I love the balance between fully occlusive and the old style - Neville Strick review
April 22
Neville is an avid biker and uses his Gen2 Earshots on the bike but also for doing work around his lifestyle block. See what he had to say below.
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Hi James
I have used the headphones as much as possible
- The comfort is excellent and the smaller "footprint" great. Definite upgrade. Importantly, they fit inside my earmuffs when using power tools in the garden. The old ones do just fit but a bit snug.
- The buttons I think you noted are poor - frankly on the test set they are horrid. ie the hardware is difficult to push, The location is perfect and identifying the buttons is easy. I LOVE the fact that left and right are the same. I hate headphones where I have too much to remember regarding buttons left and right etc. I would prefer (I think) tonal feedback for all button pushes including vol up/down and pause - ie the short push option to KNOW that I have pushed the button. Maybe others would disagree.
- Pairing was a breeze.
- Fitting was easy. I love the balance between fully occlusive and the old style. They do still let in traffic noise but wind noise is reduced. They also don't shove in the ear canal so far that wax is an issue - The airpod/regular inside canal ones are terrible for being in too deep for my preference
- As per my old earshot not a single slip or issue with "staying put" and no discomfort after wearing for ages
- On my prototype the left headphone gave 90-120 playback - I suspect the battery is munted. The right was at 38% on my phone after a 2 hour ride. I can ride 120km with no issues on the old ones - I hope this will remain the target. (EARSHOTS NOTE: Yes, the current prototypes had additional battery drain issues which we have fixed in the next builds)
- Charging - I assume the lights will stay on when charging and go off when charged on the production model so that the user knows where they are att. (EARSHOTS NOTE: We will release the new charge case charge light functionality in the next few weeks, but yes, you will know exactly where charge levels are for both the earbuds and charge case)
- Is there a place for a setting that allows a mx charge of 80% for the case and headphones? ie similar to iphone and samsung phone to protect the battery? Maybe a long long button press? (EARSHOTS NOTE: Battery protection is done on the electronics itself. The processor of both the earbuds and charge case has battery protection hard coded into it)
- When charge is low it simply says powering off and then gone. Is there a place for a message that at 25% or similar to warn users getting low... not sure if it is a good idea or worth it...
- Audio quality was good. Better? Probably but tbh not sure if it was a huge difference for me. Yes better but I use the old one repeatedly after the new ones (battery issues) and did not put them on and think that is WAAAY worse now. Others have said it is very good and improved and I agree.