Beats Solo Buds: two-minute review

The Beats Solo Buds are the cheapest earbuds the brand has ever made. Arriving in a compact package, they’re easy to sling in a bag or back pocket, lacking the bulk of many  more premium true wireless options. They also come with possibly the best in-bud battery life I’ve ever seen, stretching easily to several days of intense listening. Nevertheless, they make several compromises that mean they're harder to recommend for serious music fans.

The Beats Solo Buds offer a good range of features – although, inevitably, not anywhere close to the number that come with pricier models. Multi-point pairing is rock solid, while one-touch pairing makes connecting them a dream for Apple users. Literally all I had to do was tap them to my devices and I was good to go.

Once you’re connected, you can settle in for a lengthy listening session: Beats states that the earbuds’ internal battery will last for an epic 18 hours – which rivals that of almost any of the best wireless earbuds. And while there’s no additional charge in the case, the Solo Buds’ fast-charging means you’ll gain a full hour of listening from plugging them in for just five minutes. No more worrying about your buds dying when you’re only part of the way home from work.

There are definitely a few features absent here, though. The lack of active noise cancellation means these aren’t the best buds for keeping background noise at bay. Often I also found myself missing the in-ear detection that many rivals offer, so they auto-pause when you remove them. There are no fancy smart features here such as spatial audio with head tracking or adaptive EQ, either.

In addition, when it comes to sound quality, the Solo Buds are a bit of a mixed bag. For a lot of people, Beats means bass; but the brand has changed its priorities in recent times, refocusing on feature-set over whomping bass. This is fully evident in the Solo Buds, which lack impact and definition in the low end; without the bass to provide a firm footing, busier mixes can end up sounding a little ill-defined.

It’s not all disappointing, though: the Beats Solo Buds deliver crisp and clear mids, showcasing vocals and many acoustic instruments at their best. Admittedly, the highest trebles do pull a few punches – but for me, that remains preferable than an overly bright and brittle edge to hats and guitars. Plus, they still manage a good sense of separation between different instruments when you’re listening to less crowded recordings.

Perhaps not surprisingly for a brand such as Beats, design is where the Solo Buds really shine. They’re some of the smallest buds I’ve ever seen: they sit relatively discreetly in your ears unlike many of the gargantuan earbuds on the market. And thanks to the lack of a separate battery, their case is slight enough that I could carry the buds around in my pocket everywhere I went, and only really think of them when I needed them.

Moreover, they’re some of the most comfortable buds I’ve ever worn. Being secure enough to stay in your ears while not being so unyielding that they start to ache during long listening sessions is a tightrope many earbuds struggle to walk; the Beats Solo Buds cartwheel along it. The only discomfort I ever experienced was due to the placement of their button – given it sits opposite your ear canal, I felt like I might  puncture my brain or had to grasp the bud awkwardly every time I went to press it.

Not everyone is looking for the same things from earbuds. So if your priority is cool-looking, super-comfortable buds with a life that would make Methuselah envious, then they’re a solid choice. However, those looking for superior sound quality or features such as ANC would ultimately be better off with the Sony WF-C700N for a very similar price, or opting for another pair from our list of the best budget wireless earbuds instead.

Beats Solo Buds review: price & release date

The Beats Solo Buds come with a price tag of $79.99 / £79.99 / AU$129.95. This makes them the cheapest wireless earbuds the brand has ever produced, something that I’m certain makes them a super-tempting proposition for cash-strapped fans of the best Beats headphones.

They come in four different colorways. Matte Black and Storm Grey probably speak for themselves, given they’re basically the same hues that the majority of earbuds arrive in, but the Beats Solo Buds are also available in the more vibrant options of Arctic Purple (our review model), which is a pleasingly subtle lavender hue, and Transparent Red, a bold crimson with a translucent case.

Beats Solo Buds review: specs

Beats Solo Buds review: features

• Epic in-bud battery life…
• … but no in-case charging
• Fewer features than more expensive buds

For a pair of affordable earbuds, the Beats Solo Buds have a very solid feature set – even if they can’t eclipse many of their more high-end rivals.

Apple’s one-touch pairing is excellent, as always. Holding up the Solo Buds’ case to my iPhone 13 Pro, they paired in a trice. Pairing with my MacBook required a few more steps, but it was still trivially simple. In addition, the improvements in recent versions of Bluetooth have made chopping and changing between devices so much easier – I never once struggled to switch between my phone and laptop, with the buds switching as soon as I tapped their icon in Bluetooth settings.

Perhaps the biggest selling point of the Solo Buds is their battery life, which Beats maintains is an absurd 18 hours. This is a hell of a claim – and naturally, I wasn’t going to just take it as granted, so I set them to play continuous 256kbps audio at half volume for six hours. My skepticism was entirely unfounded. During that time, the battery drained just 34%, meaning that a rough life of 17.5 hours is entirely realistic. That’s an unreal amount of listening to get from a single charge, and I’ve never seen another pair of earbuds come close.

However, this does come with a heavy caveat. The Solo Buds’ super-slim case comes at the cost of an internal battery, which means that 18 hours is the total: you won’t get any more juice while the buds are stowed in the case.

Nevertheless, their fast-charging feature – or Fast Fuel, as it’s inexplicably dubbed – is a huge help when that battery does finally run flat. Keen to test Beats’ claims that it would deliver a full hour of juice after just five minutes of charging, I plugged them in for five minutes via USB-C and then listened at half volume until the battery died. They lasted 75 minutes, smashing the figure the brand promised.

The ability to charge the buds from your phone is also a seriously helpful feature when you’re caught short and don’t have access to a socket. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that you’ll only be able to access this feature if you have an iPhone 15 or a compatible Android device; sadly, anyone without a USB-C-powered device is out of luck. Still, you’ll likely be topping up far less than you’d expect, making these buds a good choice for someone who loves marathon listening sessions.

