Here I am again, writing a review for a pair of no-brand, China-made, Bluetooth “True Wireless” earbuds.
Wireless earbuds got popular in part due to Apple – they removed the 3.5mm jack on their iPhones, so the only way the users could listen to music or enjoy movies was to use Bluetooth earphones.
Now, I have other Bluetooth earbuds, but this is the only “TWS” set I own. “TWS” just means “TRUE WIRELESS”. The other earbuds I have still have a wire connecting the buds to a battery, and the electronics are all stored in a small-ish box-like thing further along the wire – Bluetooth chip, sound processing chip, battery etc.
TWS sets are “truly wireless” – zero wires between left and right buds. That also brings up the original arguments against these kinds of earbuds – you lose one, the other side’s useless.
Independent Buds
For this set though, that statement is NOT true.
This set has the feature that you can use the buds INDEPENDENTLY, ie if you only need/want one side to answer a phone call. Once paired, somehow the phone is able to allow any or both of the buds to connect but under the same name entry in the Bluetooth device list. There are no “F9 Left” and “F9 Right” devices. Collectively they are both known as “F9”, and even if I connect only 1, it still just says “F9”.
The upside is of course, if you want to share music with your friend, just pass the other bud to him/her, without worrying about the wire limiting how close/far you have to be.
Sound Quality
Now, this is the impressive part. They are cheap. Dirt cheap. Like, only S$10 cheap. You can’t even get a decent pair of WIRED, 3.5mm jack earphones that cheap.
How good is the sound?
Let’s just say, other than the (lack of) power of the bass, this is comparable to my Jaybird X4s (at “flat” EQ), and also ALMOST matches my Sony WI-C310 in quality of music. My wired, free set of Sony earphones that came with my phone has better bass, truth be told. But hey, they’re Sony.
Unlike the Baseus, which I have reviewed in a previous post, the highs do not sound sharp or piercing, nor screech-y. In fact, after listening to them for a while, I forget they’re a pair of super-cheap, no-brand Chinese-made earphones. There are no “remnants” of the music to remind me that I’m using a pair of el-cheapo earbuds.
Downsides
The much-touted “touch control” is too damn finicky. The operation of the buds, due to limitations, is necessarily complicated – multiple taps to move songs ahead or back, or to increase and lower the volume. Without a solid, clickable button, it’s hard to know whether the phone registered that last tap you did.
Many times I’ve skipped the songs ahead or back, when I actually wanted to increase or lower the volume. Sometimes, the songs just stop playing (1st touch recognised as a pause, not part of the multiple taps for volume control).
That said, the Siri/Google Assistant control is a hit-and-miss – you’re supposed to hold the bud for 1 second, and Siri/Google Assistant would respond. However, there is no audible response. No beeps, no bloops. Just the phone screen showing the Google Assistant bar at the bottom.
Hence, it is not really useful if you’re not looking at the phone to know exactly when Siri/Google Assitant is responding.
Battery Life
On paper, they say it should last 3 to 4 hours of music playing before they have to go back to their charging cradle. When the buds first arrived, I took them out of the packaging, and accidentally “touched” (that’s why I would have preferred an actual button to depress) the buttons and turning them on and putting them into pairing mode immediately.
When my phone connected, the Bluetooth status showed 50% battery life. So, I put it to the test. After about 1 hour and 40 mins or so of music, the in-ear voice prompts keeps telling me to “Please charge”. The Bluetooth status also showed 10% battery level.
So yeah I would guess that at 100% it should play close to 4 hours of music.
The voice prompts themselves are pretty limited – power on/off, and the low-batt warning, and the “Connected” announcement when you connected via Bluetooth to the phone.
The Failz
No, the buds work great. Everything about it so far is great, considering the price.
No, the “failz” is that the buds are labelled IN REVERSE. The L is for the right ear, and the R is for the left ear!
I was slightly confused as first, as I was reading the manual (in English) that tells you how to skip songs ahead. So I tapped the right side, but the song went BACKWARDS. Same for volume control – the volume DECREASED as I tapped the right side.
So I had to verify via an audio file/youtube video that the left and the right buds were correct – they were not.
This is just a minor thing, and in no way does it impede the performance of the product.
Conclusion / Rating
Sound is a bit better than average (which is “good” to some people because I am used to Sony earphones), bass is just slightly lacking, but still present and rather “boomy”.
Overall, given how impressed I am with them and how much the music sounded “normal” to my Sony-trained ears, I’d have to give them 7.5 out of 10. half a star off for the sucky implementation for Siri/Google Assistant, and 2 stars off for the finicky multi-tapping controls.