Boult Audio is not a new bee in the audio industry and is known for competing with brands like Noise and BoAt in India. It recently came out with a new pair of earbuds called Boult Z40 Pro, which sell for Rs 1,399. Are these earbuds appealing enough? We’ll try to find that out in our review of the Boult Z40 Pro TWS earbuds.
Design & Comfort
The Boult Z40 Pro has a uniquely designed case that opens upwards when held vertically. The earbuds then appear standing inside the case, in contrast to the general sitting position we see in the majority of the TWS earbuds.
The case has a rubberised grip finish, and the separation point of the lid and case extends up to the back, where the hinge for opening the lid resides. However, there’s no spring mechanism, meaning the hinge won’t hold itself open if you tilt the case down and will close. The colour we received was violet, which looks minimal. We liked the black colour better, which has a contrasting orange shade as well. Overall, it’s an impressively built case with a design that’ll definitely turn heads.
The comfort factor of the earbuds doesn’t disappoint either. The Z40 Pro TWS earbuds had a snug fit in my ear and didn’t fall off at any given point, even if I was shaking my head aggressively. In addition, these buds are IPX5-rated, making them splashproof.
There are a couple of issues, though, which I faced with the earbuds. They often stayed connected to my phone even when I put them in the case and closed it. While at times they’d shut down fine, more often they wouldn’t and I had to manually touch and hold on either of them to turn them off manually which was a bit of a hassle at times. Aside from that, the buds showed the same charge level the next day I’d pick them up even though they were in the case for the whole night. In other words, the buds didn’t charge the whole night.
Talking of touch controls, they are impressively responsive and quick to initiate the desired action. Touches like single tap, double tap, triple tap and even quadruple taps are supported and work in an instant. They are assigned to actions like play/pause, skip forward/skip back, volume up/down, game/music mode and voice assistant activation. As there’s no App support which we also wouldn’t expect at this price point, you cannot customise them.
Finally, there’s an LED on both the case and the earbuds where in the former, it would inform you about battery levels while in latter, it tells you about the pairing status.
Read More: March 2024: TWS Earbuds, Neckbands Launched in India
Audio, Call Quality & Battery Life
The audio in Z40 Pro depends on 10mm drivers. It supports Environmental Noise Cancellation, SBC, and AAC codecs and is equipped with 4 mics. The buds connect wirelessly via Bluetooth v5.3.
The audio quality of the Z40 Pro is surprisingly decent, considering the price. It focuses more on the treble and bass with a V-shaped equaliser for sound signature. There’s a slight echo effect in the sound but there’s ample bass for that thumping feel.
The vocals remain clear while the instrument separation is okay as well. The mid frequencies take a back seat but that doesn’t adversely affect the overall quality of the audio. I wouldn’t say its a balanced sound signature but it isn’t poor by any means.
The ENC does come into play while calling, which is unexpectedly nice for the price of the earbuds. It does pick up background noises when they are too loud, but in quieter conditions, your voice clearly goes through to the person on the receiving end.Â
Boult claims that the buds can support up to 45ms low Latency but that doesn’t seem to translate well in real world use. The latency is quite high and even with game mode ON, there’s only slight improvement which isn’t enough for an ideal experience.
Connectivity-wise, I faced no issues while connecting to various devices, and there were no breaks in audio or other issues of any kind.
As for battery life, Boult claims it can run for up to 100 hours with the case along with an 8 hour playtime with just the buds on a single charge. After using it for around 2 days, I still have ample battery left in the case so it can go on for a week without a recharge. However, I wasn’t able to reach the 8-hour mark but fell slightly short of it, maybe because I was always listening at high volume.