As mentioned, there are a fair few features missing from the Beats Solo Buds compared to more premium buds. If you’re hoping for active noise cancelling, you should look elsewhere – for example, the Nothing Ear (a) and Sony WF-C700N for only slightly more, or the Earfun Air Pro 3 for slightly less (though these are much bulkier).

Some of the features of Apple’s AirPods haven’t trickled down here, either: there’s no adaptive EQ that uses clever algorithms to optimize audio to the shape of your ears. Additionally, despite still having settings on the iPhone referring to Automatic Ear Detection, so they pause when removed or play when replaced automatically, the Solo Buds don’t actually offer it. It isn’t an essential feature; but once you’ve been relying on it, it’s hard to go back to buds that aren’t capable of it.

Finally, while the box advertises that the Beats Solo Buds have Spatial Audio, don’t get too excited – it doesn’t offer the fancy head-tracking that the AirPods Pro 2 and Beats Fit Pro do. Instead, this simply means you’ll get the same audio processing algorithms that allow other bog-standard buds to add extra separation to Dolby Atmos music with Apple devices.

• Features score: 3.5 / 5

Beats Solo Buds review: sound quality

• Weak bass
• Bit on the quiet side
• Call quality is decent

I’ll be 100% honest: when I first listened to the Beats Solo Buds, my response was… not good. The sound struck me as anemic, with a weak low end and a muffled treble; it gave me the uncomfortable sensation of my ears being stuffed with cotton wool. Worse, the volume was deeply underwhelming. I worked out that I was listening in Dolby Atmos mostly, and this was the culprit – it's much quieter, and mixed differently. I wouldn’t recommend dabbling in this for music with these buds, since it involves a few too many compromises.

So how do the Beats Solo Buds perform when they’re not attempting to simulate 3D soundtracks? The answer is probably “better… but not the best”. 

For a brand that was once synonymous with bountiful bass, Beats has really struggled to get much oomph out of the Solo Buds’ low end. Listening to Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac, I found the toms and snares cut through well, giving the song a decent pace, while those crisp guitar strings displayed plenty of bite. Unfortunately, though, the bass guitar was almost entirely lost in the mix, which is a bit of a shame and makes the result feel a bit lacking in guts.

It’s not all bad news: these earbuds can definitely make certain frequencies in the mix shine. When I listened to St. Thomas by Sonny Rollins, Tommy Flanagan, Doug Watkins and Max Roach, Rollins’ sax line clearly sat in that acoustic sweet spot, soaring over the mix with all the expected harmonic richness, while the click of Roach’s drumsticks and the taut skins of the toms were easily appreciable. Unfortunately, the piano was mostly lost in the mix – it felt like a word that was on the tip of my tongue, so nearly in grasp and yet just out of reach.

And this becomes more noticeable depending on the quality of the material you feed these buds. While listening to Black Eye by Allie X on Apple Music’s higher-quality 256kbps AAC setting, I was impressed with the punch of the snare and the trebly kick, while those poppy synth lines really felt clear and immediate. However, swapping to Spotify’s more lossy, 160kbps free tier showed up more of the Solo Buds’ flaws – the mix sounded a little more cohesive but also quite insubstantial, with the sound much more concentrated around the mid-highs and coming out quite a bit quieter to boot.

On the plus side, when you’re listening to sparser recordings, the Beats Solo Buds do a pretty respectable job of positioning things in the mix, with each element able to enjoy much more space and clarity. Listening to Timeless by Poppy Ackroyd, I could hear the timbre of instruments much better than in more crowded recordings – the pizzicato strings and the creak of the piano mechanism were so wonderfully crisp in comparison to the more muted tone of the keys and the sweet ebb and flow of the bowed violin.

Sadly, the Beats Solo Buds aren’t especially loud. Often when I was using them in the office, it felt like the sounds of typing, chatter and gadget wrangling were more audible than the music to which I was listening. This wouldn’t be a massive issue in and of itself, but the earbuds also don’t present the best noise isolation. Playing podcasts in a quiet room, you can hear all the facts and banter with crystal clarity; when you’re walking along a busy street, they have stiff competition from the world around you. This means the Beats Solo Buds are almost certainly safe for listening to while cycling during rush hour, but less good if you’re looking to shut the world out on your commute.

While I was out and about, I also tested the Solo Buds’ leading-edge microphones to see how they handled voice quality for phone calls. While I didn’t get quite the crystal clarity you sometimes get from premium, over-ear cans, the people on the other end of the line said they could always hear me just fine, even when cars were tearing past. And this was borne out when I recorded some voice notes: traffic caused a slight whoosh as it went by, but not the roar you’d expect, showing how hard the algorithm is working to keep your voice clear.

• Sound quality: 3 / 5

Beats Solo Buds review: design

• Super comfortable fit
• Attractive design and slim case
• Button placement isn’t particularly ergonomic

While the Beats Solo Buds might not be an unqualified sonic success, their design definitely still feels like it has plenty of the old Beats magic. Visually, they’re deeply pleasing, featuring gentle rounded curves, rather than the unsightly tacked-on discs, stems and other protuberances you often see in earbuds these days. And while the buds themselves are slight and lightweight, it’s the case that really impresses: it’s far more slimline than many others out there, which makes losing out on extra battery charges for your buds an almost worthwhile sacrifice.

The various colors available look great as well. Personally, I feel that the Arctic Purple I received for review is the best of the bunch; but Transparent Red also looks great and is the obvious choice for anyone wanting to shout about their new pair of Beats from the rooftops. Matte Black and Storm Grey are more restrained but nevertheless exude class. No matter which color you choose, you can be sure of one thing: these look far better than your average pair of budget earbuds.

