Verdict

Pros

• Excellent quality
• Friendly service

Cons

• Expensive bundles

What are the Snugs Earphones?

Snugs is a company, and a series of products designed to bring custom fit earphones to the masses. They use the same sort of silicone used in professional in-ear monitors, but here the entry price is just under £200, rather than a grand or two.

These are the real deal, and offer a great way to get better noise isolation for your favourite earphones. However, you need to make sure you pick the right earphones before this really becomes a worthwhile service.

Snugs Earphones – Design and Comfort

When you buy a Snugs package, you’re not just paying for a pair of custom moulds and (if you choose) earphones, but the service of getting your ears mapped to produce the mould. You have a choice here. You can head to your local audiologist to have a traditional putty impression made, or visit one of the company’s high street partners (e.g. the TekZone in Selfridges Oxford Street) to have your ears 3D-scanned.

We headed on down to the audiologist, where one of the Snugs team was waiting. If you’ve never had your ear impressions taken, it’s a largely inoffensive, entirely pain-free experience. A fast-drying squidgy material is injected into your ears, left there for a few minutes and then removed. You need fairly clean ears for the procedure to be possible, but should your lug holes be fine, the whole process only takes about 15 minutes. The 3D scanning option is slightly less invasive but takes about half the time.

You then pick your style and Snugs will have your ear tips sent within a few days. Similar services have been available for years, but none has quite had the accessibility of Snugs. You can make your order from the website, and there’s no ‘pro’ side of the business to put you off – as there is with rival ACS.

The final result is excellent. Snugs moulds use soft silicone that is very easy on the ear – some custom earphones use harder plastic that is likely to cause irritation for many people.

Any custom mould earphone takes a while to get used to, but we found the Snugs remarkably easy to fit, and comfortable for hours at a time. The real attraction, though, is noise isolation.

Although they’re designed to fit standalone earphones rather than being part of a custom earphone (meaning they are not fully sealed into a one-piece product), isolation is significantly better than either standard silicone tips or the generally excellent Comply foam tips. If your one criticism of your earphones is that their isolation is not good enough, this is one solution. However, it should also be noted that it won’t fix any isolation issues caused by ports on the earphones themselves (as these won’t be covered up by the Snugs).

There are dozens of colour options, some of which cost a little extra, giving you masses of scope for personalisation. Snugs also makes simpler rubber bungs for surfers and those dealing with snorers (these’ll probably be the best earplugs you’ll ever have).

One of the snazzier Snugs finishes

Snugs – Range

Snugs are compatible with a huge list of headphones – assuming yours aren’t particularly obscure, it’s likely they will be compatible. Snugs has also recently branched out to include true wireless models, which is great – a bad fit it a common complaint of the Apple Airpods, and now they can be ‘fixed’ with Snugs too. If you have your own earphones, the Snugs Only offering truly is hard to criticise.

We’re not so sure about the earphone bundles that Snugs offers, though. You can get the Snugs Wired or Snugs Wireless packages from £199.95, which offer the custom tips plus several featured models. The only problem here is that for several models it’s actually a little cheaper to buy your own earphones separately first.

Why buy the Snugs earphones?

The Snugs product – those ear tips – is beyond reproach. They’re top-quality, made by professionals, using the same tools used to create in-ear monitors for professional musicians. If you’re concerned whether Snugs tips can match up to rivals like ACS, don’t worry. They do. However, we recommend the service as a way to get a bit more out of earphones you already own and love, rather than for its headphone package options.

Verdict

Snugs custom ear tips are hard to criticise. They offer quality and workmanship on-par with professional in-ear monitors.

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