Though Bluetooth stereo headsets have been around for some time, there hasn't been a high-end model geared toward audiophiles—until now. The Etymotic Ety8 brings high-resolution sound to your iPod or smartphone and does so without all those annoying wires. Still, the Ety8 is saddled with several unfortunate quirks.

Two configurations of the headphones are available. The first, at $199 (direct), includes just the in-ear headset; this is what you need in order to listen to music on smartphones or PDAs equipped with Bluetooth. If you have an Apple iPod, you'll need the version that includes the 8.Mate iPod adapter, which costs a staggering $100 extra. Fortunately, it's a small and slim unit; it added some length to my test 5G iPod, but it wasn't overly obtrusive. It connects directly to the dock port and doesn't require charging. Both versions come with extra rubber and foam eartips, a USB charging cable, a leather case, spare filters, and a filter-changing tool.

The biggest issue with the Ety8 is obvious at first glance. If you're sensitive to style, there's no way you're going to be thrilled with what you see, unless you like the idea of hanging a pair of microprocessors from your ears. Etymotic puts the odd black rectangles (1.3 by 1.3 by 0.9 inch, 5 ounces) to good use by building a remote control into the right unit, letting you keep the music player tucked away in a bag or pocket. That is nice, but in my humble opinion, it doesn't compensate for the look of the earphones.

Despite their bizarre appearance, the Ety8 is lightweight. The nylon cord connecting the two earbuds isn't heavy, but it is uncomfortable. If you hang it behind your neck, it feels irritating and transmits booming sounds into the earphones. If you hang it in front, you'll be comfortable, but look even sillier.

To fit each Ety8 earphone properly, pull your ear up and back slightly, then insert the eartip with a firm twisting motion until you get a complete seal. At this point, you shouldn't hear any outside noise. Etymotic Research claims a 35-dB noise reduction with any of its stock rubber eartips and a 40-dB reduction with the company's foam tips (included in the box). That may be optimistic, but I nonetheless experienced a dramatic reduction in outside interference.

I tested the Ety8 by listening to a large variety of tunes of different genres, with mixed results. The midrange is smooth and neutral, and the highs sparkle without any trace of hash or harshness, although the overall tonal balance skews to the bright side. The Ety8s bring out a lot of the ambience and reverb detail missing with lower-cost headphones. You can hear the space around each individual instrument, such as the grace notes played on a conga drum or a vocalist's breathy sounds between notes. On Flunk's excellent cover of New Order's "Blue Monday," I clearly heard fretboard noises from the stereo-miked acoustic guitar.

As is typical with other Etymotic designs, the Ety8 made the limitations of lower-quality recordings and compressed music apparent. In particular, 128-Kbps AAC tracks purchased through the iTunes Store exhibited obvious flaws, though they weren't by any means unlistenable. On the other hand, tracks encoded with high-bit-rate AAC or Apple Lossless sounded impeccable. The Ety8 also goes plenty loud, with a maximum sound rating of 110 dB. Because of the solid noise isolation, I listened at approximately half the volume I usually do with regular earphones.

The Ety8 won't blow you away with its bass response. But what's there is tight and sufficiently detailed, with no trace of boom or muddiness. Still, you're stuck with the stock EQ. Whenever I engaged one of the 5G iPod's EQ presets, I heard repetitive, loud clicking on bass notes. I could still hear this at very low volumes, so it wasn't a headphone-driver overload issue. It sounds as if the flaw is caused either by overdriving the output of the 8-Mate adapter or by exceeding the Bluetooth data-transfer limit in some way.

If this behavior were limited to when the EQ is engaged, it wouldn't be a huge problem, since the Ety8 sounds great (although bass-light) without any adjustment. Unfortunately, the issue also reared its ugly head on music that naturally contains strong bass, even with the iPod's EQ set flat (the default). On Atlas Plug's electronic track "2 Days or Die," I heard frequent Bluetooth-related clicking whenever low synth-bass notes kicked in. As I threw all manner of bass-heavy rock and electronic music at the Ety8 without experiencing the clicks again, it might just be an issue with unusually "hot" recordings, those mastered at a high volume.

On one occasion, the Ety8 shut off right in the middle of a song, while the iPod kept playing. The light went out on the 8-Mate adapter, indicating that the link was broken. When I powered up the earphones again, the link reconnected automatically and resumed playing. On the plus side, I was able to listen consistently from a distance of 20 feet, which is impressive. I heard a couple of quick audio dropouts while walking to that distance, but none once I was standing still.

The Ety8 has a rated battery life of 6 to 10 hours, depending on the device used. That's on the long end for smartphones and about half that of the average hard-drive iPod. In our battery-rundown test with the 5G iPod, the Ety8 scored 8 hours 55 minutes, falling well within the claimed range—a good result overall.

Though the EQ-related anomalies are unfortunate, the styling is of greater concern. That said, style is subjective. If you can get past its strange design, the Etymotic Ety8 headphones have a lot to offer. They provide excellent noise isolation, good battery life, and give you detailed and transparent sound without wires. Just don't look in the mirror while wearing them.