My Jaybirds would no longer charge – red light doesn’t come on. Changing cables, using wall charger etc did not help. They just would NOT CHARGE.
Sigh, for the price I paid for the Jaybird X4s, one would have thought the customer service would be better. But no, whenever you write to them for assistance, all you get is a canned response, and it’s exactly the same regardless of who replied. It’s like they have this template reply on a corporate server somewhere and every customer service rep just copy/paste it to every incoming ticket. Even if the issue reported has NOTHING to do with the instructions sent in the reply to you.
Once bitten, twice shy as they say. I will no longer purchase anymore Jaybirds (or Logitechs, but that is another story). I had thought that by paying a premium price, I might actually get a quality product, and if I encountered problems, a decent customer service would be available to assist.
So, I went around hunting for a replacement to the Jaybirds. I had grown to like them over the Sony WI-C300s which I also own. Actually I didn’t actively go looking. I was thinking I’ll start using the Sony WI-C300s on a more regular basis. Then, I came across a review for a pair of Jays earbuds, quite by accident, on Youtube.
Intrigued, I did a little more research, and Jays buds seem to garner positive feedback and almost zero negative feedback. Pricing wise, it wasn’t dirt-cheap, but neither is it crazy expensive. In fact it is literally half the price of the Jaybird X4s I paid for.
I thought what the heck, I’ll take the plunge. I ordered a pair online, and it came literally the very next day! Excellent start!
Build Quality
The build quality is the first thing I noticed. I thought that the Jaybirds and the Sony WI-C300 were good, but this one feels better. Aluminium housing actually. Feels good and solid, but not heavy. In fact it’s very light, so light that you don’t even feel it on your neck.
Performance
How do they perform? Boy, was I surprised! Sound quality wise, I’d say it’s the BEST I have ever heard so far, surpassing even my free Sony MH750 that came free with my phone which I had been using for years, and thus my ears are “trained” for them.
(As an aside, it’s pretty sad that so many earbuds I’ve tested/used are “inferior” compared to those free earbuds that came with my phone. Other than the Sony WI-C300s, only the F9-5C no-brand China-made dirt-cheap $10 set comes even close)
The Jays A-Six (I wonder why they didn’t write it as “A6”) are fantastic in every way. It has a 12-hour battery life. I have yet to deplete them after 2 days of use, and battery level is reported as “Medium” in the in-ear prompts, and shows 50% on my phone status. This is already very impressive, as only the Sony WI-C300 has equivalent battery experience (15 hours rated).
It has been an absolute joy listening to familiar music with them. I seem to be enjoying the new nuances of the same music I have been listening to, sometimes surprised that there’s a trumpet there which I’ve not noticed before, or that piano note actually lingered and didn’t go off as I thought it usually did.
Downsides
The downside? Not IPX-rated for water resistance. So, don’t use them at the gym 🙂 Also, it is so strange (to me) that there is no function to “skip to previous track”. Yup, it does NOT exist.
Buttons to activate Siri/Google is also different, and the buttons to skip track back has become the “Announce Battery Level” button. Yeah, you press that button for 2 secs and the in-ear prompt will announce the battery level.
Conclusion
The Jays A-Six has completely exceeded my expectations. From now on, any new(er) pair of earbuds will be compared to them when comparing sound quality. Yup, even the Jaybird X4s aren’t as good as these, and to get the Jaybirds anywhere close to the Jays, it’d probably need the help of the app on the phone to tune the equalizer.
I give it a rating of 9/10, excellent! 1 star off for those weird quirks noted above – Sir/Google activation quirk, and the non-existant prev-track button.