Samsung Gear Icon X (2018)
This year’s Gear Icon X improves on virtually every aspect without hiking up the price. The earbuds are slightly more compact now, and with a narrower case that takes up less space. It also has battery charging indicators for both earbuds and a separate Bluetooth pairing button so you can initiate pairing even before you take the earbuds out.
As with the previous version, the earbuds will automatically pair to your device the instant you open the carrying case after the rst pairing, so you’ll have to take care to ensure that the case is kept closed during transit. Thankfully though, the earbuds now come with a quick charging feature so just a 10-minute charge gives an hour of playback. There aren’t official figures for how much battery life the case provides, but we’d say it gives at least three more full charges, giving you about 20 hours of playback on the go.
Gone is the onboard heart rate sensor, but in return you get up to five hours of playback via streaming from a media device, and up to seven hours of playback using the internal media player. The 2018 version again comes with 3.4GB of internal storage, and this time they’ve xed the streaming capabilities so music sounds just as good whether it’s sent over from your phone or read from the internal memory. Like some of the other earbuds in this shootout, the Gear Icon X also o ers a Voice Focus feature that feeds external noise in so you can hear what’s going on without having to tune down your music.
Needless to say audio performance is also much improved compared to the previous version. Gone is the excessively bright sound signature, and in its place is a more balanced one that has good energy and a somewhat mellow bass. The earbuds managed to o er up an enjoyable rendition of Rebecca Pidgeon’s Spanish Harlem, reproducing the piano and shakers with a good amount of detail while still keep Pidgeon’s vocals the centerpiece of the track. A recording of Paradise City by Guns N’ Roses further showed o the earbuds’ ability to rock, but also revealed a tendency for the mids to be slightly bloated.