volume controls behave “correctly.” By that, I mean that they adjust the volume on your phone instead of boosting and lowering the volume independently from the volume setting on your phone. When you reach full or lowest volume, the headphones will make a soft chime to let you know you can’t go any farther.
I noticed that the volume buttons seem to be designed to do nothing when music is not playing. A strange choice in my opinion but I have seen this design used on other headphones before. Occasionally the volume down button would work when not playing but the volume up always beeped and did not increase the volume. The inconsistent functioning of the volume down button is an obvious bug. It could be a fault in my pair or a general problem. I reached out to Skullcandy support about this issue but they have yet to reply.
With the haptic bass feature disabled, the overall max volume output is pretty high. They could get a bit louder but they get loud enough and any louder could probably risk damaging your eardrums. Thankfully they never get so loud as to completely distort the sound. Things get a bit muddy at the mids when you push them but things never get too distorted. That said, in spite of their closed-back design, these headphones leak sound like a sieve.
When my wife was listening to them, at full volume, I could easily make out exactly what song she was listening to from over 10 feet away. That’s some serious noise pollution. I can’t advise using them in a library or other quiet environment without keeping the volume below 50% unless you want to annoy those around you.
Now we get to the interesting part. What really separates the Crusher Wireless from all other headphones is its adjustable haptic bass feature. Normal audio playback is powered by a pair of 40 mm drivers but the slider on headphones adjusts the power to the second set of subwoofer drivers. These are dedicated to boosting the power of the sub-bass signal. This is the bass you feel more than hear.
Some may say that 50 mm drivers have become very prevalent and that the 40 mm drivers in the Crusher Wireless could limit the sound but you have to remember that those larger drivers are trying to push deeper bass with the same speakers. The dedicated bass drivers in the Crusher Wireless take care of the low end that you may normally get from the larger 50 mm drivers.
When the slider is all the way down the feature is disabled and the sound is very level and even with a slight emphasis on the bass end. As soon as you start to raise the slider things change drastically. With the slider raised just a tiny bit, the bass becomes more pronounced and heavy. You can even feel the vibration of low tones. Raising the slider a little more causes the effect to become more dramatic.
At about one-third of the way up, the speakers vibrate with intensity. The sound feels more like what you experience at a live concert. That feeling you usually only get from loudspeakers. I found this level to be punchy and fun. The bass is exaggerated but the mids and highs are still clear and enjoyable. This is probably because the sub-bass is coming from the dedicated bass drivers and isn’t forcing the primary drivers to vibrate to create the deeper sounds.
The amount of the desired bass is a purely subjective thing but in my personal opinion, raising the slider any higher than halfway up is purely insane. At halfway, every low note rumbles and pounds in your ears. If you touch your hands to the ear cups you will feel the vibrations intently. At this point, there is more sub-bass response than I have experienced from any other pair of headphones. It begins to cause immediate ear strain and I am personally only able to listen for a few minutes before the vibrations make me need a break. The fact that the slider goes any further up is just befuddling.
If you do go all the way up, your entire skull vibrates with every bass note, but not in a good way. I found the experience very unpleasant and disorienting. The subwoofers are vibrating so hard that you can’t even hear the mids or highs to tell if they are distorted. I can’t imagine anyone wanting this much bass. It feels like Skullcandy just wanted to ensure that no one else could say their headphones had more bass… ever.
I would personally have preferred if the bass power only went half as high but the slider was the same length. This would provide more accuracy when selecting your desired bass level and wouldn’t make me have to fidget so gently with the slider to make a minor adjustment. As it stands, I try to get the slider to just about one-third for most listening but I find myself constantly edging it up or down, trying to find the sweet spot.
Other reviews seem to agree and even focus on the absurdity of the high bass level and call it a major negative. While I believe this feature could have been implemented better, I think it’s more important to focus on the fact that these are the only headphones that allow you to adjust the bass to your own personal preference. Sure, the max bass boost is ridiculous but if you wanted to win a bet that your headphones have the most bass, you can do that. On the flip side, if you just want a clean sound with a bit of bass bias, you can have that too. It’s the best of both worlds in one pair of headphones.
As always I ran through my headphone test playlist to sample a wide variety of music. Since these are specifically bass headphones I paid close attention to there offerings on electronic tracks but I also focused on what the experience was like for tracks you wouldn’t normally expect to hear with boosted bass. I actually ran through the playlist twice. Once with the haptic bass feature disabled and again with it turned to about one-third. These headphones probably got more play time than most pair I review but I felt it was important to know what they bring to the table by default and what they can offer you if you’re all about that bass.
