Creating a profile takes a minute or two and is completely automatic. Once you’ve made it, you’ll be able to hear a striking difference between vanilla audio and that which has been adapted.

Features

While not submergible, the NuraLoop is rated at IPX3, so it’ll certainly survive inclement weather and is a good companion when sweating it up. It ships with a nifty neoprene case that is nice and compact, although it gets a bit tight if you try packing in both the cables along with the unit itself.

The cables in question allow you to connect to a USB port for topping up the impressive 16-hour battery, or a 3.5mm headphone port if you’d like to use your NuraLoop plugged in. These both attach magnetically via a proprietary connection in the centre of the neckband, meaning that the headphone cable runs down your back.

While certainly not typical for consumer headphones, this design is standard for musicians using in-ear monitors when performing live (a market Nura caters to excellently), and considering how rare the ability to run audio to wireless in-ears via a cable is, any complaint on this design decision is moot.

The NuraLoop’s user interface consists of two large, capacitive buttons that you can interact with by either tapping or ‘dialling’ up or down. We found ourselves accidentally activating these when adjusting the fit of the ‘buds fairly often, but more on this later.

This latter control method calls for you to circle your finger around the edge of the button to turn up or down levels of certain features such as volume or ANC.

We found ourselves not using these dials too often as we preferred more precise control over each of the settings, but having the option there is nice.

A more useful implementation of the dial, in our opinion, would be to use it for transport controls (skipping tracks forward and back), so hopefully that can be implemented in the future.

Speaking with Nura CEO and co-founder Dr. Dragan Petrovic, we learned that the firmware updates that added ANC and social modes to the original Nuraphone were implemented due to customer feedback, and that the company will be taking much the same ongoing development approach with the NuraLoop.

With that in mind, we don’t expect any of our minor gripes about the UI to be long-lasting – regarding the issue of accidentally activating the capacitive buttons, there’s already talk of a ‘safe mode’ that would temporarily disable them at will – useful during a workout session, for instance.

Performance

Before even listening to your NuraLoop, you’ll need to download and set up the app, but it’s well worth it. Nura’s flagship trick (one that’s been imitated plenty, but never matched) is its adaptive hearing profiles, which adjust the frequency response of audio to better suit the frequency sensitivities of your actual ears.

Take a look at Nura’s website for a more detailed explanation of the fascinating science behind it, but for simplicity’s sake, all you need to know is that it’s very easy and works spectacularly.

Creating a profile takes a minute or two and is completely automatic. Once you’ve made it, you’ll be able to hear a striking difference between vanilla audio