Wow. After all the trendy college-student reviewers at the main tech rags panned these, I was expecting bad quality and horrible design and something that looked totally weird. I feel like pretty much every mainstream technology reviewer is insane at the moment. My review revolves around the three main points that tech site reviews seemed to care the most about: Aesthetics, battery life, and sound quality.
First of all, the Xperia Ear Duo only looks bad from one angle - the side, viewed from slightly below. If you actually take a look head-on in a mirror, all you see are these carefully crafted metallic bars that make it look like you have two screws in the style of Frankenstein's monster sticking out of your head. But there's no sign of a giant ugly battery or something, sheesh. Unfortunately, I did have trouble getting them on at first, and the first time I didn't put them on the right way (the helper app you download and install quickly corrected me). The diagram for how to mount the Duos on your ears suggests that you hold them some distance from your ear and then slide them up the side of your cheek, like inserting a paperclip into a stack of paper. That mostly just caused me to mash them into the outside of my ears over and over again, heh. But it's a brand new way to wear a headset, and if I think back far enough, it took me a long time to feel comfortable wearing good old earbuds too. Everything is new at first and it's easy to forget being children who had no idea how to do these things. But with that mentality, you'll be used to them in no time. I'm already having fun training myself in the quickest ways to put 'em on.
Second, yeah, I admit, the battery life is terrible. You're just getting used to listening and then you notice that the batteries have already drained 10%, and you think "Wow, yeah. That isn't a good sign, is it?" On the other hand, it only takes a few handfuls of mere seconds in the charge base to get that 10% back. So as long as you don't absolutely need to listen to music every moment of every day, I think you'll be alright. The pauses are barely noticeable as long as you don't get too much "waiting rage" (the new medical phenomenon where people are less accepting of small delays in their lives than they were 5-10 years ago). So yes, the batteries drain fast, but honestly, technology isn't far enough along that a headphone exists which doesn't require some compromises. You might not necessarily notice it, but every device requires you to change your lifestyle to accommodate it a little. From that perspective, these aren't so bad at all.
Lastly, audio quality. Many (indeed, most) people say that these are useless in an airplane or on a subway. Well, duh. They're for listening in quiet places where you want to let sound in and don't want to scream back and forth across full-ear cans with your coworkers. If you buy these, you're buying them because you absolutely, definitely want to hear the sounds around you. People claimed that the open design reduced sound quality and flattened bass, but that's not what I'm hearing. I'm hearing the effect that happens the first time you buy a good pair (above-$600) of Sennheisers or Shures and a lot of your music sounds like garbage. The Xperia Ear Duo is one of the most acoustically honest, analytical Bluetooth kits I've ever witnessed - aside from a special exception for sounds below 250Hz or so, which I'll get into in the next paragraph. If you're listening to Youtube Music, or even using a paid music streaming service at less than the highest quality, don't be surprised if your audio is trash. Unlike Beats or something, these aren't going to prettify your recordings. (And I like Beats too, just to have that said - there's a time and a place for every approach to music. :)
As for the destroyed bass, I don't think that the Ear Duo really mangles bass or arbitrarily removes it. More like, Sony understood early in the development of their product that having decent bass with their listening approach was a nonstarter. Instead, they actually rather admirably compensate for it - more than once I've heard the DSP translate a subwoofer-crunching drum line or sound effect into a series of higher-pitched trills which continue on the "spirit" of the low-pitched sound, so that you can imagine what it sounds like, without actually being able to hear it. It's not "the best of both worlds" or anything, but Xperia Ear Duo is doing a lot more than just ignoring anything below a certain frequency range. Sony is, as far as I can tell at least, translating the sound image, manipulating low pitches in a way similar to how dynamic range compression manipulates volume.
