B&O Play E8
Stylish and elegant, the Beoplay E8 are Bang & Olufsen’s first entry into the realm of truly wireless earbuds, and they certainly live up to the B&O branding in terms of delivering that “premium” feel. Both earbuds have to be paired to each other before pairing with your player, but this doesn’t always work smoothly, requiring a restart in some cases.
On that note, the touch controls really take some getting used to, as there’s no way to disable any of them. The app only helps to maintain rmware updates and switch your transparency settings.
These settings let you adjust the amount of ambient sound you hear, but they seem to do so at the expense of your audio. The E8 is said to use NFRMI (Near Field Magnetic Induction) for better audio quality and greater connectivity. This held through in terms of sync between earbuds, but the left earbud would randomly drop out for split seconds so connectivity still isn’t best. Battery life is rated at four hours on a single charge while the carrying case gets you another two full charges, so you get 12 hours of play time on the road.
In terms of audio, we thought the E8 truly did serve up quality befitting of the higher price tag, with one of the most robust sounds we’ve heard out of true wireless earbuds thus far. It manages to produce pretty full sound, with a decent amount of bass to boot. This is a little on the dry side though, but there’s enough kick when the piece calls for it.
For example, on a recording of Diana Krall’s Temptation from her The Girl in The Other Room album, you can easily feel the bass guitar. It also shows good imaging capabilities here too, as you get a sense of being in a bar setting with bass and lead guitar to your left, Krall slightly o center at the piano, and the drums to the right. Safe to say, the earbuds work with instrumentals, but regular pop pieces are served up well too, though rock pieces that call for more bass like the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Californication might leave you a little wanting. Still, among the true wireless earbuds we’ve tested, these are easily one of the best we’ve heard thus far.
Great sound for true wireless earbuds. Premium nish.
Can’t switch Transparency modes without using the app.