Gigabyte FLY On-Ear Headphones Review

James Pikover Avatar

Written by:

Updated 6:56 pm

Expert Rating

83

FLY Headphones_2

One thing I like about PC peripheral provider Gigabyte is they don’t shy away from a challenge, frequently expanding their tech horizons with new product types. The company is more recognized for its excellence when it comes to providing kick-ass motherboards. While video cards easily pull up in second place, they do great on headphones, much like the Fanny Wang 1001 headphone does. Additionally, the company makes solid mice, keyboards, and mobile computing options. Audio peripherals are far from their stock and trade. And if you want over-ear headphones, check our article on the best over-ear headphones and the top-rated earbuds for bass.

That didn’t stop them from producing a pretty interesting set of highly durable and uniquely stylish headphones. The Gigabyte FLY is surprisingly just for music. There is no inline microphone or controls for answering phone calls or skipping tracks. You get an on-ear pair of cans that use a customized pair of Neodynium magnets that help to produce a heavier sense of bass. The adjustable headband is near invisible–it’s so thin and makes for an elegant look. It’s also made from a single piece of steel, so it’s durable and ultra-flexible.

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FLY Headphones

The unit is very lightweight, only weighing 79 grams. This adds to the comfort and allows the FLY headphones to be worn for quite a long time. They may not sound quite as good as the phenomenal Mixr DJ headphones from Beats by Dre. This could be due to the F40 drivers the set has (learn more about headphone driver size with our resource articles). But the Mixr set loses horribly to the FLY in the comfort arena. That razor-thin steel band shows immense flexibility so they will never feel too tight around the ears. The padding on the earpieces is also very soft. They work to effectively cancel out ambient noise, almost too well. While testing yesterday, I missed a phone call and a package from FedEx, which is a saying lot for on-ear.

Related: Check out our Hifiman HE 400 Headphones review

Music is definitely the intent with the FLY headphones, which is the same goal you’ll see in our Harman Kardon beautiful sound CL on-ear headphones review. But that heavy bass is sure to be too deep for some. It works great in a lot of drum-heavy tunes often found in hip hop, rock, and reggae music. But the lackluster lows and struggling midrange sounds leaves the FLY playing favorites to a select group or music. Action movies work ok but when there is a lot of dialogue much of it sounds too “throaty” from the deep bass. But again these are music and not promoted for movies. So with that, I suggest playing with the equalizer settings on your favorite playback devices. I found on both the HTC One and the iPhone 4s, that the mid and low tones can be played up a bit with some setting changes. You are sure to have similar or better results with more sophisticated device EQs. However, a stellar set of cans should never rely on tricky device tweaks and setting changes to produce clarity and clean audio.  This is the most significant shortcoming to the FLY’s performance, a general lack of clarity.

FLY Headphones_3

Yet if you are confident in your devices and their EQ settings and you have sufficiently bass-needy music playlists, then you could do worse.

Editor Rating:

[Rating: 3/5]

Good

Bottom Line: The Fly headphones from Gigabyte are not champions of clarity but they are stylish,  massively comfortable, and lightweight with deep heavy bass.

Pros

·   Nice looking

·  Deep bass

·  Lightweight with long-lasting comfort

·  Priced well

Cons

·  Lackluster low tone

·  Clarity could be cleaner

The Gigabyte Fly headphones are available on the company website for $49.99.

James Pikover Avatar