Closer Examination

The design looks quite good, price considered. The earphones are ideally suited for wrapping the cable over your ears, this should reduce the amount of microphonic noise ending up in the ear pieces. Even though the back is black it is made from metal. Like the majority of in-ears out there the sound tube is offset from the body to better align with one's ear canal.


On the back of the shell there is a small vent hole which is needed for this specific driver design. As you might have noticed from the images above there are small L/R indicators on each of the earphones. The marks are in white and very easy to spot.


The angled sound nozzle has a small metal grill in it to prevent debris from entering the housing and causing damage to the driver. If you have a lot of wax this might be an issue because it is not replaceable like the many cloth based covers, however, you should be able to gently wipe it with some hydrogen-peroxide and get the wax out of the metal grill, but you would have to be very careful so that the solution does not enter the earphone.


This set of Arctic Cooling in-ears features a small pod on the cable which accommodates both a push button and a microphone. This means that you can take calls on your iPhone or other phone compatible with the 6 conductor mini-jack without touching the phone. The microphone is not that brilliant but gets the job done. There is quite a bit of background noise being captured because it is an omnidirectional microphone. Compared to other headsets I have recently tried, the Arctic Cooling's microphone sound alright but it is definitely not the best solution on the market.


Taking a quick glance at the earphones from the side reveals the very simple barrel-like design. The offset sound tube improves ergonomics quite a bit when wrapping the cable over your ears, but inhibits you since the earphones feel awkward when worn with the cable straight down.


Like all newer portable headsets this Arctic Cooling set uses a mini-jack with extra conductors for the microphone. This is a good solution which enables you to use them with most modern phones except the ones that still use micro-jack.


In order to reduce the vibrations travelling up the cable Arctic Cooling include a shirt clip in the bundle.


Tip wise the E361-BMs are pretty well equipped, however, there are no foam tips which could prove a problem for people with oddly shaped ear canals.


During the course of my tests I found that there were some odd noises coming from the earpieces under certain conditions. It turns out that the problem originates from a small oddity in the rubber damper mounted on the earpieces. The diameter of it is too large and allows the cable to swing back and forth causing a light thump noise. It should, however, not cause a problem durability wise since there is a fixation device on the inside of the cup holding it in place removing strain from the soldering points on the driver.