So…

The earbuds

These earbuds are kinda meh. TL;DR: the mids are strong, the high end is muddy, the case feels kinda cheap but are actually decent for the price.

The good

  • These are cheap. Despite how the label says S$79, these actually only costed S$65, which are actually a steal.
  • These are Sony earbuds, so you do get the Sony software and support, with all the EQ magic they have.
  • The noise cancellation is insanely good. Even without active noise cancellation, the ear tips themselves do absolute magic on any surrounding noise, whether if its wind from a fan, the air conditioner, or whatever else. Having used AirPods Pro gen 1’s previously, I must say that these are 95-98% the strength, without all the head pain from the noise ANC generates.
  • The eartips fit very tightly within the ears, they do not fall out easily.
  • The range is great.
  • The mids are great. If you listen to genres like ChillSynth1 these are perfect.
  • The ‘ambient sound mode’ is incredible (the sound passthrough feature), it really sounds as if you are not wearing earbuds at all and even thhe little details like the volume your earbuds play the ambient sound back at matches the volume of your actual surrounding environment. These things are unfazed by wind.

The bad

  • The case feels cheap.
  • The earbuds also feels cheap.
  • There is no ANC, which may annoy some.
  • The case does not actually have any magnets, making opening and closing feel much cheaper.

The ugly

  • The trebles are kinda muddy, if you have ever used better headphones you will know what I’m talking about. Say goodbye to vocal clarity, they will be slightly muddy. The EQ only somewhat fixes it. In normal use, it isn’t all that bad.
  • The drivers are only 6mm. Coming from my Pixel Buds A-series’, it is a massive, massive downgrade.
  • The sound isn’t particularly “room filling” nor “full”, it’s just sound.

Verdict

This was just a quick review, I’m not in the mood of writing anything exciting. Avoid these if you have money, I tried to not burn my wallet this time around but man if I just splurged a bit more, would I have gotten much better sound. If these are the only budget option available, these are not bad, but coming from better audio devices, these aren’t the best.

These are 90-95% as good as AirPods Pro 1’s for EDM (complextro/electro house/bass house/future bass/future bass), Hardstyle sounds fine on these (not painful enough), and ChillSynth sounds pretty damn good (no it sounds awesome). I would still rather my Pixel Buds A-series, but oh well.

I also took them outside today (May 25), outdoor performance was excellent. The fit (again) is absolutely incredible, and sound quality was not sacrificed at all.

If you are looking for similarly priced earbuds in asia, look to sudio, I’ve heard great things about them, and products similarly priced to these sonies (At least here) have at least bigger drivers, ANC, and a longer battery life.

I would describe these as utilitarian. Not too much flair, no BS, just-works earbuds that deliver good enough sound quality to make the typical bloke happy.

  1. shoutout to guyfrom beacuse he really likes this genre and introduced chillsynth to me. Chillsynth is not lofi. ↩︎