JVC HA-F14-A review

The packaging claims F14As are Apple compatible, which means nothing as they have no switch or plug wiring.

The build is enough‐to‐work, through‐constructed. The wire is thin and soft, though not rubbery—was it off the shelf?—but it will work ok I guess. No strain reliefs, but at this price who cares? Especially as the housings are small, chunky, and light. The housings are semi‐translucent, then wrapped in some silicone or rubber matte stuff. Despite no foams, the soft matte makes them feel surprisingly secure in the ear. One side has a L/R mark, which is more than most earphones give. I can’t see F14As being robust but, for what they are, they should be good. The housings are small, comfort is outstanding. The housings and wire are flavoured ‘Peppermint Blue’, and the semi‐translucent chunky shells and matching wire look like swimwear—I say the aesthetic is through‐thought and cute.

Poor volume. Lowband has low volume. Poor volume range. They model attack well, but decay collapses. They are only passable at timing. At swells they compress, muddle a little, and sound fluffy on attack. Low horns are duff. They squeal near the sound of a whistle. There is a high hiss. They do have frequency range, but you don’t want to hear the sounds they make. Color may be reasonable, hard to tell sometimes. Width reasonable, position is accurate but fuzzy.

Do they get better? No. To give an impression, audience applause sounds like someone rattling the snare on a drum. Scratchy and broken voice replay. I tried EQ and got the profile of a ploughed field, with peaks near 200Hz, 2kHz and 8kHz (well, that matches the hearing report). EQ made the F14As into a noisy, narrow but passable earbud. Orchestras are reasonably stable but make frequency squeals and are volume uneven. Rock sounds horrible, screeching or duffing lead frequencies while the bass plods. Pop is poor also. Solo instruments, less testing for the F14As, maybe passable. These earbuds hack soundtracks to shreds.