IQ tax high incidence area! Don't choose true wireless earphones randomly, even the quality of the same price can vary a lot

Since the iPhone removed the headphone jack in 2016, "headphones" have gradually evolved from a niche professional audio device to a mass consumer product. According to IDC data, China's wireless headphone market shipments reached 42.56 million units in the first half of 2020, a year-on-year increase of 24%. Among them, true wireless headphones accounted for 64%, and shipments increased by 49% year-on-year.

However, behind the booming true wireless headset market, unscrupulous manufacturers have also figured out the fact that most consumers do not understand headset products and headset technology, and have launched a large number of products to take advantage of the situation in order to profit.

During the Double 11 promotion season, consumers do not want to buy a subpar true wireless headset. Today, Dianke will combine the product characteristics of different true wireless headset price segments to objectively and comprehensively recommend several true wireless headset products suitable for different groups of people.

The 100-yuan price segment is gradually becoming standardized

Since the products in this price range are mainly sold in large quantities, most of the products, except for a few old flagships, are the result of the manufacturer's strategy of sinking to seize the market. Unlike the previous few years when most of the 100-yuan headphone market was controlled by copycat manufacturers, with the continuous entry of first-line Internet brands, products in this price range have also begun to appear and gradually established a sound product concept.

Xiaodu True Wireless Smart Earphones

As Baidu goes deeper and deeper into the fields of smart speakers and AI, Xiaodu gradually discovered that headphones are also an important entry point in consumers' daily lives. Based on this motivation to seize the entry point, Xiaodu launched true wireless smart headphones.

Although the main feature is intelligence, the core configuration of Xiaodu True Wireless Smart Earphones is not weak. According to Baidu, Xiaodu True Wireless Smart Earphones uses a 13mm unit, which makes the sound quality of Xiaodu True Wireless Smart Earphones not have the cheap feeling common in ordinary 100-yuan phones.

On this basis, the most surprising thing about Xiaodu True Wireless Smart Earphones is that they support simultaneous interpretation and voice assistant. For example, when we go abroad and don’t speak the language, we only need to give one of the earphones to the other party to achieve barrier-free simultaneous interpretation.

However, perhaps because of the need to complete operations such as reception and calculation, the earphone handle of Xiaodu True Wireless Smart Earphones is longer than that of traditional true wireless earphones, which may not be very friendly to girls with small faces.

Beats X

Unlike mobile phones and computers, which do not have large-scale computing power upgrades within a cycle, the product cycle of Bluetooth headsets is often two to three years. Correspondingly, waiting for the price of old flagships to drop to the 100-yuan price range is actually a good choice. For example, when Beats X was first released, it was priced at nearly 1,000 yuan, but on Double Eleven in 2020, the price dropped to around 300 yuan.

Although it is a product from three years ago, thanks to Apple's ultimate design concept, the simple appearance of Beats X does not look outdated even in the flagship headphone market in 2020.

In terms of configuration, since Beats X is equipped with Apple's revolutionary W1 chip, it can have closer connectivity with Apple devices, and due to the low power consumption of the W1 chip, it also has a maximum playback time of 8 hours.

However, because it is a three-year-old product, Beats X is indeed a bit outdated in terms of sound quality. For example, it only supports Bluetooth 4.2, and does not support APTX, LDAC, NFC and other long-standing connection standards, which greatly weakens the sound quality of Beats X.

Therefore, at this point in 2020, Beats X is more suitable for consumers who use Apple devices and value the convenience of connection and the simple appearance of the product, but not for users who pursue sound quality.

Xiaomi True Wireless Earphones Air 2S

Consumers familiar with Xiaomi know that Xiaomi's tried-and-tested product strategy is "high cost-performance". Although Xiaomi has gradually handed over the task of high cost-performance to Redmi in recent years, we still see this familiar atmosphere of Xiaomi on the Xiaomi Air2S, a 100-yuan headset.

Unlike most earphones priced at RMB 100 that only promote the "true wireless" feature, Xiaomi has ensured the sound quality and latency of Xiaomi Air 2S by stacking materials.

