Price = $47 NZD delivered from Amazon AU. I bought these for myself, this isn’t a paid/sponsored review.
Top Line info: 4/5. Great sound and controls for the money. Basic waterproofing.
Look elsewhere if you want stronger brand appeal.
A review.
Who the hell are Soundpeats? Don’t worry, I asked exactly the same thing when I was browsing for a set of wireless earbuds on Amazon and stumbled across the brand. With a plethora of very similarly titled products and encouragingly positive review scores across the range I dug a little deeper: Soundpeats was founded in 2010, grew in the Asian market through to 2015 and then launched into Europe. Since then Soundpeats have diversified the product line and got into major online retailers like Amazon. I actually ordered this set with my own money through Amazon.com.au so no paid review shenanigans here.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS:
You get a plain black box about 100x100x40mm in a branded sleeve. In that box you get the earbuds, the charging/storage box, a 12 inch USB 2.0 to C cable for charging, a slim manual, 3 pairs of silicone ear tips in differing sizes, some marketing bumph with some QR codes to take you to the website and that’s about it. It’s neat and tidy and does the job. Personally, I’m fine with that since the packaging will either get thrown away or live in a drawer, and by using cardboard and stiff paper for most of the packaging the waste is kept reasonably low and there’s also something to be said for printed boxes and jazzy foam cutouts adding expense to the finished product and sitting in a landfill for centuries. Basic functionality keeps costs low at the sacrifice of bling appeal.
Opening up the egg shaped storage case activates the earbuds and turns them on automatically. If you’ve synced your phone with the earbuds previously, opening the case re-establishes that connection and they’re ready to go a couple of second’s delay. No reconnecting anew every time. Nice. You get a robotic voice saying “connected” in both earbuds just to let you know.
The storage case also serves as the charger for the earbuds. You use the USB C cable to charge the case, then place the earbuds in the case to charge them using the gold dots to magnetically attach to the small gold rods in the case. They say the case is good enough for 2 full charges of the earbuds, and that 1 full charge is enough for 21 hrs of standy, and enough juice for about 7 hours of constant playback at a moderate volume.
THE EARBUDS:
The earbuds themselves are your basic stalks of black ABS plastic. Nothing flashy or shouty to draw attention, just a plain black stalk with a black logo on the driver chassis. That logo is also a sensor that you use to control functions like volume adjust, track skip, call answering etc.
They fit snugly straight out the box. I use the smallest silicone tip and I never felt they were in danger of flying out while at the gym on the treadmill. Originally I was using the medium size but I found that the sound quality suffered as they just weren’t snug enough in the ears meaning a lack of bass, a tinny sound, and intrusive outside noise. But let it be known this is 100% my preference for fit and once I switched to the smaller tips the sound and call quality was much improved.
At the gym (when that was a thing) The Qs were ideal – shutting out the doofdoof gym music and being lightweight and small enough to let me get on with the workout with a Bluetooth connection range of around 10m meaning you can leave the phone out the way while you do your thing.
Speaking of gyms: the SoundPeats Q are waterproof rated to IPX5 which is unofficially categorised as “pretty good”. Not enough to withstand a tsunami, but more than capable of performing in a sweaty environment for a few hours.
SOUND:
This is why we get earbuds isn’t it? To listen to things privately and/or shut out the outside world for a while. As mentioned above, using the medium tips didn’t result in the best experience for my ears. The large tips held the driver too far from the eardrum, and didn’t form a tight enough seal around the ear canal so all the good stuff (bass, presence, volume) goes out and the bad stuff (outside noise) comes in.
My tip is to switch to the smaller tip.
The resulting sound quality is impressive and enjoyable. You can hear the panning, you can pick out instruments in the mix, hear backing vocals surround you. The bass is strong, the treble doesn’t pierce, the mids glue it all together without being particularly prominent or reduced so everything sounds balanced in a warm sort of way and to cut out the audiophile wank they sound better than I expected. Don’t get me wrong, I think you can get better sound from headphones with bigger drivers or better sound isolation, or a good set of over ears, but for what you get for the money you pay is nothing short of commendable.
CONTROLS:
The earbuds control some features themselves, done by tapping either the logo on the left or right earbuds. For example touching the left one once lowers the volume, whereas touching the right one once raises the volume and twice skips a track. Pressing the right for 1.5s skips a track, pressing the left for 1.5s goes back a track, and when a call comes in you double tap either earbud to accept and then hang up at the end. Nice ideas and well implemented although there is a bit of a delay on the input but it’s still easier to pull out your phone and manage music and calls that way (see the manual for the full list of controls).
BUILD QUALITY/DURABILITY:
I’ve dropped these more than once. The ABS plastic is smooth, and sometimes that means a tight grip isn’t guaranteed. They’ve also gotten wet in the rain and they’ve not complained and carried on regardless. Despite one weird moment when the left one had a bit of a sync issue and froze on a “Brrrrrrrr” sound after I dropped it on the pavement (it recovered after about 3 seconds), all has been well in my 12 weeks of owning them.
TAKE AWAY:
These are good earbuds that sound good and don’t get in the way. They’ve done everything I’ve asked of them without complaint or issue and just get on with it.
If you want more brand recognition or bling then look elsewhere but if you want a good sounding pair of earbuds to do what earbuds do, give the Soundpeats Q a look.
They’re a 4/5 because of the lag on the inputs and I wish the stalks were textured for better grip.
And for less than $50 makes these seem like a great deal.
LINKS:
I got mine here: https://www.amazon.com/SOUNDPEATS-Wireless-Earphones-Bluetooth-Headphones/dp/B08M95H1YY
To the manual: https://manuals.plus/soundpeats/q-earbuds-manual
