Amazon Echo Buds Review | Better Than We Expected

all

amazon

had to do was make a bud that didn't sound like a total dud because on paper these things already make a ton of sense hey everyone I'm Caleb Denison for Digital Trends and we are of course talking about the

Amazon

echo

buds

why do they make so much sense well first of all they're priced right there right around one hundred and thirty dollars coming out and you know that's gonna drop over time and on paper they just do everything right it's not the best battery life

in the world you get about five hours a little less with the noise reduction on per charge they'll give you two hours after 15 minutes of charging the charging case will boost that up to about 20 hours total that's pretty good for 130 bucks of course there's you know who built right in always listening so if you like the voice control thing that's available so they need to be comfortable and they need to sound okay because for 130 bucks I'm not expecting audiophile sound

quality might have some surprises for you there though obviously I've been using these a while so this is not a legit unboxing but I do want to show you what it's like when you receive them a little bit of literature here and then here's the case so we've seen smaller and we've seen bigger it's kind of like right in the middle there right and then the accessories are gonna be under here we've got USB charging cable no surprise there no wireless charging on this guy

and then all of your ear tips which is kind of part of the deal with these ear

buds

is that they've got three different size of silicone ear tips as well as three different size of these wings that are supposed to help secure them in your ears a little bit

better

so let's get rid of that stuff for me I was lucky the default ear tip on these worked out perfectly for me let me pull these out so we can take a closer look and as I do there's a magnet in here so they pop right in just aim

the ear tip towards the right direction this case doesn't have a magnetic clasp it uses a little bit of a spring in the hinge can't really open it with one hand but I don't consider that a big deal and then there's your hidden little micro USB charging port so we'll set that aside focus on the

buds

now I know a lot of people are going to are these two the air pods we did and that's because of price and functionality but one thing I wanted to bring in are the Samsung

buds

right because I think they're a closer comparison for the size of the bud themselves and also for the case right so the galaxy

buds

have a much smaller case they also don't charge the

buds

for as long but the

buds

themselves also a little bit smaller than the than the

echo

buds

here right so there is definitely a size difference and that's what accounts for the battery life difference right the bigger the bud the more space for the battery the more power you're going to get so

while they are a little bit larger than the galaxy

buds

that we just saw there I never had a problem with the size of these things to set these up the idea is that you just open your Alexa app be that on your Android or iPhone open the case and they'll go into pairing mode automatically this works the same as the galaxy

buds

or even the air pods do with an iPhone now you can do without the Alexa app to some degree I mean you can always pair these manually and just play music and make manual

phone calls but to really control the

buds

you need to use the Alexa app so I do recommend getting that this is also where you're going to be able to control the active noise reduction and also the pass through amplification so if we press the ANR here we're in pass-through mode we can change that we can turn the microphones from on to off also if you want to control the EQ with these you're gonna want to do that from this app okay so let's talk a little bit about how these

ear

buds

work I've got them in right now I'm listening to music it's actually kind of distracting and hard to shoot this video right now so I'm gonna pull this out and instantly the music pauses now if I put this earbud back in it will resume here's another trick if you start listening to music with just one bud in or make a phone call with just one button that's fine it'll work that way and then if you put another bud in later it'll pause briefly sync the two and

then you'll be listening in the stereo again so you can have it either way I really like that particular functionality so in addition to that there's some touch controlled functionality here it's a little bit limited there's only two actions you can either double tap or you can long press and when you do long press it's best to really hammer that thing and then hold it for a second to execute that command you can assign those commands to pretty much anything you want the

double tap by default is going to turn on active noise reduction or turn it off and execute pass through and you can actually sort of change that pass-through sound so that it lets in just a little bit of sound or is almost like a hearing aid if you want to the long press I would assign that probably to execute google assistant or Siri because you can't do that by voice control right now on iPhone you can call up Siri no problem but you're never gonna be able to long press and get Google

assistant it's just not available on the Android phone Google assistant easy to pull up no problem but it's not gonna work via voice control once again so that's how these guys operate in you know everyday life you can customize them to do whatever you want there's a whole list of functions in the Alexa app I'll let you check that out yourself quick note about the active noise reduction technology that is from Bose it's a step below their active noise-cancelling or a and

C and Bose is kind of cagey about what the differences are they're obviously the ANC is supposed to be

better

but what I found is between the really good seal on these and that active noise reduction technology they're fantastic like these are the ones you're gonna want to take on a plane unless you want to get a a Bose or a Sennheiser then it has active noise canceling that's gonna cost you a lot more though I mean this is far

better

than just a standard pair of ear

buds

at

blocking out noise even with that really good seal in place what I found was it virtually eliminates the noises of you know trains and buses and compressors and what-have-you I can't take these out on a plane yet but I know that I would be able to hear these far

better

than a standard set of ear

buds

overall I'm totally impressed especially for the price so the only thing left to talk about at this point as far as I'm concerned is sound quality and now I gave up a little bit at the

top of the video but let me just say I'm really impressed with how good these sound they're not audiophile grade alright you can get a

better

sounding earbud the Jabra this might sound a little bit

better

I do think that the bow sound sport sound a little bit

better

but marginally so these guys are totally respectable and part of that is due to the fact that they have dual balanced armatures in there so surprising amount of bass come for these I actually wanted to turn it down when I

first got them but that's par for the course most headphones are a little bit pumped up in the bass the mid-range is very clear and the treble is also well executed although if I'm being super persnickety I'd say I'd want a little bit more attack like a slightly cleaner transient response which is surprising considering they're balanced armatures but overall these are

better

than what most people are looking for and that really shocked me considering the price 130 bucks I was

expecting something kind of ho-hum like the

echo

speakers you know but these exceeded my expectations and I think they're absolutely gonna meet or exceed the expectations of most folks which means that these are absolute category winners there's really no other earbud that wraps everything up like this I mean you've got reasonable battery life it's right in there with the competition and

better

than others in some cases you've got ipx4 sweat-resistant so they're fine if

you're gonna be super active working out or just get caught in the rain all the time the sound quality like I said excellent they're comfortable the fit is good the noise reduction is super impressive I mean you're gonna have to go to full-on noise cancelling to get any

better

altogether just a really solidly made product and at 130 bucks these things are gonna be flying off the shelves folks thanks as always for watching were you surprised by what I had to say today I know I was

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