From the configuration point of view, Xiaomi Air 2S is equipped with a 14.2mm large unit, which can bring stronger thrust to the mid- and low-frequency sounds. In addition, Xiaomi Air 2S has also optimized LHDC Bluetooth decoding for MIUI, reducing the delay to 80 milliseconds, which also makes Xiaomi Air 2S a rare product in the 100-yuan headset market that can cope with gaming scenarios that require low latency.

Unfortunately, due to cost constraints, the Xiaomi Air 2S lacks the active noise reduction function compared to the first generation. In addition, it adopts a semi-in-ear design, which makes it almost difficult to hear the music in a noisy environment. This product defect is especially worth noting for consumers who frequently go in and out of noisy environments.

The price of 1,000 yuan can meet the noise reduction needs

Many people must be curious about why most of the 100-yuan true wireless headphones do not support noise reduction? In fact, it is not that manufacturers do not want to support it, but cost constraints. Now, in the 1,000-yuan price range, noise reduction has become a standard feature of true wireless headphones.

Freebuds Pro

After several generations of slow updates, Huawei suddenly launched an active noise-cancelling headset product called Freebuds Pro in September this year.

According to Huawei, Freebuds Pro has a noise reduction effect of up to 40dB, which is comparable to flagship headphone products. In addition, with the support of Huawei's "1+8+N" strategy, Freebuds Pro also supports seamless switching of dual devices in the Huawei ecosystem, greatly improving the usage efficiency of Huawei users.

However, perhaps because of its focus on enhancing noise reduction capabilities, Freebuds Pro will produce loud wind noise when encountering strong winds. For a pair of wireless headphones, this is really a problem that should not occur.

But overall, as one of the few headphones in the Android field that can compete with flagship products in terms of noise reduction, and also takes into account multi-device interconnection, Freebuds Pro is actually very suitable for users in the "Huawei ecosystem".

OPPO Enco X

As a manufacturer that came from the MP3 era, OPPO obviously has a certain belief in sound quality, and on OPPO Enco X, we also see OPPO's pursuit of sound quality.

According to OPPO, OPPO Enco X is jointly created and tuned by OPPO and HiFi brand Dynaudio, and Enco X also supports Bluetooth 5.2 and LHDC wireless transmission. It has good resolution in the mid-to-high frequency sound field that is difficult for true wireless headphones to achieve.

In addition, OPPO Enco X also supports noise reduction as expected, but judging from the reviews, the noise reduction effect of OPPO Enco X is not much different from that of the lower-priced OPPO Enco W51. This actually shows that the product focus of OPPO Enco X is almost entirely on "sound quality".

The biggest drawback of OPPO Enco X is not the poor noise reduction effect, but its appearance is very similar to AirPods Pro. Many netizens said that at a distance, the white OPPO Enco X they were wearing was mistaken for AirPods Pro.

Galaxy Buds Live

Although Samsung mobile phones have disappeared from the Chinese market in recent years, since earphones are only accessory products, this does not prevent us from purchasing Samsung earphones.

In fact, as early as the Note 8 era, Samsung launched the Galaxy series of true wireless earphones products. After several years of hard work, Samsung's Galaxy Buds has taken its own path in terms of appearance and function.

According to UL certification data, Samsung Galaxy Buds Live can reduce up to 97% of frequency band background noise, with excellent noise reduction effect.

In addition, in order to take into account portability and long-term wear, the appearance of Samsung Galaxy Buds Live is not limited to tradition, but is made into a "broad bean" shape. When worn, the entire body is inside the outer ear, which increases the integrity. However, this feature of close connection with the outer ear also brings a problem, that is, turning on the noise reduction function will create a sense of pressure on the inner ear, affecting the comfort of long-term use.

On the other hand, due to the size limitation of the body, the speaker of Galaxy Buds Live is only 12nm. Therefore, in high-frequency sound scenarios, Galaxy Buds Live is prone to insufficient thrust.

