In a marketplace that is ever changing and with tech giants leading the FOMO charge over earbuds, Edifier steps into the breach with NeoBuds Plus to see if they can take on the big names.
A few years ago, I was stuck with a short hospital stay, and whilst there my wireless earbuds vanished under mysterious circumstances, I replaced them with some cheap no-name in-ear earbuds that cost me about the same as a takeaway. The chance to try a high quality pair of earbuds like the Edifier NeoBuds Plus was perfect. But how they would stand up to my cheap, but sturdy earbuds.
The NeoBuds Plus have two features that immediately grab your attention. The first is the battery. They advertise a 47-hour battery life, which blew my mind as my no name earbuds barely managed five hours on a charge. Well, I am not a person to just take the box at its word, so there was but one choice. I had to test them.
Slapping the NeoBuds Plus in, I deactivated the noise cancelling and hooked the headphones up to my most used music app and I started listening to them. I got my phone out and activated a timer. Over a couple of days, with no charge, they gave up close to the 48-hour mark. Not all batteries are created equal, and these are brand new, so I expect that they will lose some of their power storage over time, but for now this is phenomenal. I can have them in all day at work and then use them in the gym straight after with no worries of having to charge them.
Then comes the second draw of the Edifier NeoBuds Plus, and that is the noise cancellation. Without the noise cancellation on, they sit in my ears snugly enough where they do a good job. Keeping most of the innate chit chat of an office environment out of my ears. However, once I turned on the Noise Cancellation setting of the NeoBuds Plus, it felt like having my own privacy bubble around my head. I had my partner stand one meter away and make a continuous sound and start to walk away. With the noise cancelling off, I could hear her faintly up to four meters away. Once I turned on the noise cancelling, I could barely hear her a meter away, by two meters, I couldn’t hear her at all.
The ambient setting is very useful as well; I went for a walk into an area known for birds and the ambient sound made it so I could hear bird song I don’t think I would have noticed otherwise.
I will state that the noise cancelling of the NeoBuds Plus does indeed impact the battery life. But again, doing another test like before, I hit just over the advertised 26 hours. Considering I doubt you will be listening to your headphones continuously; you will get several days between charges.
On the topic of charging, I struggled a little to know how much charge the earbuds had until they told me they were low. As a diabetic, I appreciated hearing something else was low for a change. The earbuds do only take fifteen minutes to charge four hours worth of listening, and they also wirelessly charge. The case does come with a charging cable though, which is what I generally use.
I decided to download the Edifier ConneX app for the earbuds to see if that would help me know their charge. The simple answer is yes, they clearly showed me the charge of each earbud but also allowed me to do oh so much more. The app enabled me to change the noise cancelling settings even more. I was also able to change the colour of the light on the earbud box, and I could activate location settings on them, so I will always know where they are.
Using the Edifier NeoBuds Plus whilst talking on the phone as well has been a wonder. Not only do I hear anyone talking to me like they are right in front of me, but I have tested that from the other side, and their microphone picks up the speaker with crystal clarity whilst blocking out the sounds of passing cars or other random sounds.
The last feature of the Edifier NeoBuds Plus I want to touch on are their comfort. You get many sizes of bud to use and swapping them over is quick and easy. I have found them comfortable to wear and over many hours I haven’t had any aches or pains in my ears. They are also very secure, when using the NeoBuds Plus at the gym I can be running quite aggressively and at no point have I had to push them back in or readjust with any kind of worry that they might fall out.
Overall, I think that the Edifier NeoBuds Plus are a brilliant pair of earbuds. I will be the first to admit that after two years of using a pair of £30 earbuds, coming off my premium buds, it was a delightful surprise just how much of a difference the jump in quality was. These are not bargain earbuds, BUT you are getting a quality product for the price. Compared to other brands, these are of an equal quality, if not better and for a considerably cheaper price. With a battery that would make the Energizer bunny jealous, and noise cancelling that made me feel like I was in outer space, if you want to treat yourself, or a special someone, then the Edifier NeoBuds Plus are for you.
