Atomic Floyd SuperDarts Titanium +remote review

As the name implies, the Atomic Floyd SuperDarts Titanium +Remote is made almost entirely from metal, making them a seriously lightweight and robust pair of in-ear headphones. Each earbud is encased in silver titanium, with a snakeskin-like texture that’s a pleasant change from the norm.

Each earbud weighs just 2.8g, despite the liberal use of metals, so they barely weigh you down. The earbuds are bullet-shaped, with the cabling coming straight out rather than at an L-shaped angle as with most earphones. 

We found this proved problematic, as it not only meant the earphones and cables protruded quite considerably out of our ears, it also magnified the pull of the cabling down and away from our ears. The earphone casing in no way rests on your outer ear, meaning there’s no natural anchoring aside from the inserted silicone tips. This meant there was a consistent paranoia that the earphones would fall out, and we had to re-adjust far too regularly when wearing them throughout the day. 

Constantly worrying that an expensive pair of earphones would fall out of your ears, hit the floor and immediately be at risk of being stepped on detracted from the enjoyment of them. For those that care about such things, we also found the way they looked when worn unattractive as well.

The way they protrude straight out of your ears means that a solid fit will be all the more important in order to anchor them in your ear canal. You do at least receive four different sized silicone tips as well as a pair of Comply foam tips, so Atomic Floyd hasn’t skimped on accessories. A silicone pouch is also included for transportation, along with a 6.3mm DJ plug adaptor and an airplane adaptor – a useful addition for constant fliers.

The cable is Kevlar-reinforced, which adds to its robustness, and terminates at a straight 3.5mm jack that has the same titanium-based sleeve as the earphones. The cable is coated in textured tangle-resistant fabric material up until it terminates into the Y-shaped cable that leads to the earphones. Here the cable uses a more conventional rubber coating, but we would have preferred to see the same material from the main cabling. While we didn’t encounter any problems during our testing, the rubber-coated cable felt more susceptible to fraying or damage.

The left earphone cable holds a remote that includes playback and volume controls. The buttons are relatively low-profile but we didn’t have any problems using them. They’re ridged so it’s easy to identify the play/pause button from the volume buttons.

The SuperDarts uses two speaker drivers in each earphone; a 9mm dynamic driver and a balanced armature driver. These allow for a wide frequency response of 5-25,000Hz, so deep bass and high treble. Sound production was as detailed as expected.

Listening to a track such as Stevie Wonder’s Another Star, it was easy to pick out the percussion and the vocals were nicely separated. Bass was tight but occasionally caused the overall sound to become slightly too warm for our tastes. Confusingly, the treble was also occasionally slightly bright and harsh, such as during Charles Bradley’s Dusty Blue.

For the price we would have expected slightly better overall sound quality. The SuperDarts by no means sound bad, they’re quite good in fact, but at this price you’re entering the territory of some great in-ear monitors from the likes of Shure. We found the sound quality from the SuperDarts only fractionally better than that of Shure’s SE315, which are considerably less expensive.

What really let the SuperDarts down is the manner in which they’re worn. There’s a constant sensation that the headphones are on the verge of falling out of your ears, which unfortunately detracts from your musical enjoyment.