Both the buds and the case are made from a gloriously smooth matte plastic that feels great under your fingertips. The buds themselves feel particularly tactile; often I found myself reaching for them over other earbuds just because I enjoyed the way they felt in my hands. And they pop in and out of the case with a satisfying click as the magnets lock them into place – a nice bit of near-haptic feedback, so you know immediately that your buds have found their way home.

The Beats Solo Buds come with silicone ear tips in four different sizes, from small to extra large. After experimenting with every size, I found that the medium provided me with the best seal; but, naturally, you’ll want to try them all to find what works best for your ears.

Having tested no end of earphones and earbuds over the years, I can honestly say that the Beats Solo Buds are some of the most comfortable I’ve ever tried. They sat snugly in my ears, with the ear tips forming a close seal in my ear canal. Their contours closely mirrored the shape of my ear, meaning they never once felt loose or even needed adjusting, and they didn’t get uncomfortable, even after long listening sessions.

Keen to really put this fit to the test, I even tried doing a couple of workouts with the buds in my ears. Now, the Beats Solo Buds aren’t really designed for exercise, and their lack of IP rating means that they won’t be able to withstand sweat as well as actual dedicated workout buds – so you might not want to try this at home. Still, the buds stayed firmly in place, even during my most high-intensity workout, which means you can definitely count on them to stay put while you dash for a train.

That’s not to say the Beats Solo Buds are completely free of missteps where their design is concerned. First of all, their lack of stems and relatively uniform design means that, on occasion, I’d absent-mindedly find myself trying to put them in the wrong way up. This can be solved fairly simply by looking closely at the bud before you insert it, but it’s easy to forget this when you’re in the middle of other things.

Personally, though, I find this less of an issue than the controls. Like many earbuds, the Solo Buds feature a multi-purpose button on each bud that you press a certain number of times for various actions: once, for play/pause; twice, for skip forward; and three times, for skip backward. Unfortunately, the positioning of the button means pressing it drives the whole bud deep into your ear canal, making me feel like I was going to perforate an eardrum every time I paused my music. Eventually I realized that gripping the bud at the top and bottom with my fingers stabilized it enough to allow me to press the button without discomfort; but I feel like lowering the pressure required to push the button or repositioning the button would have been much more ergonomic.

• Design: 4.5 / 5

Beats Solo Buds review: value

• Cheapest earbuds Beats have ever sold…
• But they don’t offer as good value as other affordable buds
• You can get better sound for your spend

How sweet a deal you’re getting with the Beats Solo Buds will almost certainly depend on your perspective. As I’ve already mentioned, these are the cheapest wireless earbuds the brand has ever offered, and if you’ve been clamoring for a pair of Beats but have only a modest budget, then these will definitely scratch that itch for you.

However, in comparison to other products on the market, I’m not convinced that they offer the absolute best return on investment. Both the Sony WF-C700N and Nothing Ear (a) offer more well-rounded, energetic sound, not to mention ANC to boot – and while they both retail for $20 / £20 or less more, they’re often on sale for a similar price or even cheaper than the Solo Buds.

If you’re not so bothered about sound quality and just want a stylish, super-comfortable set of buds with epic battery life, this is still a very reasonable price. But if you want the best sound quality for your buck, you might be better off looking elsewhere.

• Value score: 3 / 5

Should I buy the Beats Solo Buds?

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

Beats Solo Buds review: also consider

Beats Solo Buds review: How I tested

• I used them for over two weeks
• Listened to a wide array of music, podcasts and movie soundtracks
• Compared them against other affordable earbuds

To test the Beats Solo Buds, I used them for over two weeks. I connected them to multiple different devices, including my iPhone 13 Pro and MacBook Pro. 

I listened to a wide range of content, from compressed Spotify streams to higher-quality audio on Apple Music. Not only did I listen to tracks from TechRadar’s testing playlist, but a wide variety of genres outside of this, as well as listening to a range of podcasts and watching several TV shows and movies.

I tested their fit doing both cardio and weight-training workouts. And I tested their microphones by recording multiple voice notes and making several phone calls.

I also compared the Beats Solo Buds directly against similarly priced earbuds, as well as utilizing years of experience testing other headphones and audio gear.

• First reviewed: August 2024
• Read more about how we test

Edifier Stax Spirit S5: Two-minute review

Edifier is no stranger to the idea of creating a product that, by rights, ought to cost a fair bit more than it’s charging – but with the Stax Spirit S5 wireless over-ear planar magnetic headphones, it might just have outdone itself.

Small and reasonably light where most planar magnetic designs are big and unreasonably heavy, the S5 also have a lot of cutting-edge wireless features. Bluetooth 5.4 with LDAC and aptX Lossless codec compatibility is not to be sniffed at, and neither is aptX Voice for telephony. Having said that, though, the lack of active noise-cancellation will put some people off – and the use of animal hide isn’t exactly going to widen the S5 appeal either.

But let’s imagine neither of these things concern you greatly. What you’re left with is a pair of comfortable, well-made, smartly presented and impressively specified wireless over-ear headphones with an absolute stack of positives where sound quality is concerned. These are as open, as detailed and as revealing a listen as of the best wireless headphones at anything like this price – and they basically demand an audition.    

Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: Price & release date

• Released July 10, 2024 
• Price: $499 / £499 / AU$949 (approx)

Obviously you’re not short of choice if you’ve this sort of money to spend on a pair of the best over-ear headphones. You don’t have to go very far along the alphabet to find brands as credible as Apple, Bose and Bowers & Wilkins with very similarly priced wireless over-ear headphones to sell you. Safe to say, then, that Edifier has its work cut out. 