Electronic tracks like The Crystal Methods’s Trip Like I do feel right at home with the haptic bass enabled. The entire bass line seems to come alive. Without it, you can still hear the bass line but it just feels a little anemic. Phutureprimitive’s Cryogenic Dreams, Pretty Lights Hot Like Sauce and The Prodigy’s Breath were the same way. The bass line sings with the low rumble of the haptic bass. The song is enjoyable without it but once you’ve turned it on, you won’t want it off again.
Not all electronic music is the same though. On El Huervo’s Daisuke, this track has a strong and ever-present bass guitar riff that actually sounds like a bass guitar. However, with the haptic bass again at one-third, this riff no longer sounds like a bass guitar but now a thundering boom that is just painful. Though you may not think so, this track sounds best with the haptic bass all the way off or maybe edged on very slightly. Anything more is just unpleasant.
Rock tracks were mostly consistent in their light use of the haptic bass. Bass drums and some bass guitar notes could trigger a rumble but otherwise, the sound was the same. Cake’s The Distance gets punchy bass notes that sound perfectly welcome but things are just as enjoyable with the feature off. The bass doesn’t hit as hard but it still sounds clear and low. A Perfect Circle’s Pet is very similar. With haptic bass on the bass drum hits harder but the song is barely different with the haptic bass off. The Black Keys’ Everlasting Light’s grungy bass line does pick up a good bit of rumble with the haptic bass on but again, turning it off doesn’t really remove anything from the track.
Hybrid tracks like Alex Clair’s Relax My Beloved are good middle of the road songs. Strong clear vocals, smooth strings, sharp snare drums and an electric bass line. With haptic bass off things sounded really nice but the bass line felt a little lacking. Though the primary drivers are a little bass heavy, they are flatter than most. As a result, you could hear the bass line but it just didn’t feel very present.
With the haptic bass on, the first few notes of the song instantly let you know it’s working. The tones rumble low and deep. When the drums kick in each bass hit punches. Nothing seems out of place. In fact, it feels great. The bass line is pretty consistent through most of the track and your ears adjust to it quickly but there is a spot after the second chorus where every instrument falls away and you get a second of pure silence. Your ears almost don’t know what to do with the absence of rumble and sound. The haptic bass really makes this song stand out.
When you get to purely acoustic tracks things get very simple. Good Mystery by Amber Rubarth is a great acoustic soundstage test. This track was recorded with a single omnidirectional microphone surrounded by the different instruments with the singer front and center. I first listened with the haptic bass off and I was very pleased with the overall sound. The vocals are clear and distinct. The soundstage isn’t very wide but the spacial relations of each instrument was very apparent, strings are strong on the left while drums are on the right and everything feels to have a place.
Due to the lack of any real sub bass in the track, enabling the bass boost made almost no perceivable difference. The song just doesn’t contain the low tones that the subs respond to. That was the best I could hope for. A melodic acoustic track that sounded great with the bass off and wasn’t ruined when it was enabled.
There were several other soft acoustic guitar tracks like Jose Gonzalez Heartbeats, The Avett Brothers I And Love And You and Ben Howard’s Old Pine that just don’t feature any of the low-frequency signal to trigger the haptic bass. On or off, it made almost no difference. This is great in my opinion. I expected that I would be forced to disable the haptic bass to enjoy these acoustic tracks but they just don’t trigger it.
In general, the Crusher Wireless really shine on tracks that are meant to drive the bass. I listen to a lot of electronica and I loved having the haptic bass on at one-third. Those songs would just pop. The bass wasn’t overpowering but it felt like you were getting the full effect of the song.
What the Crusher Wireless provides is control and a user-defined audio experience. To my knowledge, there is nothing else on the market like it. Combine this unique feature with their overall comfort, great battery life, and amazing quick charge, all in a nice looking package and you have a very respectable pair of headphones. The Crusher Wireless are a very fun and unique pair of headphones that will meet and exceed all your bass needs. Personally, I am glad to have in my arsenal. In spite of their flaws, I think they are well worth their very reasonable price. They won’t be replacing my monitor headphones, for audio recording and mixing but they will be my primary daily headphones for a while. They are just too fun to ignore.
The Skullcandy Crusher Wireless headphones can be found on Amazon for $129.00.
