Rating:
6/10
WIRED
Full and detailed sound for open buds. Innovative design. Good features and battery life.
TIRED
Big and heavy, especially the case. Unstable and inconsistent noise canceling. Changing between fit modes is awkward.
Soundcore’s Aerofit 2 pro aim to achieve the impossible: add effective noise canceling to open earbuds. These aren’t the first open earbuds to travel this quixotic path, but they do so in the most novel way I’ve seen yet, by physically transforming between buds that leave your ear canals open and ones that plug them up to administer noise canceling directly.
It’s a cool idea that goes beyond other open-ear noise cancelers we’ve tested. They’ll even sense which position they’re in and change their mode and sound signature accordingly. Though they’re bulky (especially the case) and more onerous to wear than my favorite open buds, they offer relatively good sound, solid features, and accessible controls.
Unfortunately, Soundcore’s innovative take on open earbuds for any scenario still doesn’t come off in a way that would make me recommend them. I’ve been singing the praises of open earbuds for a while now, which are more versatile than you might think, but traditional wireless earbuds still do a much better job piping sound in than open earbuds do keeping it out. Sadly for fans of novel design, the mighty morphin’ Aerofit 2 Pro are no exception.
Is That a Case?
Photograph: Ryan Waniata
The first thing you’ll notice while unboxing the Aerofit 2 Pro is that their charging case is massive. I’m talking two or three times the size of most modern buds. I kept making the joke on Zoom calls with my editor that it looked just a Nokia cell phone from the early aughts—I stand by it.
The case is large, but touches wireless charging and a futuristic frontside LED beam that indicates battery life make the case very functional. The size also leaves plenty of room for a backup battery, supplementing the earbuds’ 7 hours of playback to 34 total (or 5 hours and 25 hours with noise canceling enabled).
The wraparound buds are less beefy than the case suggests, similar to Beats’ Powerbeats Pro 2. There’s a battery bulb at the back of each earhook, and a pill-shaped housing at the front with a tip that looks a lot Apple’s semi-open AirPods 4. Soundcore even references the Aerofit 2 Pro’s “semi-in-ear” noise cancellation in its literature, and the basic AirPods, there are no eartips.
The most intriguing part of the design is also the hardest to figure out, even for someone who’s been reviewing earbuds since the Obama administration; you’ll want to consult the manual to put these earbuds on.
Courtesy of Soundcore
Soundcore’s included diagram thankfully does a good job laying out the Aerofit 2 Pro’s five different fit positions, adjusted by twisting the buds back and forth along their ear hooks with a tactile click. Levels 1-2 are the “open” positions, while pushing the buds forward to levels 4 or 5 is required for noise canceling. Even at their most open, the buds plug your ears more than most open earbuds I have tried, sometimes making it hard for me to keep full awareness with light music playing, especially for conversations with others.
The buds proved reasonably comfortable over two weeks of testing, but their headset-design and weight of over 10 grams per side do get onerous after a few hours. It’s a mild issue on paper, but it detracts from one of my favorite features of the best open earbuds, which seem to disappear on my ears for all-day wearability. You can wear the Aerofit 2 Pro all day, but you’ll feel it.
I do mostly the controls, which trade touch sensors for stiff physical buttons on the housings. This helps avoid accidental tapping during adjustment, though pressing them in noise-cancelling mode can be slightly uncomfortable. The default control layout includes volume and play/pause via single and double taps, but you’ve got to download the Soundcore app to assign the triple tap for functions song skipping.
You’ll want the app anyway, which makes it easy to check battery status and adjust features EQ, multipoint connection, and a low-lag gaming mode. There’s even a spatial audio feature with available head tracking to make the buds feel more speakers, though as usual, it sounds too synthetic for my taste. There’s also a switch called Intelligent Noise Cancellation, designed to automatically engage noise canceling when you move the buds into position.
An Awkward Transition
Photograph: Ryan Waniata
Changing the buds between open-ear and ANC modes became second nature over time, but the way the earbuds sonically adjust to the different positions is slow and still feels awkward two weeks on. Moving from open-ear positions 1 or 2 to 4 or 5 with noise canceling emits a loud tone by default (you can thankfully turn this off), and the noise canceling spits out a fair bit of white noise. More startling is the slow speed at which the sound signature changes as the speakers close in.
Moving the buds into your ear canals feels way off at first, with bass so heavy you feel you’re underwater. I began pausing audio each time I switched to give the earbuds time to recalibrate for the closed position. Once the buds (and my ears) adjusted, the sound was much more balanced, if a bit claustrophobic. I still prefer the open-ear performance, but the sound is perfectly listenable in ANC form.
They do sound good in open mode. When they’re not covering your ear canals, the Aerofit 2 Pro rank among the best open earbuds in their price class, with an airy sound signature that naturally focuses on the upper registers. While no open earbuds I’ve tried accentuate bass as well as regular buds, the Aerofit 2 Pro have more resonance down low than most, accompanied by splashes of keen instrumental detail and clear stereo separation.
Wandering Noise
Photograph: Ryan Waniata
The biggest issue I have with these “best of both worlds” earbuds is noise cancellation that’s not only limited but also unstable and inconsistent. This is almost certainly due to the lack of eartips, which prevents a proper seal. There’s a reason all our favorite noise-canceling buds come with multiple eartip sizes to conform to your ear canals; a good seal is paramount to effective noise canceling.
High-register noises and midrange sounds are the worst offenders, especially voices. During one of my wife’s video calls, her voice seemed to constantly migrate from one ear to the other as the noise-canceling struggled to adjust to my head’s natural movements. It’s was a disorienting experience, listening as the onboard microphones work to quell the noise sailors bailing out a leaky ship.
Low-frequency drone sounds bathroom fans or the din of a refrigerator fare better, but I continued to experience issues in key use cases bringing in my garbage cans, where the rumbling of the wheels kept fading in and out.
Soundcore’s PR team was quick to point out the Aerofit 2 Pro’s limitations, saying the experience is “highly fit-dependent” and “not intended to replace fully sealed in-ear ANC earbuds in extreme noise environments.” That’s fine, but it does beg the question: What are we doing here?
The Aerofit 2 Pro are a fair pair of open earbuds, but their hefty design works too hard for a feature that can’t compete with even average noise cancellers. It’s hard not to think of noise-canceling open buds as a solution looking for a problem, especially when you can get a solid pair of regular open earbuds the Acefit Air for as low as $30. On the other hand, the Aerofit 2 Pro get frustratingly close to working. Could eartips crack the case? Honestly, I hope we get a second generation to find out.
If you can only buy one pair of earbuds, it should not be the Aerofit 2 Pro. It’s the AirPods Pro, Bose QuietComfort Ultra, or any of the scores of more affordable ANC buds that effectively keep out environmental sounds and offer solid transparency modes for hearing the world around you when you want to. Better yet, you could just get a good cheap pair of each. Open earbuds have many benefits, and the idea to give them noise canceling is a good one in theory, but the Aerofit Pro 2 have too many compromises to be your only pair.
Sumber Artikel:
Wired.com
