****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
Having used the Sony XM4 buds, and phones, regularly, and the Jabra 85t Elite buds, I can say that the noise cancelling on these, at least for me, is as good as or better than all of them.This was my main reason for buying the Technics, good ANC and decent sound.Although you can, as expected, adjust the amount of noise cancelling done, you can also optimise the noise cancelling itself for any situation with a simple slider in the technics app.Initially I thought you would just optimise it and it would work best at that setting in all environments. As a person who uses a lot of buses I set this to cancel out as much noise as possible and thought that was done. And it was.A few days later I noticed I could hear the bus a bit more. I then realised that the slider adjusts the noise cancelling to somehow cut out different frequencies, so if you find yourself on a bus with a constant engine whine or chatty passengers you can just adjust the slider until those sounds are less obvious.I still leave bit mostly on one set position but every now and again I adjust it as needed. This feature is brilliant and allows you to fine tune the noise cancelling easily, and quickly, if required.Ldac on these is great but in a busy environment, like a city centre, you'll get noticeable dropouts even at 606 kbps. You can however minimise these dropouts by turning off location on your android phone.I don't know why that works, and its not the technics fault, but it does help. I haven't got these to play ldac at the highest setting of 906 kbps without a lot of cutting out in city centres (although the highest bitrate can play flawlessly at home) but to be fair my xm4 headphones have the same problem.These do hurt your ears at first, or at least they did with mine, after a few days they hurt less. I've used these for months now and they are much more comfortable although you will notice they are in your ears, some people may prefer to have buds that you can fit and forget they are in but I quite like the fact that they wedge in and stay there even though you do notice they are there.Music sounds very good on these with Ldac at 606 kbps, they do also offer multipoint connection to multiple devices but I don't use that feature as it disables ldac audio streaming and having used ldac streaming on other buds and headphones I prefer it for audio quality. You can hear the improvement using ldac and so I just don't use the multipoint feature.They do sound good on AAC or even SBC though, they just sound better with ldac. So if you can't use ldac don't be put off of considering the technics.Battery life isn't great with ldac and anc enabled, I have only used these for two and a half hours at a time and they still have about fifty percent battery left then, so for me its not a problem, and the case charges them quite quickly.I like that you don't have to worry about which earbud you put in or take out first if you do want to use just one, they just work. You don't have to use a pre designated earbud, I have used other well known brands that have a similar price yet require setting one of the earbuds as the only one you can use in single bud mode. Technics have this working well, no need to set one or the other, just use which ever bud you want. I use both but have tried one bud at a time to see how well it works.The charging case is not wireless, its not a problem as it charges quickly via a USB c cable but if you only want a wireless charging case then you won't want these.Although only IPX4 rated they are definitely waterproof as I have used them in heavy rain with no hood a few times for a good fourty minutes at a time and they still work as well as they did when first bought, they feel well made and sturdy and connect very quickly although I would like to know where you can replacement ear tips from or foam ones, although these do a good job.They update with new firmware quickly, I had an update to install the first time I used them and was expecting it to take quite a while as the Sony buds do, but it literally took a few minutes and that included the downloading part. Maybe technics just issued a small update, in which case other updates might take longer, or maybe they are able to do firmware updates in a more efficient way.The comparisons to Sony's xm4 buds aren't meant to disparage those buds. I loved the Sony's until one bud stopped working a month in and I was told that I had to send them back and Sony would see if they could be fixed under warranty but if not I would have to pay for repairs....and they wouldn't know until they received them. That is shoddy for a product that is a month old and I hadn't bought those on amazon so couldn't return them.Needless to say amazon do have a return policy so buying on amazon should negate that issue if it did happen with the technics. The Sony's were always problematic though, unlike their headphones version.So, these sound greatusing ldac and lossless audio files such as Amazon's ultra HD music, the noise cancelling is up there with the best and they are well made. They also come with a lot of different size earbud tips so should fit any size ears.
