Author: Scott Schaen

Arctic Cooling, a brand that made its name selling cooling supplies for computers, has delved into the headphone market with their new Arctic Sound line. I had the opportunity to review Arctic Sound E352 headphones, the premium model of their five model collection. The E352 is built with a wooden chassis and a large driver coil which gives these headphones a high quality output with a warm and natural sound. Arctic Sound headphones are precisely engineered by Swiss and German audio experts, but does that really mean anything these days? How nicely has Arctic Cooling diversified into the headphone market? Dive in with me for the full review…

What’s in the Box:
-Arctic Cooling E352 Headphones (of course!)
-Durable Carrying Case with Zipper – Perfect for Storing and Protecting your earphones. Also prevents cord tangling
-3 Sets of Silicone Eartips  – Small Medium and Large
-Cable Clip

Design:
The E352s stands out from regular earbuds; The glossy wooden chassis distinguishes the E352s as a classier set of ‘buds. The earbud cable is a regular Y shaped cable with a rubber casing. The thickness of the cable is standard compared to any other inexpensive headphones. The strangest design flaw choice is that there is no “Right” and “Left” labels anywhere on these earbuds (no ‘R’s or ‘L’s either). The buds are shaped exactly the same so that’s no help either. The only design queue to help you orient your earbuds is the AC logo on the Y point of the headphones (where the headphone cable splits into separate right and left cables). The logo must face away from your body to properly listen. The driver enclosure on the buds are relatively long. This generally means the driver is larger, which is good. The buds will sit about half an inch outside of your ear canal. Personally, I found this feature enabled the bud to come loose from my ear with any decent amount of cable movement.

Performance
The performance of these E352 headphones is largely dependent on the type of music that is playing through them. Arctic Sound lived up to their claims of high quality sound with a warm and natural sound when listening to soft acoustical music (Simon & Garfunkel sounded great). This type of music was kind to the E352’s weak mid-range audio output. When playing songs with more low-range audio (bass) like a rock or rap song, the “enhanced bass” overshadowed the vocals (weak on treble). The bass sounded unnatural and forced. This unbalance of bass and treble makes these heavier genres of music sound untrue to how the song was intended to be heard. It is possible some users prefer this type of sound though.

The carrying case that came with Arctic Sound’s E352s is great. It’s durable, zipper sealed, and even allows you to wrap up the earbuds inside so they do not tangle. It may leave a small bulge in your pocket, but it’s sure to keep the earbuds safe and untangled.

Conclusion
Considering the E352’s are Arctic Sound’s most expensive earbuds ($69.95 from the website) they were a bit disappointing. Soft and Acoustical types of music sounded pretty good, but $70 is a lot to pay for headphones that don’t always sound good. Personally, I would wait until Arctic Cooling makes it further along on the headphone learning curve. The Enhanced Bass seems like a marketing gimmick; yes the bass is loud, but it does not sound good. Also, leaving off a “left” and “right” indicator on their earbuds seems a bit silly. The one thing Arctic Sound actually did right was the case; I will be sure to use it in the future. I would strongly recommend anyone considering the E352s to check out ThinkSound’s TS01 Earphones. Also encased in wood, the TS01’s sound much better and are priced just under $50.

The Eclipse Touchmouse looks like a wireless mouse straight out of the future. This wireless Bluetooth mouse sports a three button operation (middleclick being the third button), a touch sensitive scroll sensor with support for vertical and horizontal scrolling, and excellent precision with 1600dpi laser technology. It’s unique and elegant design will make you wish you had a nicer desk for it to sit on. Aside from it’s futuristic design, Eclipse Touchmouse differentiates itself through it’s touchscroll sensor. Touchscroll is a small fingerprint-sized touchpad. It functions similarly to a regular scroll wheel, but features a horizontal scroll and browser gestures that allow the user to easily launch their browser homepage, refresh, and navigate back and forward.

