The battleground for your ears rages on, with a steadily increasing number of high quality headphones vying for your iPod accessory cash. V-Moda's Remix Remote brings remote control functions to make your iPod or iPhone sound just that little bit sweeter.

The packaging boasts "metal metal metal" and it is nothing to do with music genre: the earbuds are constructed from metal so the end result is rather weighty, but certainly feels solid. The connection stem is tough rubber and feels like it will take some abuse, whilst the cable is Kevlar reinforced and has a distinctly tough feel to it.

The "Remote" in the name refers to that in-line remote and mic. It again feels solid and offers up three rubber buttons for play/pause and volume. Designed for Apple products, you'll be able to take advantage of Voice Control on your iPod or iPhone, or use the double press to skip through tracks.

However, the placement of the buttons sees the volume raised above the level of the central play button. As a result, we sometimes found that hitting the play button first time was tricky.

We tried the V-Moda Remix Remote with a number of different devices and you'll get differing results - many will support the play/pause functions, but not always the volume, so these really are pitched at Apple owners.

There is a selection of different sized silicone tips in the box, with a spare set too. There is also a set of "sport earhooks" which you can attach to give the earbuds more support if you want to use them for running. They make no claims about being water resistant or anything else and we'd rather have something we could rinse the sweat off, like those from Philips or Sennheiser/Adidas, if sport is an intended use.

The 3.5mm jack is 24k gold plated, naturally, but unusually the cable comes out from it at a 45 degree angle. V-Moda says this is designed to be more flexible and less prone to damage, but it does seem a little larger in the pocket than some rivals.

The V-Moda Remix Remote offers noise isolation by way of a good fit, and we found that once we'd selected the correct size tips, we had a secure fit that did block out a lot of external noise. This always helps the clarity of the music, so it was no surprise to find excellent performance on offer.

With plenty of bass coming through, there is real punch to the delivery of the V-Moda Remix Remote, holding their own in terms of audio quality against some of the bigger name brands at similar prices. The bass and clarity is maintained through the volume range too, so higher volumes don't distort.

The bass might be a little heavy for those who are looking for a more natural tone on spoken word or classical tracks, but for your average pop diet you'll find the V-Moda Remix Remote to be a great set of headphones.