For quite a bit less, you could have the July 2024-release, five-star $279 / £229 / AU$479 Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 wireless over-ear headphones; the Sony WH-1000XM5 can be yours for a little more than that, at around $329 / £319 / AU$549; the Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless (which arrived in August 2022) can be found for around $299 / £269 / AU$450 in today's money; the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones are an excellent October 2023-issue pair with a price tag of $429 / £449 / AU$649. 

Here's the thing: none of those is a planar magnetic design (praised for its ability to provide extra detail over traditional, dynamic-driver designs). And in case you missed them, the February 2022 Edifier Stax Spirit S3 are a very talented set of headphones indeed. So, plenty to consider. 

Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: Specs

Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: Features

• Planar magnetic drivers
• 80 hours battery life
• Bluetooth 5.4 with wide codec compatibility

Ordinarily I’d just start ticking off the many and various features these expensive new wireless over-ear headphones have – but in this instance I think it’s important to start with something they go without. Unlike pretty much every price-comparable rival, the Stax Spirit S5 don’t have active noise-cancellation.

Edifier suggests that the carefully ergonomic design of the S5 frame and of the earpads attached to it (more on those a little later) offers a lot of passive noise isolation. And that may be true, but for some people the lack of ANC will be a deal-breaker.

In every other respect, though, the Stax Spirit S5 are specified very thoroughly indeed. 

The headline, of course, is the use of planar magnetic drivers to deliver sound. The overwhelming majority of wireless over-ear headphones, at any and every price, use dynamic driver technology (a conical diaphragm driven by a voice coil within a magnetic field) to create sound. The planar magnetic alternative (which uses an extraordinarily thin diaphragm, embedded with wires, suspended in a gap between two magnets that vibrate the diaphragm to produce sound) is less common for two very good reasons: cost and complexity. 

The magnets need to be big enough to cover the entire surface area of the diaphragm, which usually results in a bigger, heavier and more power-hungry arrangement. The diaphragms fitted to the S5 are just 2μm thick, and are implanted with the second generation of Edifier’s ‘EqualMass’ wiring. By connecting different numbers of wires of the same width in a symmetrical structure, Edifier is confident that uniform driving force can be achieved - the diaphragm will move back and forth with the same momentum across its entire surface, and thus minimising distortion. 

The S5 are no less lavishly specified elsewhere. They use Bluetooth 5.4 for wireless connectivity, and because they feature the Qualcomm QCC5181 SoC they support cutting-edge codecs like LHDC, LDAC and aptX Lossless – with an appropriate source of music they can serve up digital audio content of 16bit/44.1kHz resolution losslessly, as well as lossy 24bit/96kHz. aptX Voice is also on board, which is deployed in an effort to deliver best-in-class call quality. Multipoint connectivity is on the menu too, and those Android users with a device running ‘Marshmallow’ or later can benefit from Google Fast Pair. 

Battery life is a whopping 80 hours from a single charge. Admittedly that’s measured when streaming AAC-derived stuff at midrange volumes, but surely the broad point is obvious: the S5 have better battery life than almost any of the other headphones you might be considering. And in the unlikely event they should require charging from flat, 15 minutes will buy you 13 hours and it takes just 90 minutes to get back to full.  

Control happens using a fairly restricted selection of physical controls on the edge of the right earcup (just above the USB-C slot), or the rather more comprehensive ‘ConneX’ app that’s free for iOS and Android. The buttons handle ‘power on/off’ and ‘volume up/down’, and there’s also a ‘multi-function’, the exact function of which can be specified in the app. The app is also where you’ll find wide-ranging EQ adjustment options, selection buttons for the like of ‘game’ mode and multipoint pairing, and so on. The left earcup, meanwhile, features a single 3.5mm input - Edifier supplies both USB-C and 3.5mm cables to facilitate hard-wired listening. 

• Features score: 4/5

Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: Sound quality

• As detailed a listen as they come 
• Positive, entertaining and informative sound
• High-frequency reproduction doesn’t enjoy big volumes

It doesn’t matter if you’ve listened to a recording plenty of times before now – I’m confident the Edifier Stax Spirit S5 will find some tiny aspect of it or detail within it that you’ve never heard (or, at least, noticed) before.

For me, it is a 24bit/192kHz FLAC file of Neil Young’s Borrowed Tune streamed via a digital audio player using the LDAC codec. The harmonic variations and dynamic fluctuations in the harmonica playing are fuller, more alive and more complete than I’ve ever heard before. And once it becomes apparent this pair of headphones is able to identify previously unsuspected nuance at the very edges of a recording, you’ll find yourself listening to tune after tune in order to discover what else you’ve been missing.

So yes, there are remarkable powers of resolution and detail retrieval here. But that’s far from the only talent the S5 exhibit. They’re a direct, positive and unequivocal listen, able to entertain just as readily as analyse. They seem willing and able to perform this way no matter the standard or resolution of the content you’re listening to.

Low-frequency information is deep, varied and has proper substance – but though there’s plenty of straightforward punch here, control is such that momentum levels are high and rhythms get described confidently. Midrange insight is equally impressive, and vocalists of every type have their character, motivations and, quite often, competence described in the barest terms – the S5 communicate with real eloquence, and allow a singer ample expression. And the top of the frequency range is similarly substantial, similarly varied and similarly informative – as long as you’re not listening at significant volume, anyway. Listen very loud and the top end can harden up more than somewhat.

Integration of the frequency range is nicely achieved, and the overall tonal balance is neutral-going-on-cool. There’s a stack of dynamic headroom available when a recording shifts up its intensity or volume, and the attention to detail extends deep into the most minor harmonic deviations.

