Sound advice on buds
We put Amazon and Apple to the test.
In the battle of the buds, our “taste test” was striking.
A friend and I both compared listening to the Foo Fighters “Learn to Fly” on Amazon’s new Echo Buds and the product it aims to emulate, what Apple calls the best-selling headphone “in the world,” the AirPods.
The Amazon product “sounded tinnier,” said Jan Schreiber, a Laguna Beach, California-based photographer.
And I agreed. The AirPods had richer bass and a fuller sound. We switched to other songs, and the verdict didn’t change.
But it doesn’t really matter. Amazon wins on affordability and versatility.
The Buds, which begin shipping Wednesday, sell for $129, that’s $30 less than the starting price of the AirPods and nearly half the cost of Apple’s new $250 AirPod Pro models, which also are being released Wednesday.
The new AirPod Pros tout better sound, a new design and noise cancellation. The Buds are all about Alexa and putting the Amazon voice assistant in your ear – for a lower price.
And the audio difference? The average consumer won’t care.
Price will play a big factor for people looking to add Bluetooth earbuds to their collection. And as a potential holiday gift that could see the usual Amazon practice of deep holiday discounts, Mom and dad aren’t going to do audio tests before they click the Buy button.
And the bottom line is this: When you’re not comparing the Buds to the Pods, and just grooving to music in your ears, the Amazon product sounds just fine. Rather good, in fact.
What we like:
❚ Price. Affordable and competitive. ❚ The Buds stay in the ear pretty well, even when you’re jogging.
❚ Bose active noise cancellation can help shield you from unwanted sounds.
What we don’t like:
❚ Making phone calls with voice commands isn’t as easy as Amazon would like you to believe. You often are sent to the Alexa smartphone app for fine-tuning. ❚ Unlike the AirPods, which answer only to Siri, with the Buds you have the choice of going with Alexa, Siri or the Google Assistant. But that’s spotty, too.
❚ Voice commands for music only works with select partners – Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio and TuneIn, as well as Amazon Music. So if you’re a fan of YouTube Music or Apple Music, that could be an issue.
Setup
You start using the Buds rather painlessly by pairing them via Bluetooth, in your phone settings, and adding them as a device in your Alexa smartphone app.
From there on, phone calls, music and podcast playback comes through the Buds, and not your phone speaker.
The bonus is that you can use Alexa to guide you. But in the case of the music partners Amazon isn’t working with, you can still use your fingers to access music manually.
Triple assistants
Amazon says you can use whatever voice assistant you like by holding down on a bud and waiting for a chime. You then ask the question to the assistant of your choice.
In theory.
I did successfully ask a question to the Google Assistant. Siri said it was having “communication problems” and couldn’t connect. It never did.
For battery life, Amazon promises five hours of music and four hours of talk time. I didn’t do a battery test, just listened to a bunch of music, made the call to muy colleague Ed Baig and noticed that battery life had fallen to the 40% level.
I put the Buds back into the charged case – without plugging them into electricity, left them there for 15 minutes, and got them up to 97%. So consider me impressed.
Amazon promises different gestures to learn for voice operation, such as double tapping a bad when the phone rings to accept a call, or holding down on one bud and waiting for a chime to switch voice assistant. There’s a lot for consumers to learn.
My hunch is most will primarily use these for listening to music and podcasts and talking on the phone. And at $129 and probably less, the Ear Buds makes a fine, more affordable competitor to the AirPods. So what if they don’t sound as good? I don’t care. And I’m guessing you won’t either.