Mobvoi Ticpods Free

Earbuds leave you unwired for sound

Free as a bud

Despite scepticism about their high price and chopped-off design, Apple’s Airpods – wireless earbuds for iphones, which can also be used with Android devices – have proved popular. A more advanced version is reportedly on the way, but in the meantime competitors are emerging. Mobvoi’s Ticpods Free, created after a £2m crowdfunded campaign, share the Airpods’ bud-plus-spike format and similarly come with a charging case (pictured below) that extends their battery life by up to four hours to a day. They come in white, orange-red or navy blue.

Unlike Google’s Pixel Buds (£159 from www.snipca.com/27488, see our review, Issue 526), these are completely wireless units, with no cable between the two – hence why they’re called ‘Free’. They’ll pair with almost any Bluetooth device, including Android and Apple phones, after which reconnection is automatic.

We had very few dropouts in the sound. Removing either bud from your ear will pause input, but when you don’t want to use both, you can slot one back into the case and tap the other to resume playing. There’s no option to route external sounds into your ear, so when you need to listen to the world around you you’ll have to take one or both buds out.

At first glance the Ticpods’ tips look similarly shaped to Apple’s, but while the Airpods sit loosely in your outer ear and just point the audio into your ear canal, the Ticpods have more conventional earpieces at the end that stick fully into your ear. Whether this is better or worse depends on personal preference, but overall the units are a bit bulkier. Small and large silicone tips are supplied. The broad ‘tails’ have touch controls, letting you pause, skip and adjust volume, a feature Airpods so far lack. You can also press to activate Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri on your phone.

Airpods provide good but not exceptional sound quality, and it’s a similar story here. We found the built-in mic a little quiet on phone calls. The earbuds have more bass than Apple’s, but high frequencies in music, such as cymbals, get hissy. Speech sounded fine. We’ll soon be testing RHA’S Trueconnect wireless earbuds (£142 from Amazon www.snipca.com/30546), which promise more refined audio, but the Ticpods are unlikely to disappoint.

Cable-free, in-ear buds offer more control for audio on the go