The Edifier create a large and persuasive soundstage on which all of this can happen, too. It’s deep and wide, properly organised and explicit in its layout – so even a recording with numerous competing elements is easy to follow. Every aspect of a recording gets a little pocket of space in which to operate, and there’s sufficient elbow-room at every stage. But despite the spacious nature of the layout, a recording is still unified into a coherent whole. 

As far as noise reduction goes, Edifier is correct when it says that there’s a fair amount of passive isolation offered by the way the Stax Spirit S5 fit. Certainly if you’re listening at home, not much below a distant car alarm is likely to disturb you. But if you’ve experienced headphones with active noise-cancellation, using the S5 while out and about is going to seem peculiar – and not in a good way. 

• Sound quality score: 4.5/5

Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: Design

• 347g 
• Comfortable and easy to wear 
• Liberal use made of animal hide

Just as the ‘features’ section started with a bit of a downer before rallying strongly, so it is with ‘design’. Edifier cares not for the concerns of vegetarians or vegans - that much is obvious from the use of cow hide for the backs of the S5 earcups and lambskin for one of the two sets of earpads it provides. It’s a weird decision to have come to, and those who find the use of these materials distasteful are well within their rights to ignore the Stax Spirit S5 from here on out.

By prevailing planar magnetic standards, the Stax Spirit S5 are agreeably compact and, at 347g, impressively lightweight. The clamping force, the hanger arrangement and the padding at the contact points is all nicely judged - and the ‘cooling’ mesh earpads that Edifier supplies as an alternative to the lambskin numbers take much longer to heat your ears during use, too.

The headband adjustment mechanism feels solid. The headphones are hinged to the point that they’ll fold helpfully small, so the supplied travel case is a fair bit smaller than the norm. The ‘shades of black’ finish is pleasingly realised, too, so not only are the S5 comfortable over the long haul but they don’t make you look in any way ‘try-hard’ while you’re wearing them.

• Design score: 4/5

Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: Value

• Excellent sound-per-pound value
• No ANC
• Use of leather will mean a 'no' for some users 

These are not Edifier’s most affordable planar magnetic over-ear headphones – but nevertheless, at $499 / £499 they’re a fair bit more affordable than the majority of planar magnetics out there. Take into account the great wireless specification, also factor in the lack of active noise-cancellation, consider the build quality and the use of questionable materials, and last but not least the way they sound… the S5 represent unarguable value for money where sound quality is concerned, and cover plenty of bases besides.

• Value score: 5/5

Should I buy the Edifier Stax Spirit S5?

Buy them if...

Don't buy them if...

Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: Also consider

The Audeze LCD-1 planar magnetics cost even less than the Edifier Stax Spirit S5 (hurrah!) but their open-backed design makes them unsuitable for public listening, sadly. FiiO’s FT5 planar magnetics are more affordable than the S5, too – but although they sound splendid, they are (for want of a better description) massive, which is going to put some prospective customers off. They’re not wireless, either. 

If you can bring yourself to consider dynamic driver designs too, however, a whole world of possibilities opens up – Apple AirPods Max, Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones, Bowers & Wilkins Px8, Sonos Ace… the list goes on.   

How I tested the Edifier Stax Spirit S5

• Wireless and wired connections 
• Various different sources 3: numerous file types and resolutions
• Numerous file types and resolutions

Of course, wireless headphones tend to be used wirelessly - and so I listened to the Stax Spirit S5 connected wirelessly to an Apple iPhone 14 Pro and a FiiO M15S digital audio player. I also listened to the headphones when wired directly to an Apple MacBook Pro and to the same computer via an iFi iDSD Diablo 2 headphone amplifier. Lots of different music, of lots of different file types and sizes, and a fair few different Bluetooth codecs, were deployed too - and listening happened both indoors and out in the real world. 

• First reviewed: July 2024
• Read more about how we test

Creative Zen Hybrid SXFI: Two-minute review

The Creative Zen Hybrid SXFI headphones are an interesting proposition. With active noise cancellation, a ‘spatial holography’ mode known as Super X-Fi and a choice between wired and wireless listening (so, it's tough to know whether they'd be better pitched as some of the best wireless over-ears, the best wired headphones or best noise-cancelling headphones, for example) they have a host of advanced-looking features in a stylish package, all for less than $100.

As a manufacturer of affordable audio hardware, Creative is in the difficult spot of trying to bring premium features to a low price, so there are corners cut in places. However, even the mild levels of noise cancellation are useful for softening outside noise, while a substantial battery life (up to 70 hours) means these cans last a lot longer than some higher-end headphones (cough, AirPods Max, cough). The support for Bluetooth 5.3 certainly helps to increase power efficiency and ensure these headphones last longer, too.

The stereo sound is somewhat to be expected for the price, though Creative’s proprietary SXFI feature does push your tracks harder, ensuring the headphones offer more than the sum of their affordable parts. While we had some issues using these headphones to watch TV shows or Twitch streams, music recreation over a phone or laptop was still lively for what you pay for.

Creative Zen Hybrid SXFI review: Price and release date

• $99.99 / £89.99 / AU$69.95
• Launched in May 2024

The Creative Zen Hybrid SXFI headphones retail for $99.99 / £89.99 / AU$69.95, having been released in May 2024. 

As inexpensive as that may seem (when you consider something like the Sennheiser HD 620S headphones, which arrived on June 6 and retail for more than triple that, at $349.95 / £299.99 / AU$599) that MSRP is actually a little more than last year’s Zen Hybrid 2, which doesn’t make use of Creative’s spatial tech, but can now be found for as little as $49.99 / £59.99 in the US and UK.

Creative Zen Hybrid SXFI review: Specs

Creative Zen Hybrid SXFI review: Features

• Adaptive ANC and Ambient Mode
• SXFI app
• Bluetooth 5.3

On paper, the Creative Zen Hybrid SXFI headphones pack a lot of premium-sounding features at a very non-premium price. 

