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True wireless earbuds are a hot market with dozens of companies offering up their variation on the theme. From $20 to over $200, the range is overwhelming and the engineering is all over the place, from badly thought out designs to sleek, easy to use devices. But do they sound good?
Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ got a pair of Tribit x1 earbuds from the company at CES 2019 and spent a few days testing them out. The result: They're a delight to work with, super easy, but he found the audio quality was a bit lacking for listening to music...
Check them on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2ClYCRE
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0:00
True wireless Bluetooth earbuds? Let's check these out
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Dave Taylor here and I'm looking at these. Well let's open it up and take them out
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See and I'll take one out. These are the TriBit X1 wireless earbuds and this is their second
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generation of product and they got a lot right with the engineering this time. They're running
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Bluetooth 5.0. They have in-ear detection so when I want to pair them the very first time you just
0:34
take them out and they're in pairing mode. After you've done that every time you take them out
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they actually will now connect to each other. I'm taking both out. They'll connect to each other
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and then they'll connect to the device you have paired with. So by the time you put them in your
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ears they're ready to listen to. That's super easy to work with. Really really nice. They are
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sweat proof and they have these little tiny six millimeter drivers. So we'll get back to the sound
1:00
They come with three different sizes of ear tips and as you can see they are a very modest size
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So when you put them in your ear they almost get lost in there. I mean they don't literally get
1:11
lost in your ear but they're very small very discreet and as you can see in this close-up
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it's pretty easy for people to not even realize that you have them in. In fact I'm not sure why
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companies don't offer the skin color earbuds. If they just had like a palette of different
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human skin tones then you could get ones that match your ears and people literally wouldn't
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know that you have them in which I think would be kind of interesting. Now they have three hours on
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a charge but of course as with all of these they come with a little charge box and the charge box
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gives you five more charges which gives you about an 18 hour run time with these. And of course one
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of the challenges then is well how long do I have to charge it if it's dying to be able to listen
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more. And they've done a good job with that. So there's a fast charge and basically when you put
1:59
them in 15 minutes in the box gives you an hour of listening. So that's not bad. So that means if you
2:05
want to get the full three hours it's only 45 minutes in the box and then you got three more
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hours. And as you can see this is very easy to slip into your pocket or purse or even just hold
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it or just put it on the table or something right while you're doing something else. Now like some
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of these this does not have wireless charging but honestly you don't really need wireless charging
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There's a micro usb connection on the back. You plug it in you're good to go. The earbuds themselves
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actually have illumination and it's a little hard to see here but they light up so you can tell where
2:39
they are in the charging cycle. And let's see not much else to talk about. I can tell you that
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you can put them both in and then when you make phone calls both of them are active and actually
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phone calls sound really good. And the people on the other end I made a couple of test phone calls
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and they're like you sound really good. So that was really comfortable. They also worked really
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really well with audio books. So I will say that you know right in that middle range of human
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hearing I found them to be really good. Now one thing you can do is if you only want to have one
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you can use just the left earbud but you can't just use the right earbud. I'm not exactly sure
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what about their design requires that to be true but that's how it works. So if you're looking for
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either earbud the idea that you can like use one while you're charging the other then this only
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gets you halfway there. Actually it doesn't get you halfway there right because half the time you're
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gonna have to charge both of them the other half you'll be charging just one the one you're not using. So not super useful. So there's a lot to like about these and the price is really good too
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We'll come back to that too but let's talk about the sound. So as I said for phone calls for audio
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books these sound really good but I found and they come with multiple ear tips. I already mentioned
3:54
that. Of course it's super important for you to try out the different sizes to get the ones that
3:59
match the size and dimensions of your ear but I was a little disappointed with the sound on these
4:04
for music. I felt like there was just not a lot of richness to it. So I mean it does a reasonably
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competent job of reproducing music but in a noisy environment even a marginally noisy environment
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like a cafe I was almost unable to you know really just focus on my music. There's so much ambient
4:24
noise being let in and I found that I had to turn the volume almost all the way up on my phone
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and that is an unusual experience for me because almost always you know your phone you turn it up
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maybe halfway or two-thirds and it's nice and loud. So in a quiet environment they sound better
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obviously. There's no active noise canceling. There's not even any passive noise canceling
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which is a fancy way of saying they really fit your ears really well. So it might be my ears I
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don't know but when I was listening to music I felt like there was a lack of sort of richness
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and depth. So you know all the notes are there. You can actually enjoy your music but it's really
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sort of biased on the high end and that was after I was experimenting with the EQ settings on my
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iPhone. It doesn't have aptx, doesn't have AAC, doesn't have anything like that. It's not HD audio
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so you sort of get what you get and my you know take on these is that they've got a lot right but
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I don't think they quite nailed the sound on these. I found the other tribit that I used I think gave
5:26
me better sound than these but again that might be my personal experience. You might plug these in
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You might put these in your ear and you might say dude these sound really good. What the heck's wrong
5:36
with your hearing? I listen to a lot of headphones and earbuds. My hearing's okay. So my take is that
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there's a lot to like about these. If you're an audiobook person, if you like to listen to podcasts
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if you're on the phone a lot, these could be terrific for you. Nice battery life, very good design
5:53
super easy to work with. I love that you just take them out and boom they're paired
5:57
and I will also say that in all my experiments and walking around and being far away from my
6:02
phone and everything I never had a dropout which was great. It's very rare to have these sort of
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devices where you never have one ear disconnect while the other ear stays connected and then
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after a couple seconds the other ear comes back. So these were just solid on stereo the whole time
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That's really nice. So now the only thing I want to talk about is the price but before we get to the
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price of these I want to ask if you can subscribe to my channel. I really appreciate when you
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subscribe to my channel and if you are also using some true wireless earphones or earbuds whatever
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you want to call them, tell me in the comments what are you using and how are they working for
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you. Obviously the sort of reference standard is the Apple AirPods but don't kill me on this one
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I don't think they sound that great. They sound good. Everything else Apple got right but I don't
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think the sound is really there. So you know I'm always looking for something that has all the same
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sort of user experience but actually maybe has better sound. Unfortunately the Tribit X1 are
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not those. So they also got the experience really right but the sound again I found was a little
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lacking. So you can make up your own mind. I will say these are the Tribit X1 and if you want to
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pick up a pair they're $49.99 at amazon.com and if you do pick them up leave a comment and let me
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know how you find them and what you think of the sound. I'll be super interested in hearing that
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So with that this is Dave Taylor and I'll catch you in my next video
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you
#Music & Audio
#Music Equipment & Technology
#Audio Equipment