Very interesting day today testing out microphone quality in extreme weather conditions here in the UK.
Let's start with the model I lauded the most during the Summer
Edifier TWS NB2:
Wow. I really did get these wrong. Listening back to the summer recordings they sounded really good, by comparison the winter recording is atrocious.
Firstly, they are far better with ANC on. Noise suppression when not much is going on is good, sounds quite natural. As soon as the wind and traffic kick in your voice starts to sound a bit more muffled, not quite as bad as
@Laethageal 's recording but I can see why his sounded the way it did - my call recording sounded much more like his than my summer call.
With ANC off - wow. They were absolutely awful. Worse than any of my budget sets and exactly like
@Laethageal 's recording. Any ambient noise completely kills your voice. You don't get the loud woosh you get with some buds but it just kills everything to a muffled, muted noise. Not good.
ANC ON:
Clarity - 6/10
Affected by the environment - 6/10
Suppression - 6/10
Naturalness - 6/10
ANC OFF:
Clarity - 4/10
Affected by the environment - 3/10
Suppression - 4/10
Naturalness - 5/10
Omthing Air Free:
So I'm still in the process of reviewing these, the mic indoors is fantastic but outdoors it has virtually no suppression. Traffic completely overpowers your voice, wind fares slightly better. When there's no ambient sound your voice is extremely natural and clear. Overall pretty impressed
Clarity - 8/10
Affected by the environment - 3/10
Suppression - 3/10
Naturalness - 8/10
Alien Secret QCC010:
Great budget buds, not renowned for their microphone quality. No major surprises here, while your voice sounds clear at times it's quite robotic. Wind and traffic not only overpowers it, but the suppression has a similar affect to the Edifier with ANC off, it suppresses your voice and not much else. Still, I didn't buy them for the mic!
Clarity - 5.5/10
Affected by the environment - 3/10
Suppression - 3/10
Naturalness - 5/10
1More Colorbuds:
Still reviewing these too. Sound quality on these is really nice and refined but they don't fit my ears well. Clarity is surprisingly good for in ears, and even with traffic you could still hear my voice very clearly and very loud too, peaking at times. The sound is a touch robotic compared to the omthing, but better than most.
Clarity - 7/10
Affected by the environment - 6/10
Suppression - 6.5/10
Naturalness - 6.5/10
Boltune BT-BH024:
Never cease to amaze me. For £21 or whatever they were, the mic is surprisingly very good. Clarity is decent but a little inconsistent - moving them around changed the dynamics, there is virtually no high end suppression despite claiming CVC8.0 so rather than traffic flying past instead you hear the puddles splashing where the traffic flew past. These were tested on a main open road with probably the worst conditions and yet they performed better than some of the more expensive buds. Voice sounded much more natural than some of the others.
Clarity - 8/10
Affected by the environment - 6/10
Suppression - 6/10
Naturalness - 7/10
FIIL T1 Pro:
Love these earbuds and their microphone actually performs better outdoors than I expected. MAF GUAM or whatever it is sounded very clear, a little robotic but your voice separates from the wind and traffic well. Without MAF guam your voice sounds natural but the traffic is very compressed and sounds robotic. Your voice still overcomes the conditions. With ANC on it sounds a little more robotic, still fairly natural. A skoda flew past me at around 40mph and you can't hear it. It suppresses worse than with MAF selected.
Clarity - 7/10
Affected by the environment - 7/10
Suppression - 8/10
Naturalness - 6/10
Tronsmart Apollo Bold:
I wasn't that impressed during the summer. At the park they over suppressed kids playing and other high frequencies and made me sound like I was talking through a sponge. Different story today - clarity and naturalness are pretty good, I was at a train station when I tested them and you couldn't really hear the train or cars going past to it did a great job suppressing, but at times you couldn't hear me through the suppression, which I expected. They performed better with ANC on, contrary to my first test during the summer.
ANC ON:
Clarity - 7/10
Affected by the environment - 8/10
Suppression - 8/10
Naturalness - 6/10
ANC OFF:
Clarity - 7/10
Affected by the environment - 7/10
Suppression - 7/10
Naturalness - 6/10
Whizzer E3:
Haha. I love these earbuds but my god the mic is bad. Even without any background noise I sounded a long way from the mic and very robotic. I was undercover at this point and just sounded really over suppressed and not natural. Wind and other conditions weren't obvious but still, definitely not an option for the daily commute.
Clarity - 4/10
Affected by the environment - 6/10
Suppression - 6/10
Naturalness - 4/10
Summary
Well, it surprised me. The FIIL T1 Pro and Tronsmart Apollo Bold showed their premium quality by outperforming the rest. Just behind them, the Boltune BT-BH024 never cease to amaze me. Such a bargain! The Omthing also surprised me, they aren't for those who live in rainy countries but without too much ambient noise they are natural sounding and clear. Next, the 1More Colorbuds and Edifier TWS NB2, the latter being the best I tested during the summer, struggle with the conditions a little. The former just amplifies your voice 'in the red', which is acceptable given the high quality audio. The Edifier on the other hand just over compresses everything as soon as the scene gets complex. I noticed as soon as I got to the post office to change phones, the Edifiers performed really well. This suggests overcompression.
The Alien Secret and Whizzer E3 should not be considered for commuters.
League Table from todays test:
Joint 1st - FIIL T1 Pro and Tronsmart Apollo Bold - both decent performers regardless of weather conditions
2nd - Boltune BT-BH024. Surprisingly great performers at a budget price.
3rd - 1More Omthing Airfree - Clear and natural, but fair weather performers
4th - Edifier TWS NB2 - Fair weather performers that over-suppress in complex scenes
5th - 1More Colorbuds - Overall pretty decent all-rounders but peaking your voice so it's louder than the other loud stuff is not really going to do your hearing much good
Now, bear in mind I've tried the Airpods Pro and Galaxy Buds Plus, none of them compete with either model. They are way short in fact. But they are also a fraction of the price.
really comfortable, great sound, just a fantastic tws for the price"
Not worth the $10 to me unless there was more improvement. Nice to see they upped the specs on it. They should have since they got way more than enough. 10X the $12,000+ they wanted so they should offer some improvements. That is the only good thing about Kickstarter...if they way overshoot what they budgeted for they can then choose to upgrade the product since they know that more $$$ will be there for it. Still be nice if the premium had a cool color scheme or something else extra.