To start with, there’s active noise cancellation, or ANC, with a button that lets you cycle between ANC (blocking outside noise), adaptive ANC (responding dynamically to variable outside noise), ambient listening (letting all the outside noise in), and no ANC at all. It’s great to see ANC here, but none of these modes feel overly distinct: there’s a minor benefit to listening with ANC, but the effect is quite limited, only mildly softening the sound of traffic of chatty commuters, while the lack of passive isolation in the headphones’ casing means that the ambient mode isn’t much different: you’re hearing most of what’s going on.

There’s also Creative’s SXFI, or Super X-Fi spatial audio tech, which is intended to capture “the listening experience of a high-end multi-speaker system in a professional studio”, by virtually upscaling its stereo audio into something approaching three-dimensional sound. There’s a dedicated SXFI app you need to download, before building a personalized sound profile based on the size and shape of your ears, but it is available for both desktop and mobile.

Elsewhere, you get the option to use either a wired (3.5mm) connection, or a wireless one through the power-efficient Bluetooth 5.3 standard – given the gradual fade-out of wired consumer audio, it’s great to have the option if you’re sporting older source devices or prefer a more reliable, wired connection.

Features score: 4 / 5 

Creative Zen Hybrid SXFI review: Design

• Great to look at
• Light, with a cloth carry case
• Built-in buttons are hard to parse

For sub-$100 headphones, the Zen Hybrid SXFI look better than they should. They’re constructed with a muted black-gray plastic and a metal headband, with plenty of cushioning for the top and side of the head. The cushioning uses an artificial leather for a soft surface, which held up in our tests but looks like it could feasibly flake a little over time.

They’re also pleasingly lightweight, at just 271g, making them easy to wear for long periods and carry around without too much burden – aided by the soft gray cloth bag that comes included.

The left earcup carries a single USB-C port for charging, but the right earcup is where most of the action happens. You’ll find a power button, volume controls, and buttons for both ANC (active noise cancellation) and SXFI (spatial audio), as well as a 3.5mm headphones jack for those favoring wired connections.

While wearing the headphones, it’s a little hard at first to figure out which button you’re touching, given they’re all clustered together on the same ear and use the same kind of buttons – no toggles or touch controls to vary things here – though some muscle memory will no doubt help the longer you use them.

Design score: 4 / 5

Creative Zen Hybrid SXFI review: Sound quality

• Clear and crisp audio
• 40mm drivers, but light on bass response
• SXFI makes for much more interesting sound

More than anything else, the Creative Zen Hybrid SXFI headphones are fun to listen to. They feature clear, crisp audio, with a solid mid-range frequency response (100-10,000Hz, so lacking both deep 20Hz lows and the 20kHz highs from some other consumer headphones).

The bass is a little lacking – to be expected at this price – though the sizeable 40mm drivers do offer some presence in tracks where the bass is meant to be more prominent. Overall, a decent, if unremarkable audio performance for sub-$100 over-ear headphones.

The issue is that Super X-Fi, Creative’s spatial audio tech, ruins the standard stereo experience. 

To clarify, switching SXFI on immediately levels up the audio, causing more resonant vocals and a sense of three-dimensional audio moving and echoing through space – not on the same level as Dolby Atmos audio, per se, but certainly giving the feeling of a sphere of audio around your head, aided by the SXFI app’s analysis of your head and ears.

Creative’s website states that “Super X-Fi captures the listening experience of a high-end multi-speaker system in a professional studio, and recreates the same expansive experience in your headphones,” using “computational audio intensive techniques to custom fit audio, for every individual, through a sophisticated Head and Ear-Mapping process.”

It’s effectively a form of virtual upscaling, a kind of cheat code to prop up cheaper drivers with some software trickery. But it works! Having switched SXFI on and off a few hundred times in my testing, it’s now hard to listen to anything without it, even though it increased my listener fatigue – after a couple of hours of listening with SXFI, I really needed a break. So, SXFI makes the audio more impactful, but possibly for shorter bursts than the standard stereo experience.

My major complaint with these headphones was in watching TV shows or Twitch streams. Across various devices, the Zen Hybrid SXFI struggled to recreate anything other than dialogue tracks, with atmospheric soundtracks disappearing entirely. You’ll be fine for music through your phone, but maybe give Netflix a miss.

Sound quality score: 3.5 / 5

Creative Zen Hybrid SXFI review: Value

• Medley of premium features
• Sub-$100 price
• Looks better than you’d think

The Creative Zen Hybrid SXFI headphones are certainly good value – thanks to a host of advanced features including ANC, Super X-Fi audio, and the latest Bluetooth 5.3 standard. Not to mention a stylish design that suggests a somewhat higher asking price.

Its active noise cancellation leaves a little to be desired, but for the price there’s no doubt that its inclusion, and the little help it gives you, is still useful – while SXFI audio still helps to make sure these over-ear headphones sound better than they likely should for the price.

Value score: 4.5 / 5

Should I buy the Creative Zen Hybrid SXFI?

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

Creative Zen Hybrid SXFI review: Also consider

How I tested the Creative Zen Hybrid SXFI

• Tested for 2 weeks
• Used at home, on commutes, and in public cafes
• Predominantly tested using Spotify service on OnePlus 8

I’ve worked as a tech reporter and reviewer for seven years now, including a substantial stint at TechRadar as its News & Features Editor. I’ve tested countless headphones and covered audio tech in London, Las Vegas, Berlin and Shanghai.

My first over-ear headphones, back in 2009, were made by Creative, so I have a long history with the brand, and was excited to test out their products a full 15 years later.

