The earbuds sync shortly after you put them in your ears and are fairly straightforward to use. That said, every once in a while, one earbud (in my case, the right one) will drop the audio for about a second. At best it's an occasional annoyance and at worst it's enough to be a deal breaker, though Binatone is handling the problem better than most of the competition. Bragi, for example, had to delay production so it could build a hearing aid technology called Near Field Magnetic Induction into the Dash earbuds in order to get around using Bluetooth between buds. Earin, essentially the first to market last year, just went ahead with Bluetooth — a decision that totally marred the experience of their earbuds. Perfecting this connection is obviously not an easy task.

More importantly, I never had problems with the phone-to-earbud connection, which was the biggest problem with the Dash. I could put my phone in any pocket or out on my desk and the Bluetooth radios in the VerveOnes+ were powerful enough to keep the connection going. (Reading some of the other reviews of the VerveOnes+, though, it seems like your mileage may vary with this issue. My former colleague David Pierce ran into far more Bluetooth trouble over at Wired.)

As for the headphone basics, the VerveOnes+ sound decent — they won’t impress audiophiles, but they’re as good as the most common wired earbuds. There's definitely enough bass for me, but I don't crave the heavy, overpowering bass like many fans of big Beats cans. Call quality is better than the awful experience I had with the Dash, but it’s still not pleasant. And the battery life is okay, too: three to four hours between charges.

More bad than good

The earbuds come with a tube-shaped charging case that provides an extra two to three full charges for the earbuds. It's small enough to fit in a pocket but it's definitely not small — I keep finding myself yearning for smaller cases with every set of earbuds I try, Earin's pen-sized case being the exception. The VerveOnes+ snap snugly into the case, though it takes a little while to get used to the force necessary to get them in and out.

The base model of the VerveOnes+ starts at $200, but I had the VerveOnes+, which are IP57 waterproof. That means they can be submerged in up to three feet of water for up to 30 minutes. You won't really be able to go swimming with them — Bluetooth just doesn't work in water, and there's no internal storage like on the Dash — but it's nice to know they're protected and it makes them easier to clean.