Headphones come in a profuse amount of shapes and sizes, the WeSC Piston on-ear headphones come under the compact banner, leaving not much of a footprint when worn. Ideal for smaller heads and for avid listeners who want minimal irritation on their heads.
The ear cups are particularly small but are well padded, along with the headband, and result in a near unnoticeable fit. The cups can actually be tilted 180 degrees and moved up and down via a metal slider for a greater adjusted fit. This also makes their footprint more compressed so that they can even be carried within a large pocket. The left cup has an attached cable with a gold plated 3.5mm auxiliary plug. The right cup has a 3.5mm auxiliary input to allow the sharing of your audio with someone else; this is a feature that we occasionally see implemented on headphones and can definitely be useful.
The overall build isn't anything too fancy. Lean plastics have been used to coat the exterior of the cups. The cable is chorded, which means it won't tangle too easily in comparison with the plastic coated cables other headphones sport, and it is generally harder wearing. The matte cups are the most attractive element of the design. These headphones do come in a welcome choice of colours: bright red, black, charcoal grey, navy blue, limestone white, kombu green, burgundy purple, loden green and a patterned design called flora.
Along the chorded cable is a remote with a built-in microphone. The remote features one single button and allowed us to operate pausing & playing of audio, skipping tracks, answering calls and activating Siri on our iPhone. The remote will work with a raft of other mobile phones, including Samsung, HTC, Blackberry and many more. The inclusion of a remote is essential in today's busy times but the lack of any volume controls is a shame and degrades the listening experience. We tested the microphone in and outdoors and it produced audio which is identical to many other microphones built into headphones we review, so we assume the same supplier is being used which Is of no concern really. The microphone picks up vocal audio well and doesn't tend to complicate the clarity by grabbing surrounding background sounds.
Audio output quality isn't outstanding or outright terrible. It sits somewhere in between. The WeSC Piston Headphones didn't excite us, they produce an all purpose sort of sound that doesn't play specifically better with any particular genre. The specifications are as follows: 40mm power drivers, 1kHz sensitivity: 120db, independence of 32 and a frequency range of 20-20,000Hz.
The bass is punchy but unfortunately habitually crowds the other frequencies. The mid range is feeble and the treble is steady. We tweaked with EQ's but couldn't produce an audio output that we were happy with for the price of £41.99 in the UK, $59.95 in the USA and €49.99 in Europe. The Brainwavz M3 Headphones or the Bell'O Digital BDH821 Headphones are similarly priced and offer a more desirable audio. At low volume these don't have any definition, we have to crank the volume up to obtain it. Having said this, when the volume is fully turned up, these did not distort easily. It's safe to say that the WeSC Pistons don't quench our listening thirst.
Noise isolation is good when taking into account how minute the ear cups are. Sound doesn't travel as directly into the ears as would a pair of over-ear headphones, due to sound leakage, but the performance in this area isn't at all bad.
We'd sum up this review of WeSC Piston Headphones by saying they're overpriced. The build, features and audio quality deliver a package that would be fairer at around half the retail price.
