Buds punch well above their weight
Wireless, noise cancelling… and Irish, too!
OneSonic MXS-HD1 noise cancelling earbuds From €130 ★★★★★
There are lots of home-grown Irish tech companies, but we don’t have many hardware makers who have stepped on to the global stage. I was delighted so to see Irish audio firm OneSonic launching a pair of noise-cancelling wireless earbuds with a mid-market price.
In the box are the MXSHD1 buds, a compact and sturdy looking storage and charging case, and a USB charging cable, which thankfully is Type-C.
Charging cases are now the standard for earbuds an they’re incredibly useful. You can store your headphones securely, and safely. Also, they act as the charging point.
This case will give you up to 20 hours of battery life, meaning you don’t need to worry about getting to a mains if you’re on the road, or out for a day or two.
Setting them up is as straightforward as any Bluetooth device, and they should pair instantly with iOS and Android phones.
Also in the box are additional silicone tips, of different sizes, which are designed to help you get a better, firmer fit.
If you want to immerse yourself in your music, or you want to get the best out of the noise-cancelling feature, you need to ensure the headphones are as snug as possible.
I ended up using tips of two different sizes and, after a bit of ear wiggling, had a firm fit, and they stayed in place even while I was running.
Despite the mid-range price tag, these are well equipped earbuds and they have 7nm dynamic drivers and battery life on one charge is around five hours.
I listen to music mostly as I run, and Nina Simone’s Sinnerman is both a great running song and headphone test tune.
With the active noise cancellation on, even with background traffic, the opening piano notes of nerman were there, along with the subtle drums.
A few minutes in to the track, the vocals become testing, and the OneSonic coped well. They also dealt well with punchy finale, where drum, guitar, piano and vocals build to a testing crescendo.
Notable were the guitar and vocals, which remained pretty well separated and crisp.
In the evenings, I listen to a lot of radio, podcasts or Audible. I’m careful to not have anything too loud, particularly on in-ear headphones like these, and volume adjustment is easy here.
A single tap on the left or right bud will adjust volume up or down, and there’s a good range of adjustments accessible via touch.
A double tap will play or pause, or if you have a phone call in progress you can answer or end it using the same controls.
Holding the left bud for two seconds gets you access to Siri or Google Assistant and triple tapping a bud either moves forward or back a track.
That’s convenient, and while its easy to have a tap too many or few now and again, it works well particularly if exercising or popping in to a coffee shop or the likes.
The active noise cancellation is also activated by holding the right bud, and it will be noticeable immediately if you turn it on.
It works pretty well, and I use it even when indoors to remove ambient household noise.
The noise-cancelling effect may not match that offered by Sony
TWO SIZES AND A BIT OF EAR WIGGLING GAVE ME A FIRM FIT
DELIVER A LOT MORE THAN THEIR PRICE TAG SUGGESTS
or Bose, but at this price it does a decent job.
There’s a couple of things OneSonic could do to improve the overall performance though. The addition of an accompanying app could open-up the ability to customise the listening experience a bit more, perhaps even adding a set-up ‘listening test’.
Also, I would like to see wearing detection so when I take a bud out, music pauses.
However, overall, these earbuds deliver a lot more than their pricetag suggests they should.
You get nice, clean, punchy music and an excellent audiobook experience.
Calls are good, at both ends and the touch controls are wonderfully responsive.
Sennheiser offers excellent audiophile earbuds for around €300, and JBL has excellent entry-level buds for under €50.
In the busy mid-range though, the MXS-HD1 buds from Dublin-based OneSonic are star performers.