Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsI didn't know a product could be so poorly designed.
Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2020
This is a review for use with android and macbook pro
TLDR most glitchy product i've ever had in my life. Updates are few and far between and bring new glitches. Most common glitch is sound going out of sync between left and right resulting in delay, and feeling of echo in the audio: it's infuriating and requires disconnect and reconnect: sometimes with waiting in between or having to repair from box which makes the big bulky charge box a must carry everywhere: can't exactly go ona run with that thing.
Imagine having to interrupt your sports routine 2-4 times to get these things working, does that make you want to work out more or less?
Since i first bought them, they have been nothing but glitchy, and it took two months to have them replaced on apple care (because apple after sale service is a joke) so i made a glitch diary over the past few weeks to write this review.
Android: many of these glitches are not android dependent but rather location/movement dependent, or where you put your phone dependent, or what your phone is touching dependent or next to what appliance you're standing dependent and sometimes audio app dependent (switching apps resolves the glitch).
Glitches are "seasonal" they come and go, though some are constant. But there's always something new.
-Worst and by most common glitch: the earbuds often go out of sync resulting in an echo (bc of the delay btw one ear and the other). This one is infuriating/maddening: happens everyday many times. Sometimes i just live with it because i don't want to go through the motions of disconnecting/wait/reconnect but the sync keeps drifting and it gets jarring/disorienting after a while: like chinese drip torture.
- powerbeats connect, sound still comes from phone speakers
-“skipping sound effect” from the connection faltering
-sometimes nonstop struggle to stay in sync, stay connected
-Sounds cuts in and out repeatedly with random intervals (on... off........ on.... off... on........ off...)
-put them in a box and close it only to realize they’re still connected and the sound is coming out of the box still, but sometimes the opposite problem occurs: i'd be listening from macbook speakers and they. randomly connect to the laptop and start playing from within the box, and pause playback. Must turn off bluetooth on device to recover sound from speakers.
-sometimes resumes all audio app after you pause and play (eg pause podcast, hit play, youtube, podcasts, audible all start playing together at the same time)
- Different buttons/functions cease to work, sometimes all buttons won’t respond (sound plays buttons unresponsive), sometimes just some buttons, just volume or play, or just one earbud.
-Sometimes buttons work but no sound (can see the app play/pause on the screen)
-Sometimes connects (as confirmed by connection sound and bluetooth menu on phone) but no sound and buttons unresponsive. Sometimes no sound though buttons can play/pause
-lag between commands and response (btw hitting play and music playing, pause and music pausing)
- often disconnects from phone after a call: when you hang up sound resumes from phone speakers
-sometimes disconnects during call making me run back to phone to continue call on phone
- sometimes one of the earbuds "forgets" its charged straight out of the box, putting it back in the charge box "reminds" it it's actually full (goes from 0% to 100% immediately): imagine you put them on step out of the. house and realize one of the earbuds is acting dead, now you have to go back home, stick it in the huge box you don't want to carry around and. then g et back to your run/bike/routine
-rarely, one earbud "dies" and needs to be placed in charging box for a long while before it comes back to "life"
-updates few and far between and bring new glitches
- EVERYTIME I ride (bike) through specific intersections it "slices" the connection: audio goes out though the app continues to play and the connection is still established in the bluetooth menu.
Recently (new "seasonal" glitches since last update ):
-just doesn't automatically connect when i open box and put them on, I have to manually connect them from the bluetooth menu, sometimes i have to repair them from the box.
- one ear starts playing immediately, other earbud takes 6-9 seconds to connect, during which you're standing there. waiting to see if it's this glitch or the one where one of the earbuds thinks it's empty and needs to be put back in the box to remember it's full.
-earbuds connect but they don't make the connection sound so you don't know if they've connected or not without playing something
- entire volume range is on the bottom three increments of the volume bar, goes from no sound (one volume click up) 50% volume (one volume click up) 100% volume and all the rest of the range no matter how much you volume up/down, remains at 100% volume.
Macbook pro
-refuses to connect/reconnect to macbook pro, no idea why, requires a factory reset and re pairing
-randomly switches to another device mid use (from phone to macbook pro or vice versa)
Sound Quality: bass ok, HIGH TREBLE many podcasts sound like there's a hissing in your ear when they pronounce the letter S. Overall sound is good but the hissing from the high trebble is annoying: one solution to this i found was to use biggest size rubber buds and shove them well into your ear: enhances bass and mitigates treble.
Customer service: took nine days to ship them back to some facility to have them "looked at" decided they were fine within twenty minutes (i know this because they have a link to a tracker) and returned them to me (they had to overnight ship them when I blew a gasket at the store when i realized the confirmation email after nine days was just for their receipt of the product at the repair facility and not that they were done and ready for pickup: nine days, just to get from the store to the "repair" facility).
Had to return twice more and both times same thing: they receive them, immediately decide nothing wrong with them, return them: spent the whole summer without the product i had bought SPECIFICALLY for that summer. In the end some "genius" i paris told me it was because they were labeling the problem as "permanent" as opposed to "intermittent" (permanent means it's always there and so it should show right out of the box)
Please comment if you've been having any of these problems.
thanks
100% would not recommend