Set-Up:
In the package you’ll find the Eclipse Touchmouse, a quick start guide, one “AA” battery, and a mini CD with drivers. What you won’t find in the box is a Bluetooth adapter or a CD that won’t break your slot loading disc drive.If you have ever set up a Bluetooth device then the Touchmouse setup will be relatively easy. If you have never set up a Bluetooth device then you may have to do a bit of research on how to turn your Bluetooth radio on and pair a device. Eclipse did not package this mouse with a Bluetooth adapter, so make sure you have Bluetooth on your computer or laptop before trying to set it up. Worst comes to worst you can buy an adapter for almost $4.

Pop the AA battery into your mouse and On/Off/Pair button on the underside of the mouse. The LED will blink red and green, this means it is ready to be paired. On your Mac or PC find your Bluetooth Connection Screen/Wizard and pair a new device. When prompted to choose a passcode opt to continue without a passcode. If all goes accordingly that should be the whole process. The drivers are not required to get Touchmouse to work. I had this working fine on both my Mac and PC, but on both I had to turn down the mouse sensitivity because it was super sensitive when first set up.

Design:
The Eclipse Touchmouse has a very sophisticated look to it. It has large black brushed-aluminum buttons and black rubberized borders. It bears resemblance to a cell phone. It doesn’t have a very ergonomical shape, but I personally found it to be pretty comfortable and have enjoyed using it during my 40 hour work week. Moving the mouse around on a hard surface (rather than mouse pad) has been exceptional. The Touchmouse design creates very little friction between the mouse and the surface. This means it moves very easily, and allows for a more precise mouse movement. This was one of the reasons we were not fans of Apple’s Magic Mouse — it does not move around nicely. Touchmouse uses one AA battery, and it is very easy to replace it. Just turn chrome battery cap half a turn until it pops out, replace the battery, and put pop the battery cap back in.

Performance:
Once the sensitivity was turned down, Eclipse Touchmouse performed amazingly. Its responsiveness and accuracy combined with its ability to smoothly glide along any surface makes it an absolutely amazing mouse. The touchscroll sensor, placed in between the right and left click buttons, was just okay. The sensor takes some getting used to. Even when you’re comfortable using it, it’s still a bit finicky. With most scroll wheels it is easy to tell how many notches you have scrolled up or down. With Eclipse Touchmouse it is a bit trickier. The button also functions as a middle click (as do most scroll wheels). Middle click is ideal for browsing. Middle click on links to open them up in new tabs, or middle click tabs to easily close them. There are browsing gestures that are enabled on Touchmouse by pressing the middleclick button and moving the mouse either up, down, right, or left. These gestures are very handy and I found myself constantly using the right and left gestures to navigate back and forward on the web. The up gesture will launch the browser homepage, and the down gesture will refresh the page. Unfortunately, these gestures are not customizable with the current drivers. The gestures also do not provide much functionality outside of your browser. These gestures worked on both Mac and Windows without the drivers. The only features the drivers add are the ability to adjust the touchscroll sensitivity and the ability to use the horizontal scroll. The horizontal scroll did not work exceptionally well because of the short width of the touchscroll sensor. The Touchmouse documentation boasts a long battery life. I’ve been using my mouse for two weeks, roughly 70-80 hours total and it still seems to be going strong.

Conclusion:
The Eclipse Touchmouse, which is built by Mad Catz, is an exceptionally stylish looking mouse which is very accurate and easy to use. Some people may not find that it is ergonomic, although I had no problems and my hands are rather large. The touchscroll seemed like it would be way better; it made me prefer using a regular scroll wheel. The browser gestures using the touchscroll button were really a treat while browsing. If you buy this mouse throw away your mouse pad (unless you’re using a glass desk). The precision of Touchmouse on almost any surface was perfect. It glides around so easily that it will make you hate mouse pads. It works just fine on mousepads, but unless you’re using a glass surface, there is really no need. It is compatible with both Windows and Mac and requires you have a bluetooth adapter. Touchmouse can be purchased for $59.99 or $42 at Amazon, which may be expensive for a mouse, but not too expensive for a mouse with such style.

Good: Browser gestures worked great, accuracy, design
Bad: Touchscroll not all it was hyped up to be, gestures aren’t customizable, not ergonomically designed