These come nicely packaged and presented with some, but not excessive plastic.

 

Case

The case is reasonably compact, has a pleasing design, easily fits in a jeans pocket and has an nice, almost rubberised texture to it. Compared to an AirPods case (shown in the photos but of course not included), it’s slightly larger in all dimensions but certainly smaller than other cases I’ve come across. The case appears to hold charge well but I would have preferred it to have USB-C rather than Micro USB. On the bottom of the case is an LED that tells you when the case needs charging and on the inside of the case in an LED to indicate the state of the earphones. The lid is held closed by a clip rather than magnets which would have been a nicer experience and in fact that’s probably how I would describe these overall: they’re very functional rather than being physically refined. The earphones also are not held in by magnets

 

Sound quality

Sound quality is surprisingly good with well defined and controlled bass, smooth mids and clear highs however they may sound ever so slightly harsh. They have plenty of volume and I found the sound isolation (they don’t have active cancellation) to be completely adequate on a train. One strange quirk I found was that when changing volume at around 75% volume there is an audible click and then there is a bit more hiss, below this, the hiss is barely perceptible. It’s not a big problem but it just another thing that detracts from the experience.

 

Fit and comfort

In terms of fit and insertion I found the large tips worked well for me when usually I use medium and actually I’m happy it’s like that because it means I don’t push them too far into my ears and they’re quick to insert, with a twist to lock, and take out, something that I feel actually is quite important - these don’t feel like a chore to put in or take out. They’re reasonably comfortable but after a while I did experience a bit of discomfort due to the twist to lock. They were reasonably secure apart from when I was eating something!

 

Functionality

Functionally they have the full house: Skip forward/backward, play/pause, volume up/down, as well as assistant and ambient mode. Skipping and volume control use the same buttons, press for volume, long press to skip. I would prefer double and triple click of play/pause for skipping but the press is short enough that you can still skip to a previous song (I have experienced other earphones where you have to hold it so long that it’s impossible to skip to a previous song and instead it just goes to the beginning of the song). That said, double press is allocated to ambient mode which is quicker than a long press. Ambient mode works well but it tends to pick up a lot of environmental noise which can make it difficult to listen to what you need to. A long press activates the assistant, Siri worked flawlessly but I experienced issues with Alexa which seemed a bit slow or sometimes failed to activate properly. Setting up Alexa was however easy to do via the app.

Removing either earphone will pause the music and play when you put it back.

 

App

I have no complaints about the app. It doesn’t have any strange design choices and has what you would expect, namely an equaliser and ability to adjust the ambient or “hear through” level.

 

Earphone design and appearance

These are a pretty standard design but with a small microphone boom. They look and feel durable, are light, reasonably compact and don’t protrude too much from the ears. On the outside of both earphones are small LEDs which indicate when you put them in the case and their connection, thankfully, these don’t seem to light up after the initial connection.

The buttons unsurprisingly are pretty small but I had no issue operating them.

 

Battery life

As I mentioned, the case appears to hold charge well and I don’t have reason to believe the earphones won’t at least get close to 5 hours.

 

Calls

When on telephone calls I didn’t have any complaints from the other end. It would be nice to be able to use either earphone for calls but only the right one can be used by itself.

 

Connection

In all my time using these I have not had a single dropout or stutter, not even on a crowded train. I also had no issue maintaining a connection to my phone down two floors.

 

Multiple connections

These support simultaneous connections/multipoint so if you’re listening on your computer and a call comes in then you can answer it straight away. Additionally you can just play something on another device and the sound will automatically switch over.

 

Sound sync/Lag

In the YouTube app I experienced 40ms of lag however all other video apps, as well as YouTube in the browser had virtually zero lag. These performed very well.

 

Sports activity tracking

These have motion tracking sensors in them and can track steps so can be a very minimal way of measuring your workouts. In practice, you need your phone in range to record the steps so I can’t really see how these are better than recording using your phone, unless you’re in a confined area where you stay in range of your phone. Tracking steps however did seem to be reasonably accurate.

 

Conclusion

These really are very good, what they lack in refinement they make up for in functionality and sound quality. The case size and ease of insertion are both big plusses.

The negatives I’ve already mentioned:

- The case uses Micro USB so if your phone is USB-C like most new phones then you won’t be able to use the same cable. The case doesn’t have wireless charging so you can’t charge it that way either. If you use an iPhone, well that’s a different cable anyway.

- The case has a clip rather than magnets and the earphones aren’t held in by magnets either so if the clip breaks then it’s likely that the earphones would fall out. That said, it feels durable enough.

 

They lose a star for lack of USB-C, lack of magnets and the weird way you get more hiss over 75%. However they’re a very solid 4 stars and at this price there’s not a lot out there that can beat these. I really want to give them 5 stars but feel there were a couple of needless compromises.