Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsMusician review
Reviewed in Australia on 2 November 2020
I thought most of the reviews were paid, but after hearing them, a small part of me thinks perhaps many of them are actually honest buys. I'm a musician, audiophile, and audio engineer so I believe I can comment with some certainty about the sound quality. I bought one because it wasn't too bad a price to try IPX8, and yes they work in the shower, and stay snugly in my ears for 1 hour runs, but I this is very personal.
Since most people are fixated on sound: I ABd this with another 2 sets of popular Chinese made wireless earbuds which would be an average 4 or 5/10, and the sound quality of these is a solid 7/10. Indeed it doesn't sound as transparent and detailed as my $650 Audio Technica IEMs which I would put at 9/10 for work, or my Focal main monitors at a reference 10/10. But you can actually hear reverb trails and get a sense of the recording space in some finicky recordings, bass can be heard but not 'felt', which is a good sign of a balanced frequency response, high frequencies are present and only occasionally overwhelmingly bright, and there isn't much 'veil' over the sound associated with cheaper earphones. Not exactly criteria to judge professional equipment by, but for the average user they are excellent. Isolation is good - it blocks ~50% of outside sound comfortably (also helped by the heft and density of the earbud housing), to get better you'd have to get noise cancelling.
Don't buy the bull about driver size and fancy specs, a well tuned or quality driver means more. Clearly cheaper, quality drivers are becoming more ubiquitous and this is no exception. It works for a large variety of styles, including classical for which rendering realism is difficult. Pairs well and without issues, comes with 6 eartip sizes, and the case (as many mentioned) feels very hefty and has a satisfying click to close. I believe it has a low battery mode and the sound quality gets bumped down as a result (or sometimes from bad pairing) but this is the exception and can be easily reset. Professionals buy with their ears, not specs - so this one gets a solid tick for the price.
