Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2020
I really wanted to love these earbuds. I spent hours pouring over reviews, videos, and any other form of media I could find before I purchased them, and when they finally came in the mail, I was on cloud 9. My euphoria didn't last long, however, as I immediately started having tech issues with the first pair I had. No worries though, I sent them back and got them replaced with a brand new pair, and didn't have any issues with those. Yet.
Before we get into the technical side of things, I want to go over the earbuds themselves:
Comfort: ***
When I first started using these earbuds, they were massively uncomfortable. They fit in my ears decently enough, and they had a wonderful grip (to the point where it was harder to pull them out than it was to put them in), but within the first few hours of use, my ears started to bruise and they were really painful to keep wearing. The pain lasted for around the first week of use, but after that they felt really natural. I gave it 3 stars because that first week *really* hurt, and as I mentioned, they're very hard to take out of your ear because of the way they fit in. That might just be a "me" problem due to the way my ears are shaped though, so your mileage may vary.
Sound: *****
The sound honestly blew me away. I definitely had high expectations given the price point, but they exceeded in all regards. I do consider myself a casual audiophile, and these were a joy to listen to. It took me a bit to get the equalizer just right (I like mine with mid-high bass, low mid, and mid-high treble), but once I did they absolutely held their own. I did have issues with the sound itself, namely balance issues, but I'm going to save that for the technical issues part of my review, because when they did work, the sound was stellar.
The App: **
The app is a mess to be honest. If you want any level of customization, you need to have it downloaded, and it makes things funky. You can use the headphones just fine without the app installed (unlike some wireless earbuds), but if you want any level of customization, you have to install it, plus it's how you update the earbud's firmware. The first time I started using the earbuds, they were working fine, but after I installed the app they started going haywire. The balance started shifting to favor the left earbud, sometimes the right earbud would cut out sound completely, the equalizer never worked, and the list goes on. After I got all of those issues sorted out (after getting my replacement set), the app worked fine, but it was never great.
Buttons: *
I really didn't like the buttons at all. There's basically 3 buttons in total, you have one big one that makes up the outer shell of the right earbud, and you have two buttons on the left earbud in the same location. You do need to apply a considerable amount of force to activate the buttons, which wasn't fun when they were already causing my ears a ton of pain just by sitting in them. There's a whole bunch of different combinations you can use to activate various features, such as track control, the "hear-through" feature, volume, voice assistant, etc, but any combo of them caused me a lot of discomfort. Plus, sometimes the sound one one or both of the earbuds will get extremely quiet or cut out completely if you move the earbud a certain way, so 75% of the time I pressed a button to do something, I had to spend a minute trying to fiddle with the earbud to fix the sound. It was a mess.
Bluetooth: ****
The bluetooth connectivity was actually really solid for the most part. In my testing, I think I got around 60~80 feet before the sound started getting choppy, and that was with a *lot* of interference (other electronics, walls, other bluetooth/wireless devices, etc).
Connectivity: *
I'm making connectivity separate from bluetooth, because I'm talking specifically about connecting to the device(s). The earbuds allow you to connect to more than one device, but it can be a nightmare trying to switch them around, and repair them to other devices once they're connected to something. As far as I know (and I spent a fair amount of time trying to find out), there's no way to put the headphones into pairing mode without resetting them completely. You do this by holding down the power button (the right earbud button) for 3 seconds, and after it powers off, continue to hold for another 3-6 seconds. You'll hear the startup chime, and they'll be ready to pair. However, doing this RESETS them, so it wipes the memory of any devices you were already paired with, so you have to re-pair them. I eventually got them to connect to more than one device at a time, but it was a massive headache to do this, a massive ear-ache because of how painful it was to press the button in for 10 seconds at a time, for multiple minutes in a row, and it was a major pain if I needed to reset them to pair them to something different.
Voice Assistant: **
I'm making this it's own category, because I had a major gripe with it. The assistant itself works very well, it lets you know what the battery level is, the connection status, if there's any incoming calls (and it reads the contact name/number off which was nice), plus a few other things. However, my issue with it is specifically the volume, and the suddenness of the voice prompts. I generally always listen to music at reasonable levels, but the voice assistant was always LOUD. Like, if my music was set to a 4 or a 5, the assistant comes in at a 7 or an 8. Not only that, but it comes out of nowhere like a cheap jump scare from a horror movie. You'll be minding your own business when suddenly you have the assistant screaming in your ear that the bluetooth is disconnected. I thought I was going to have a heart attack every time it kicked in. Not only that, but whenever the battery got low (which was often), the assistant would scream about how the battery needs to be charged. There's no soft beeps or little chimes to let you know that your ears are about to get assaulted, it just jumps from 1 to 5000. If they took care of that, the assistant would be 5 stars easily, but it absolutely destroyed any enjoyment I had gotten out of it.
