I’ve owned the first and second generation of the original product that these are inspired by, you know, the expensive one that only comes in white. Both pairs had the microphones stop working after a while, and both pairs would do weird things when connecting to my phone, sometimes refusing to connect even after multiple resets… so I decided to give these cheaper ones a try.
Wow… these far exceeded my expectations. This review will compare them to the other brand as a point of reference. I’ve been using them exclusively and extensively for the last three days, and this review is based on that experience.
Sound quality: Different, but about the same quality. They emphasize different parts of the sound, but I wouldn’t call either one better than the other — some songs sound better on one, some better on the other. Since I mostly use this style of headphone for convenience when I’m doing other things they’re effectively equivalent — if I care about sound quality I sit in a quiet spot and wear big over-the-head cans.
Pairing: Initial setup is ever so slightly longer on an iPhone — with the other brand you open the case, a prompt pops up, push connect, and you’re done. With these you have to go into bluetooth settings and add them the first time, an extra 30 seconds, one time.
Connecting, after pairing: Super simple… just open the case, they connect and are ready to go. The plus is that they’re ready to go once they’re in your ear, the drawback is that they don’t detect when they’re in your ear, so they steal your audio before you’ve got them in your ear — usually no big deal.
Switching devices: I’ve had no problem switching devices — I’ve paired them to a Linux laptop for Zoom calls, and an iPhone, and switch back and forth, though I do have to disconnect one to get the other to connect if they’re both in range. Whichever I used last is the one it connects to by default when opened.
Controls: This is a HUGE win for these, with a few minor losses. These use a touch control rather than tap. Took me a few minutes to realize that and I was struggling to get the controls to work. I like the touch better since the tapping transmits the tapping sound into your ears — touching is much quieter. The drawback of touch is that it doesn’t work with gloves and you have to be careful how and where you touch them if you temporarily remove them or adjust them to avoid accidental operations. The other brand has the ability to auto-pause when one is removed, which is convenient when somebody starts to talk to you as it’s much faster than the double touch. The other brand also only has one (configurable) control per side, whereas these have basically everything w/ different tap patterns. That said, I do wish that the double-tap duration was a bit shorter so that I could adjust the volume a little bit faster — trying to adjust the volume multiple steps does require patience to avoid accidentally double or triple-tapping.
Battery Life: These blow away my old gen 2 of the other brand, but they are a few years old and are probably degraded, so it’s not a fair comparisson. The battery life is great. I also like that the case battery indicator is on the outside of the case, easier to see. A slight negative, the battery status is reported to the phone as a single value, not a value per side, and the case battery status is not available other than through it’s build-in LED — doesn’t bother me much, to be honest.
Appearance: Basically the same as the other brand, but I chose black, which I like better and isn’t available in the others.
A few minor caveats:
I’ve noticed a few times per day that the audio gets ever so slightly out of sync L to R for about 2 seconds, and then fixes itself. It’s a weird effect, but doesn’t happen very often.
USB-C is great for Android users who have USB-C phones, but for iPhone users it is inconvenient to have to use a different charging cable, but most of the time I can just charge at home, so I don’t care.
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