Truly wireless earbuds are expensive. Samsung Galaxy Buds are $130, Apple Airpods start at $160, and some sets go for more. If you temper expectations, TaoTronics offers $46 wireless earbuds that perform far better than its price suggests possible.
Truly wireless earbuds are, quite frankly, a luxury item. You can live without them until you try them, then you won’t want to live without them. The biggest issue is usually price. You can expect to spend between $130 and $300 on good earbuds, and even our recommended budget pair, the Anker Soundcore Liberty Air, will you set back $80.
If you’re looking spend less, you should take a look at TaoTronics Wireless Earbuds. You may not have heard of the brand, but the hardware is solid—at least if you can accept some trade-offs for the low price.
Truth be told, the photos you see in the rest of the article aren’t of a review unit sent to us by the company. I bought a pair for my wife, and she loved them so much she turned around and bought a pair for me. That’s a double vote of confidence right out of the gate, so let’s take a look at what we both loved (and didn’t love) about the affordable little earbuds.
The Overall Design Isn’t Much to Look At
To be completely blunt, the design of the TaoTronics case and earbuds are incredibly generic. The case is about the size of one and a half Altoid tins stacked, and shaped like a rectangle with the corners cut off. It’s thin enough to fit in jeans pockets, but thick enough you’ll know it’s there the entire time.
The lid is semi-transparent plastic that feels a little fragile, while the bottom is somewhat harder and feels like it can take some abuse. The earbuds themselves could be confused for any number of truly wireless earbuds, and that’s fine. If your goal is a unique fashion accessory, you’ll need to spend more for the looks. But low prices mean trade-offs, and it’s more important that these buds work well than how they look.
A Little Difficult to Set Up, but Easy to Use
TaoTronics set their wireless earbuds apart with one striking feature. Both buds are Bluetooth capable. Often with truly wireless earbuds, only one bud connects to Bluetooth, and the other connects to the first bud. That usually means you can listen with only the right ear (for instance), but not only the left.
This set of earbuds though work in single ear mode for either side. But that makes setup tricky. I found in my testing that the best thing to do is take one earbud out of the case, pair it, put it back in the case (which turns it off), then take the second earbud out of the case and pair it. From them on, you can either use just the left or right bud, or both. When you put in the second earbud, you will have to wait a moment while the earbuds connect.
Once you have the earbuds set up, using them is as simple as taking them out of the case and waiting for connecting. You can start in single ear mode, or switch to it by putting the second earbud away. Likewise switching from single earbud to dual earbud mode is a simple as taking the second out and wearing it. The company included tap controls, and they work well enough once you’ve memorized them. Helpfully, play and pause are a single tap the left and right ear respectively, and that’s all I typically use.
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Source : TaoTronics Wireless Earbuds: The Best Cheap Truly Wireless Earbuds