I spent two weeks testing out the Creative Zen Hybrid SXFI headphones on several modes of transportation: flight, train and bus, as well as walks in my neighborhood. I primarily used my Android smartphone, a OnePlus 8, for testing, but switched to a Macbook Air for wired listening also.

• First reviewed in July 2024

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

Cambridge Audio Melomania P100: Two-minute review

The Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 wireless over-ear noise-cancelling headphones enter a sector of the market as cutthroat as they come – that of best noise-cancelling headphones. It’s a category that’s been ruled (at least in the under-$350 sub-sector) by Sony's XM-suffixed cans for some time now, but Cambridge Audio reckons it’s got what it takes to snatch the crown.

And, on paper at least, it’s off to a great start. Specification, from Class AB amplification to aptX Lossless compatibility, is impressive. Battery life, at up to 100 hours if you leave the ANC alone (not a typo, we mean one hundred), is the best around. Having Matt Berry as one of your options for ‘audible feedback’ is nothing less than a stroke of genius.

And the good news keeps coming. The P100 are flawlessly built and finished, from materials that are both tactile and reasonably up-market. Comfort is good. Ignore the relative size of the travel case and there’s nothing to take issue with here.

To seal the deal, the sound they make is endlessly listenable. There’s a stack of detail, a wide-open soundstaging, vaulting dynamic potency and an engaging, lively overall attitude that will keep you coming back for more. And with that epic battery life, of course, there’s plenty of ‘more’ to enjoy. 

Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 review: Price & release date

• Released on July 15, 2024
• Priced $279 / £229 / AU$479

The Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 wireless over-ear headphones have been available via Cambridge's website since they were announced on July 3, 2024, but every other stockist has had to wait until July 15 to offer them for sale.

At $279 / £229 / AU$479 they’re keenly priced when you consider how extensively they’re specified, that’s for sure – but don’t go thinking that there aren’t impressively specified alternatives from equally well-regarded brands at very, very similar money. Chief of those would be the Sony WH-1000XM5, which can be yours for a little more than the P100 these days (rather than a lot more, which is what they were when they launched), at around $329 / £319 / AU$549. 

Then, there's the Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless, which arrived in August 2022 and can be found for even closer to the Cambridge Audio P100's price, at around $299 / £269 / AU$450 in today's money.

However, at the risk of stating the blinkin' obvious, the P100 are brand new July 2024 cans. And a quick glance at our Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones review proves that Cambridge has priced them ever-so aggressively; Bose's top-tier October 2023-issue over-ears arrived with a price tag of $429 / £449 / AU$649. Food for thought, then. 

Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 review: Specs

Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 review: Features

• Class AB amplification 
• Up to 100 hours of battery life
• Bluetooth 5.3 with aptX Lossless compatibility

No matter what else happens during the course of this review, there’s no arguing with the way Cambridge Audio has specified the Melomania P100. And just because the company has plenty of previous where the features-per-pound ratio is concerned, that’s no reason to take it for granted – instead, let’s just take a moment to marvel at what these headphones offer relative to the money they cost.

Battery life is as good a place as any to start. I won’t pretend I wasn’t mildly sceptical about the quoted figures when these headphones first arrived, but having lived with them for a good while, and on a number of different continents, I can’t disagree. The P100 will run for 60 hours with active noise-cancellation switched on, and an epic 100 hours if it’s switched off. Yes, you have to be listening at unremarkable volume levels – but the fact remains, these numbers are achievable. And they’re way beyond what the vast majority of price-comparable rivals can offer. And should you be negligent enough to allow the worst to happen, five minutes on the power is good for a couple of ANC-enabled playback or four hours with it switched off.

The technology taking advantage of this prodigious battery life is equally impressive. Wireless connectivity, for example, is taken care of by Bluetooth 5.3 and there’s multipoint connectivity along with aptX Adaptive and aptX Lossless codec compatibility – so as well as lossy 24bit/96kHz file-streaming, there’s lossless 16bit/44.1kHz resolution available to those with an appropriate source player.

Unlike most Class D-toting alternatives, the Melomania P100 use hi-fi-tastic Class AB amplification – the same sort of technology deployed in its hugely successful CX range of full-size stereo amplifiers. This is used to power a couple of 40mm full-range dynamic drivers made from a three-layer composite arrangement of polyurethane sandwiched between polyether ether ketone. 

A total of six mics take care of active noise-cancellation, voice-assistant interaction and telephony – Cambridge Audio has deployed Qualcomm cVc echo-cancelling and noise suppression technology in an effort to maximise call quality. The ANC itself is a hybrid system, with ‘low’, ‘mid’ and ‘high’ settings available alongside a ‘transparency’ mode. 

• Features score: 5/5

Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 review: Sound quality

• Lively, detailed and confident presentation
• Nice tonal balance
•  ‘Very good’ ANC = ‘not class-leading’ ANC

Some wireless headphones at this sort of money like to make it obvious that certain things are beneath them. Some wireless headphones will take a 320kbps MP3 file from Spotify’s free tier and basically hold it up for ridicule. The Melomania P100 are not those headphones.

Obviously they prefer some 16bit/44.1kHz FLAC file action from Qobuz or Tidal. Obviously they prefer being hard-wired to a DAC/headphone amp churning out the 24bit/192kHz stuff even more. But they don’t judge – give them what you’ve got and they’ll do their best with it.

And ‘their best’ turns out to be very agreeable indeed. During the course of this test I listened to (for example) Jersey Girl by Tom Waits as a 320kbps MP3, Salt in the Wound by boygenius as a 16bt/44.1kHz FLAC file and a 24bit/192kHz FLAC file of David Bowie’s Sound and Vision – and the Melomania P100 are never less than entertaining and quite often impressively insightful.

