This and That:
Since there's even an "Ariane Grande" limited edition, I guess the target group should be clear. I still got those (the normal Brookstone Axent Wear Wireless Cat Ear Headphones), just for the laughs, in a moment when I felt funny.
You get a nicely large hard case with them, along with a detachable 3.5 mm cable, charging cable and the manual.
Fully made of plastic but appear surprisingly solid and not fragile or rickety at all. And there's absolutely none of that soft-touch plastic that I really dislike.
Solely the silver-coloured borders of the cat ear speakers (yes, those are actual speakers inside the cat ears) look somewhat cheap-ish.
No, there's really nothing to complain for the price.
As for the buttons and features - the manual does a better job of explaining than me:
So yup, the Cat Ear Headphones can be used wireless and wired. The bad news: the batteries have to be charged even for wired use, which clearly sucks, especially since battery life is only around meagre five hours. Yup, that sucks big time.
The LEDs inside the cat ears are indeed quite cool though.
There's a button to toggle the speakers located inside the cat ears on or off, and it lets the user select between headphone playback, cat ear speaker playback, or both. Sound quality of the cat ear speakers is quite crap: telephonic and with high distortion, so more like a party gag, as pretty much any portable Bluetooth speaker will provide better audio quality.
Switching colours and light modes is cool as well, and there's even a strobe mode where the lights will pulsate in the music's rhythm, but if you're using the Cat Ear Headphones in wired mode, the volume has to be quite high, else that won't work.
The cups and headphones are foldable.
Comfort is good as the padding is soft and as the ear cups are nicely adjustable.
Even though clamping force isn't that high, noise isolation is good.
Sound:
Wireless sound quality is only okay though, and not as good as when the Cat Ear Headphones are connected by cable, wherefore I've only used them in wired mode. Unfortunately since the active amp electronics inside the headphones are active all the time, there's also some mild hissing that can be a little distracting in quiet music sections.
What's quite annoying is that even in wired operation, the automatic power saving mode is engaged after 20 minutes if one's not using the headphones at disco levels. Unplugging and re-plugging the cable is necessary to continue music playback if that has happened.
Tonality:
Those who expect a very bad tuning will be disappointed, because although the headphones are not quite perfect, they have no real flaws in the tuning.
In short: The sound is heading into the dark, bassy and somewhat warm direction.
A bit more detailed: The bass range is raised, but not dominantly raised - my Fostex x Massdrop TH-X00 has a stronger emphasis in the bass, which is a bit more shifted to the sub-bass that rolls off the Brookstone headphones. The emphasis of the Cat Ear Headphones is mainly on the upper bass and fundamentals. The upper midbass is almost as strong as the kickbass, but already the middle midbass has less level, and the sub-bass, which you can still hear, drops even further. Instead of driving the music from the low bass, the bass of the Brookstone headphones focuses on kick and punch.
The midrange of the headphones has an inviting warmth, but it can also appear a bit woolly, since the treble of the headphones is on the dark side, so that a little bit of compensating brightness either in the upper midrange or the upper treble wouldn't have been too bad to give the sound some freshness that is a bit lacking.
Nonetheless the headphones don't sound muffled or cloudy, because the bassy, warm and dark sound is harmonious.
More detailed impressions with the sine generator: At about 900 Hz, the emphasis in the "low frequency" begins to rise and then reaches a first plateau at 200 Hz, which is slightly increased again around 100 Hz. Compared to neutral headphones, this emphasis is about 7 dB. From 80 Hz downwards, the bass then decreases slowly and evenly, but there's still a hint of it at the beginning sub-bass until 35 Hz. But that's the end of it. The Brookstone is therefore not a bass-heavy headphone, even if the fundamentals are full and also radiate into the lower midrange, making it appear full and warm.
Above 1 kHz, the upper midrange/treble is in the background, giving the headphones a relaxed and dark character. At 6, 10 and 13 kHz, I can detect a slight increase in my ears, but the level is still in the audibly reduced and relaxed range despite this.
"Unobtrusive" is also a word that comes to my mind when describing the sound. The sound is coherent at least and also not too unnatural, even if I personally would wish for a little less level in the upper fundamentals in order to make them appear a little less "grumbling"/full, even though the midrange doesn't appear overly strongly coloured.
Resolution:
Here we experience a double-edged sword - partially the headphones do quite well, partially they have quite striking weaknesses.
The bass range is definitely a weakness of the Cat Ear Headphones - it sounds wooden, dull and undefined. In the low frequencies, the headphones don't like fast and complex recordings, because with them they seem overstrained and distorted. Here, the Cat Ear Headphones unfortunately cannot keep up with headphones that are cheaper.
I can't find any serious flaws in the mid and high frequencies - $140 is not what the resolution sounds like, but it's not too far away from that of the cheap Superlux models in the price range between below $40. You shouldn't expect a tonal miracle with razor-sharp separation of the tonal elements, but a solid sound, for which I would be willing to spend up to $80 (upper limit), if there weren't the technical flaws in the bass.
Soundstage:
My first thoughts were that the headphones had a very convincing spatial image, with a good spherical representation and a deep stage - but after only a very short time to adjust, this impression turned around and I realised that what I heard were reflections in the ear cups, because behind the drivers, they seem to be very sparsely damped, or not damped at all, which would also explain the poor bass quality.
So while generally surprisingly convincing, you sometimes really blatantly notice that the spatiality consists mainly of reflections in the shells behind the drivers.
So there is definitely a lot of wasted potential here, because by simple modifications both the cabinet reflections as well as the deficiencies in the bass range could be largely fixed.
In terms of sound in total, I see the Brookstone headphones slightly ahead of the Brainwavz HM2, which retail for about $50, while the compact 1More MK801 trump the Cat Ear Headphones in terms of overall performance. My Superlux HD681 is also better overall than the Brookstone headphones, especially in the bass range.
Conclusion:
It was clear from the beginning that audiophiles were not the target group and that the Wireless Cat Ear Headphones were overpriced to some degree. Nonetheless, they don't suck nearly as badly as I expected. In fact, the tuning is done pretty well and something that I'd listen to on the go, while the lows and soundstage show some technical weaknesses as the cups seem to lack rear-cavity dampening. But would the target audience care? Probably not. And even though I definitely don't belong to the "typical" consumers of these headphones, those LED lights and the idea of the cat ears are admittedly cool.
There are however some other serious flaws that aren't really sound-related and that make these headphones a failure from my point of view, such as the automatic power-off after 20 minutes if one isn't listening at (very) high volume, as well as that the fact that these headphones cannot be used in wired mode if the battery has run flat.