Noise Canceling/Here-through: *****
These things form a great seal. I never had issues with outside noise slipping through while wearing them, plus they have a feature called "Hear-through" which you activate by double tapping the right button. This feature activates the mics to feed sound through the earbuds, which makes it sound and feel like you aren't even wearing them. It honestly blew my mind the first time I used it, and it's by far the best feature that they offer. It's extremely easy and convenient to turn the feature on or off whenever you need to, and it works beautifully. The buds on their own (with nothing playing) do a great job at canceling outside noise, and with some music playing at any level, the rest of the world may as well not even exist. But as soon as you double tap that side button, you're all of a sudden brought back to reality. It's a really fun feature, and it's honestly the primary reason why I wanted to love these so badly.
Battery life: ***
Not bad, but also not great. I generally got between 4-6 hours worth of battery life out of them before they started screaming at me to charge them back up. The case holds enough charge to give you ~15ish hours out of the buds, which was good enough for a work day. I'm docking it 2 stars because I feel like it should have been just a bit better (specially when compared to other wireless buds). A 10-20 minute charge was enough to get another hour or so out of them though, so that was nice, but the primary issue is that you have to do it frequently.
That's enough of the basics, now lets get into why these things are a 1 star overall:
Tech issues - what the internet doesn't want you to know: bleh/10
As I mentioned towards the start of this review, I spent a LOT of time researching these buds. $160 is a pretty big chunk of change for me, so I wanted to be sure of what I was getting. Everything I saw, from reddit posts to youtube videos was overwhelmingly positive. Most of the reviews on amazon I saw were also very positive, and the few negative were due to tech issues that I wrote off as standard for any tech product. However, after I got my pair and started having these issues myself, I suddenly started seeing tech issues all over the internet, because I knew what to look for.
The first pair I got worked for maybe 2 hours total before they stopped working. The sound started shifting more towards the left earbud, and eventually the sound on the right earbud cut out entirely. It's not that the bud wasn't working, it was that *something* was causing the bud to cut out when positioned a certain way. If I pushed it too far into the canal, the sound cut out. If I shifted it a nanometer too far, the sound cut out. If I didn't push it in far enough, no sound. It was a NIGHTMARE trying to get it to fit in there just right, because literally any small shift made the entire earbud just quit working. It was by far the most bizarre thing I experienced with the earbuds, and to this day I have no idea why they're like that. It's an extremely common issue as well; I saw a ton of posts online about it and I had the same issue on BOTH pairs that I received.
So, if you're going to buy these despite this review, and you have this issue, just know that it's PLACEMENT BASED. If your sound gets quieter, or it cuts out completely, keep readjusting the bud in your ear until it works again. 9/10 times it's due to how far you push the bud into your canal, so you might have to take it out and only lightly push it into place. It's going to be the most frustrating thing you have to deal with, so good luck.
Battery issues: Refund/10
This is what ended up being the final nail in the coffin. As mentioned, I had my first pair for a whopping 2 hours before I had Amazon send out a replacement pair, but the 2nd pair ended up lasting me around a month and a half. However, the issues I had with that one were *far* worse. After around a month of use, I noticed that sometimes when I would go to use the headphones in the morning (after charging both the buds and the case overnight), the buds would be around 50-75% battery. It was weird, but I chalked it up to me not putting them in the case correctly, or the cable I was using not being good (it uses micro-USB btw, so that's another negative). However, over the next 2 weeks, it started to happen more and more frequently. It got to the point where I'd charge them over night, plugged into a known-good wall outlet with a known-good cable, and they were only at 10% in the morning. I'd pop them in my ear and instantly be greeted with "Connected... Low battery" or whatever it said. I'd then put them back in the case, making sure that the LED showed it was charging, and let it sit for a few hours. When I'd take them back out, they were somehow at 5% now. After a few days of this they became completely unusable; they'd either be around 5-10% or they wouldn't power on at all. Then, to make matters worse, the case stopped charging too. It was definitely the buds that went first, because there's an LED on the case that lets you know if it's fully charged, or if it's charging the buds, and that was working fine up until the very end.
At that point I had had enough and I got a refund for them. Despite how good they sounded, and despite how much I loved the various features, I didn't want to have to keep returning them every 30-60 days for a new pair. I use wireless earbuds at school and at work, so not having them is a *massive* inconvenience. Plus, they're more trouble than they're worth given the amount of time I had to spend fiddling with their placement, trying to get the sound to come back in one of the earbuds, trying to get the volume to balance properly (I had to download a 3rd party equalizer for that actually, so add that to the negatives list), and praying that they'd be charged by the time I needed them.
I HIGHLY recommend you stay away from these, and go with something else. I've heard really good things about the Galaxy buds, but I personally upgraded to the Sony WF-1000XM3 and they are *phenomenal.* If you're going to go with these regardless, make sure you get some sort of insurance plan for them. There's no question that they'll end up breaking on you, the only question is, when will they decide to do it?
