Aiaiai Pipe

Aiaiai Pipe Earphones Review

Not interested in the microphone included with Aiaiai’s curiously funky Y-com headset? No matter, the Danish design cooperative knows how to build a stripped-down pair, too. Aiaiai’s Pipe earphones discard many of the frivolous novelties from the Y-com in favor of a design that’s right on par with Apple for sheer minimalism, but miles above stock earphones in sound. Much like the Y-com, the Pipe comes squiggled into a clear acrylic tube that looks fit the for the pneumatic tube system down at the local bank. The hollow end caps each come filled with extra silicon ear gels for a total of four different sizes: small, medium, large, and an additional bizzaro shape that looks like a baby’s pacifier. Maybe they’re just for raver appeal – that particular pair couldn’t even hold the phones in our ears. Both Aiaiai earphones use a distinctive Y-shaped splitter to cleave a single stereo plug wire from the plug into two mono wires headed to each earbud – and annoyingly, no slider to control where the left and right cables peel apart. But beyond that, we found few similarities. The unwieldy cable we complained about on the Y-com has been replaced by a much thinner model on the Pipe, and the earbuds themselves are narrower, too, making them easier to fit them into the ears.