Many new companies have been entering the Indian audio market after witnessing the business’s potential. One such company is 1More, a consumer audio company. It launched its first set of audio products in India back in early August, and one of the products was TWS earbuds called Omthing AirFree Pods.
These earbuds are priced at Rs 3,999 in India. TWS earbuds at this price usually sound decent and have a good set of features. So let’s check what Omthing AirFree Pods has to offer.
Design & Comfort
Talking about the design of the earbuds, they take inspiration from Apple’s AirPods but with a slight twist. It’s not exactly like the shape of AirPods, but it is not the best I have seen. The stem has a matte finish on the outer side, with the whole bud being made of plastic.
The earbuds have a 4 mic setup, with each earbud being equipped with two mics. Coming to the case, it’s a square-shaped one with a matte finish all over. There’s a Type-C port at the back to charge the case. There’s also a nylon strap as well so you can attach it to your belongings.
The case feels nice to the touch, but the cover is a bit flimsy when opened. Yes, the mechanism is smooth, but it will easily close itself if pointed downwards. The magnets keeping the buds in position aren’t that much strong either. Now, talking about the comfort and fit of the earbuds, it was a bit disappointing. As it’s entirely made of plastic, it starts causing discomfort after a certain time period.
Also, I could easily hear my surroundings even after inserting the buds properly in my ear. Fortunately, they didn’t fall out, but this is not a snug fit, and one can easily hear everything happening around them. I feel rubber ear tips would have been better both with comfort and isolating the noise as well.
Read More: 1More enters Indian Market with Omthing audio products
Audio Quality
First, let me get you through the specs of the earbuds that should sound interesting to you. The buds equip 13 mm composite titanium dynamic drivers. In addition, it has a Qualcomm chip and supports aptX and AAC codecs which allow faster transmission and a more stable connection.
There’s also support for advanced Qualcomm cVc 8.0 noise-cancelling technology and 4 built-in ENC (Environmental Noise Cancellation) mics, as mentioned before. However, these impressive specs fail to translate into real-time usage. In addition, the audio quality from the 13mm drivers isn’t the most pleasant. It focuses more on the higher frequencies, drops down a bit in mid frequencies with little to no response in lower range frequencies.
This is definitely not made for the bass lovers as there’s almost no bass in the audio. The only thing that you will be able to hear clearly are the lyrics. The lyrics even overshadow the music in some songs. I figured that the Dolby Equalizer present in my OnePlus should help to handle the situation, but unfortunately, it didn’t. It did improve the sound quality to some extent but couldn’t bring the bass response I was looking for.
The earbuds also have touch controls that are super confusing and over sensitive. I had to adjust the earbuds multiple times and every time I went to do that, a gesture would get triggered. One can use the controls to skip or go back to the next track, change the volume, accept or decline calls, and more.
Talking about some of the issues I faced, the right earbud was the troublemaker. First, it failed to pair with my phone after a firmware upgrade through the Omthing app. After a lot of tries and resets, I was finally able to pair. After that, the battery life of the right earbud dropped 2x faster than the left earbud. A full recharge solved the issue.
And finally, I could hear a hissing noise in my right ear after wearing these. These issues started after I upgraded to the latest firmware. However, the left earbud was fine. So we don’t know if it was an issue with the unit we received or if its present universally.
App support, Call Quality, Battery Life
The Omthing App is useful only to the extent of changing the touch controls and upgrading the firmware. Apart from that, it doesn’t provide anything else, such as a custom equalizer.
The call quality on the Omthing AirFree Pods was surprisingly impressive. The Qualcomm CvC technology does work quite nicely. The other person could hear me without any disturbances and with full clarity. Even I could hear them very clearly. They didn’t complain of any excessive background noise either and the calling experience was pretty good.
Lastly, the Omthing AirFree Pods are claimed to last approximately 5 hours at 50% volume. With 60% volume, I could almost touch these numbers. The case can easily provide up to 3-4 full charges for the earbuds. The kind of battery life I got was finally something I loved about the TWS earbuds.