A "both" product priced at 2,000 yuan

Different from "heavyweight" products such as smartphones and PCs, the 2,000 yuan price range has become the high-end price range for true wireless headphones due to their limited product functions and auxiliary positioning. This price range of products can often bring an ultimate experience, but the quality of the manufacturer's technology also determines that different products have different experience advantages.

AirPods Pro

After experiencing the market weakness caused by the second-generation toothpaste-like update, AirPods Pro made up for the shortcomings of noise reduction and once again became the darling of the market. IDC previously released a data report predicting that by the end of 2020, the sales of AirPods Pro will exceed those of AirPods.

Admittedly, the success of AirPods Pro is closely related to its advantages in portability, noise reduction, latency, etc., but what cannot be ignored is that AirPods Pro also continues the tradition of Apple headphones having less than ideal sound quality.

When listening to music, AirPods Pro cannot display the mid- and high-frequency sounds very well. Therefore, using it to listen to music will give you a dull and soft listening experience.

Considering that AirPods Pro is priced at 2,000 yuan, the listening experience is not even as good as the thousand-yuan-level headphone products we mentioned above, which will obviously discourage some consumers.

Sony WF-1000XM3

After the breakthrough of AirPods Pro, Sony gradually found the technical positioning of its "noise cancelling beans" products based on its own technological advantages.

Compared with its competitors in the same class, the biggest advantage of WF-1000XM3 is its better sound quality. According to Sony, WF-1000XM3 has a built-in 6nm driver unit and supports DSEE HX digital sound enhancement engine, which can more accurately control the sibilance of high-frequency fragments and widen the mid-frequency sound, enhancing the three-dimensional sense of the entire sound field.

However, compared with AirPods Pro, the WF-1000XM3's inherent "straight male" thinking also brings some inherent disadvantages to the latter.

First of all, when wearing the WF-1000XM3, the entire body of the XM3 is hung outside the ear, which makes it feel unreliable. And because the WF-1000XM3 uses a shark fin design, long-term wearing will also cause swelling and pain due to pressure on the outer ear.

In addition, since the touch area of ​​​​the WF-1000XM3 only supports lightweight interaction, the App takes on most of the interactive tasks. However, Sony's noise reduction App cannot be kept in the background for a long time, which weakens the interactive experience of the WF-1000XM3.

BOSE QC EarBuds

After seeing Apple and Sony swallow up the true wireless noise-cancelling headphone market, BOSE, as the pioneer of noise-cancelling headphones, finally brought us the true wireless noise-cancelling headphone product BOSE QC EarBuds in 2020.

According to the tests of authoritative organizations, BOSE QC EarBuds fully leverages BOSE's technological accumulation in the field of noise reduction and surpasses AirPods Pro.

However, similar to AirPods Pro, BOSE QC EarBuds also loses in BOSE's long-standing weakness - sound quality. According to actual experience, BOSE QC EarBuds can hardly show the details of the sound only at the bass level.

In addition, since BOSE does not have mobile phone products, it is difficult to optimize the latency for a certain type of product. When playing games, the high latency of BOSE QC EarBuds will also be exposed.

Summarize

In general, although the true wireless headset market is complicated, from a cost perspective, we can still clearly feel that products in different price ranges have different product focuses.

In the hundred-yuan price range, there are almost no noise reduction products due to cost constraints, but under the strategy of manufacturers occupying the entrance, we can find smart and "cost-effective" products.

When the price reaches RMB 1,000, noise reduction becomes popular, but the noise reduction effects of different products are also different. For example, the product orientation of OPPO Enco X is to ensure the noise reduction function while trying to meet consumers' pursuit of sound quality.

In the 2,000 yuan price range, although the noise reduction performance of different products is similar, the manufacturer's product genes also influence the advantages and disadvantages of the products.

Therefore, when consumers choose true wireless headphones, the most important thing is to clarify their own needs and the main products they use. Only by using these two aspects as a guide and combining them with their own subjective preferences can they find the product that suits them best.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.