Aipower introduced Wearbuds as the world’s first wireless earbuds that can be charged inside a fitness band back in June on Kickstarter, which ended few weeks back. The company has moved on Indiegogo. I’ve been using the wearbuds for sometime now, and here is the first impressions.
Box Contents
- Aipower Wirless Earbuds in Shiny Black color
- 2 x Ear tips
- Fitness Band
- Magnetic charging cable
- Quick Start Guide and Warranty information (2 years)
The Wearbuds has a 0.96-inch (160 x 80 pixels) 65k color TFT touchscreen which shows the date, time and battery capacity. It also shows smartphone notifications which are customizable for calls, texts and social apps using Aipower app. You can just swipe the screen to view heart rate, daily report that shows steps, distance, calories burnt and floors climbed. The band has 7-axis accelerometer (including a pressure sensor).
The Sport option lets you choose several modes such as Walking, Running and Cycling. You can just select one activity, and it starts measuring the distance, calories burnt and heart rate. You can double tap to pause it. It also has sleep tracking. The touch response is decent, but it could have been better since you need to swipe the display hard to register input. This could be improved in the final unit shipping to customers. The screen doesn’t get scratched easily.
There is a heart rate sensor on the back. You can see the charging pin, and the bundled magnetic cable easily attaches to the back, and you can charge it by plugging it in any USB port, including power banks. The band has ARM Cortex M4 processor.
The earbuds has a shiny look, weigh just 3.5 grams each, and can be placed in wristband, so that you don’t lose them. It can also charge the earbuds immediately you put it in place, so you don’t need to carry a separate charging case. You just have to press to place or remove the earbuds inside the band, which locks it securely, so that the buds don’t fall off accidentally. The buds have IPX6 ratings for water resistance.
The earbuds are small, and come with Qualcomm chipset with aptX codec, graphene-augmented drivers and Bluetooth 5.0 technology offering good audio output with good amount of bass as well. It also supports mono mode so that you can use one or both earbuds for calling, which is decent in normal environment, but not the best in noisy condition due to the tiny microphone, which is common in most earbuds. The buds offer good passive noise cancellation, but it might be a bit tight on the ear for some. It also has touch controls to change the track, play or pause and can also be used to send voice commands to Google Assistant on the phone.
Each bud have 35mAh battery that promise up to 5.5 hours of battery life, and with the band it will offer up to 12 hours. The battery life will be less if you are charging the earbuds, since they charge when you place it in the band, and there is no way to disable the charging.
The company says that it has used skin-friendly silicone band and adds that the hybrid silicone allows the ear-tips are able to achieve more effective passive noise cancellation. The band can be removed easily since it uses a simple locking mechanism. It a 160mAh battery that offer up to 7 days of battery life, but this will be less since the buds are charged inside it. It takes about 90 minutes to charge the band fully.
It is priced at $99 (Rs. 7088 approx.) on Indiegogo, however our readers can get the Wearbuds at $89 (Rs. 6375 approx.) ($10 off) through this Indiegogo secret perk link (Limited to first 100, so hurry!) for limited period. Shipping begins December 2019, according to the company.