Dynamic headroom, for instance, is considerable – so where the broad strokes of ‘quiet’ modulating to ‘loud’ are concerned, the Cambridge Audio are more than capable of keeping up. It doesn’t matter the increase in intensity, the P100 can track it without discernible stress. And the more subtle harmonic variations apparent in a voice or an instrument from note to note are picked up on just as readily. But while the P100 extract and contextualise a huge amount of detail from any given recording, they’re not analytical for the sake of it. More than anything, they’re an energetic and thoroughly engaging listen. 

From the top of the frequency range to the bottom, the Cambridge Audio are convincingly integrated and unwilling have any favorites. The bottom end is substantial, and it packs a punch – but there’s control to go along with the presence, and attack is so straight-edged that rhythms are expressed with real confidence. The opposite end has plenty of bite, but it’s not in any way thin or undernourished. There’s substance to treble sounds (as well as a whole lot of variation) to balance out their brilliance. And in between, the midrange manages to secure a little pocket of space in which to operate without sounding estranged from the rest of the frequency information – and has an eloquent, revealing way with a vocalist that allows character and attitude full expression.

Soundstaging is good, both in the simple size and impressive definition of the area. And despite the amount of room that’s available, there’s a tight unity and togetherness about the way the P100 present a recording. Tonally, the sound is fractionally warmer than ‘neutral’ – but this is a characteristic much more than it is a shortcoming. 

Really, it’s only where active noise-cancellation is concerned that the Cambridge Audio are anything less than fully and quite aggressively competitive. The ANC here is very acceptable, don’t get me wrong – it will do a job on external distractions of all types, and without leaving a counter-signal or shift in tonality in its wake. But there continues to be no two ways about it: if you want the best noise-cancellation available at a given price (and you don’t mind some sacrifices in other areas) you buy a pair of Bose.

• Sound quality score: 4.5/5

Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 review: Design

• Vegan leather earpads and headband
• Black or white finishes
• Physical, rather than touch, controls

Sensibly, there are no shocks to be had where the design of the Melomania P100 is concerned. They look, and feel, like a reasonably upmarket pair of wireless over-ear headphones. Although personally, I much prefer the black finish to the white – it’s more harmonious, somehow.

Anyway, the P100 are very agreeably built and finished, from a nice mixture of memory foam and vegan leather for the (detachable) earpads, more vegan leather on the outside of the headband with sturdy, nicely padded fabric on the inside. The adjustment mechanism is concealed inside the headband, and the arms, yokes and outer portion of the earcups are all of aluminium. An all-in weight of 330g is pretty ordinary by prevailing standards, and the nicely judged clamping force means the headphones are comfortable on the head for a good long time. Certainly for longer than it takes for the earpads to heat your ears up, that’s for sure.

There are a few physical controls distributed around the edges of each earcup. On the left there’s a slider that covers ‘power on/off’ and ‘Bluetooth pairing’, and a button that allows you to cycle through your ANC options (‘off’, ‘on’ or ‘transparency’) or summon your voice assistant. There’s also a USB-C socket for charging the battery, and it can also be used for data transfer – Cambridge Audio supplies nice USB-C / USB-C and USB-C / 3.5mm cables in the P100’s robust, but not especially compact, travel case. On the right earcup is the usual three-button strip, dealing with ‘play/pause’, ‘skip forwards/backwards’ and ‘volume up/down’.  

Other functionality is accessed via the ‘Melomania Connect’ app that’s free for iOS and Android. Here’s where you check for firmware updates, check on battery life, and select the level of noise-cancellation you’d prefer. It has a seven-band equaliser with half-a-dozen presets and the facility to save plenty of your own custom settings. It’s where you can switch ‘automatic play/pause’ on or off and enable ‘gaming mode’ (which will reduce latency to less than 80m/s). And it’s where you get to select the sort of audible feedback you’d like – switch it off, have tones tell you what’s what, or choose from one of nine different languages. 

Actually, there’s no difference in the language if you select ‘English’ or ‘Southwark’, but the latter, as with the Melomania M100 true wireless earbuds, is voiced by actor Matt Berry. This is as worthwhile a unique selling point as I think I’ve ever encountered – I’ve been using these headphones for quite a while now and am still nowhere near bored of hearing “device one… disconnected” delivered in the fruitiest voice imaginable. 

It’s worth taking a moment to appreciate Cambridge Audio’s commitment to ‘circularity’ of design here. The P100 packaging is plastic-free and 100 percent recyclable. The battery and the earpads are replaceable by the end user, using standard tools. 50% of the plastics used in the construction of the headphones, and 100 percent of the rare earth neodymium in the drivers, are recycled. None of which is to be sniffed at. 

• Design score: 4.5/5

Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 review: Value

• Remarkably thorough specification
• Frankly staggering battery life 
• Great across-the-board sound quality

When you line the Melomania P100 up against pretty much any price-comparable competitor (and quite a few that cost a bit more), the value for money they represent can’t really be argued with. 

Specification is ahead of the curve, battery life is as good as it currently gets, build quality and the standard of finish can’t be argued with. And the sound they make – detailed, direct and endlessly listenable – is profoundly competitive too. 

• Value score: 5/5

Should I buy the Cambridge Audio Melomania P100?

Buy them if...

Don't buy them if...

Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 review: Also consider

How I tested the Cambridge Audio Melomania P100

• Using iOS and Android devices
• Using a variety of Bluetooth codecs
• With music of many types

During well over a week of pretty much constant use, the Melomania P100 were connected to a MacBook Pro, an iPhone 14 Pro and a Samsung Galaxy S23 in order to listen to as many different codecs and sources of music as realistically possible. The music, naturally, was of many different file types, sizes and styles. Active noise-cancellation was tested by taking the Cambridge Audio with me on several journeys on public transport – which also helped me test the claims for battery life. 

• First reviewed: July 2024
• Read more about how we test