What music is good for these? Well, the answer is something you will either love or hate - this is an unashamedly, unapologetically, bombastically Japanese audio system. If you listen to Capsule, IOSYS, ClariS, or other examples of idol groups, Shibuya-kei, anime music, and so on, you'll be listening to these as they were surely intended. Enka is rendered so well that it makes me pause what I'm doing to appreciate it. Anything reliant on treble is rendered beautifully, so dance, electronica, and even some rap (as long as you don't miss it shaking your car/house too much) would all do nicely. Again, I have no idea how the open-eared design was ruining the sound quality for people. Especially at higher volumes and with favorable song selections and a sprinkle of EQ massaging, the sound quality is indistinguishable from a wired set around this price, in my humble opinion. Were most purchasers of these listening in the middle of a busy construction site or something? They're great! They're a lot less muddled than AirPods to me, and they manage to capture nuances in the problematic 6-10kHz range that I find even HomePods turn into a shrill cloudy mess.
If there's one major complaint I have, just to make it sound like I'm not paid off by Sony or something (because I'm not), the touch controls are junk, and the motion controls are rubbish that I haven't been able to get working at all. Also, the interface is very laggy - sometimes I can send 4-5 commands, get no response, and then suddenly 10 seconds later they will all be immediately executed in an utter mess of things I didn't want my phone to do. It's not a reception issue, it's not a performance issue, the software is just slow and bad and odd. Stroking the long flat pieces to change the volume almost never works for me unless I do a forceful stroke, pressing into my head, and do it very fast, from one edge to the other. A light half-stroke in the middle of the touch area will just register as a tap.
Finally, the taps themselves are clumsy and annoying. I assumed that the double-tap gesture which you use to advance tracks would be at roughly the speed of double-clicking on a mouse, but instead you have to wait almost a full second before tapping again. Instead of "tiptap *advance track* tiptap *advance track*" it's a very slow "tap.... ... ... tap. *track slowly advances*" Worst of all, the device won't let you skip ahead another track for several seconds - you actually have to wait between gestures. Do you know exactly what song you want to listen to? Do you know that it's exactly 5 tracks ahead of where you are? Too bad. Enjoy spending your next 60 seconds forwarding a track now and then, accidentally pausing the music several times, moving forward again after a long fight with the touch area, and so on.
Suffice it to say, I'd much rather have to fumble around with my fingernails for physical buttons than deal with this hot mess. I honestly assumed that the tap controls would be controlled by an accelerometer, not a capacitive touch surface. That way, a pretty simple AI could detect when you were giving a forceful intentional tap anywhere on the device, and would respond accordingly. Many gadgets use this already, and it would be much easier than having to line your finger up with a tiny area that you cannot see and can barely feel. By the time you've found it, you've touched it, and send some stupid command to the software.
Would I recommend the Xperia Ear Duo? Wholeheartedly yes, to my friends, who like the same things I do, and are used to putting up with stuff like this because they're all the "early adopter" sorts of people. Would I recommend it to a stranger? Maybe. I'd be wary recommending it to someone below 20 or over 60 because, (mass generalization here, I know), both age groups are used to things that "just work" and mostly want a simple good product that will obey their commands and make them feel good. The Xperia Ear Duo requires a little bit more effort than that, and definitely has all the pros and cons of a niche early-adopter product. If you're okay with being a test pilot, welcome aboard! If not, that's fine too.
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Very useful for hands free work, but extended use in warm temperatures may loosen adhesives used
Incredible useful for keeping tabs on things hands free, which is exactly what I needed considering my job has me in a lab coat and gloves all day which makes fishing a phone out of my pocket a somewhat tricky process just to find out that it was an unimportant notification or text.Sound quality is clear and ambient noise id still audible allowing for decent situational awareness thanks to an open back design. However the bass response is also somewhat lackluster because of said design, but that is understandable and forgivable in my book, especially considering that this is more of a tool for me than a recreation item.They were slightly uncomfortable at first and caused some pain ans fatigue in the left ear after an hour or so of wearing, but this was fixed when I figured out which of the replaceable ear pads was the correct size and I can now wear them all day with no discernable discomfort.The motion controls took a couple of days to get used to but is almost second nature now.My one complaint is that after several weeks of use the magnetic strip that holds the earbuds in place in the charger separated from the right bud and I in my infinite wisdom seem to have forgotten to purchase a protection plan for said $200+ electronic item and now will either have to bite the bullet and see how expensive it would be to have it repaired or replaced, or baring that attempt to re-attatch the magnet myself.
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Luis F Ferreyra Gaona
La calidad de productos
Reviewed in Mexico on December 8, 2018Color: BlackVerified Purchase
