PLAY, popular for its mobile accessories recently launched PLAYGO T44, the company’s first True Wireless Earbuds. These have a splash-resistant body, EBEL (Enhanced Bass and Extra Loud) 10mm drivers for crisp audio, promises up to 4 hours of standalone and 20+ hours of battery life with the case. Let us dive into the review to find out if this one is good.
Box Contents
- PLAYGO T44 in White colour
- USB Type-C Cable
- User manual and warranty information
Design and Build Quality
Starting with the design, the headset comes in a small box that fits in your pocket. There is a Play branding on the top. The box is made of plastic, but doesn’t attract fingerprints or prone to scratches. Total weight of the case is about 40 grams and the earbuds weigh about 3.5 grams per bud, which is light for comfortable long period of use. The case measures 73×39.19x27mm and the earbuds measure 16.56×41.77×17.49mm.
The earbuds don’t have any LED light, but the box comes with an LED on the inside that glow in green and orange colours.
There earbuds have a half-in-ear design. There are touch controls on both the earbuds on the top of the stem that lets you play or pause music, go to previous or next song, launch voice assistant and accept or reject calls, but you can’t control volume or turn off the earbuds. Check them out below.
| Function | Left earphone (L) | Right earphone (R) |
| Play/Pause | Double tap | |
| Previous Song | Long touch | |
| Next Song | Long touch | |
| Answer call | Double Tap | |
| End a call | Long touch | |
| Voice Assistant | Triple Tap | |
Even though these are not in-ear buds, these fit your ears firmly and doesn’t fall off easily during workouts or even when running. I have been using this for my runs for an hour without any issues. Since it comes with IPX4 ratings, it can withstand sweat and light rain, but you can use it in the shower or go swimming wearing it.
Audio Quality
Coming to the audio quality, these earbuds offers good audio quality with decent bass for the price, thanks to proprietary EBEL (Enhanced Bass and Extra Loud) 10mm drivers. Even though these are not in-ear earbuds the passive noise isolation is decent. It has support for high quality AAC audio codec, so once you enable this in the Bluetooth settings, audio quality is slightly better. We did not face any connectivity issues or latency issues when listening to music or video playback, but there is no dedicated low-latency mode for gaming, which is common even in budget earphones these days. Overall the audio quality is better than expected in most conditions.
The earbuds have a tiny microphone on the bottom which is decent in most cases in picking up your voice clearly for calls. The company says it has echo noise cancellation to cut background noise in calls, which works well. It might struggle in crowded and noisy environment, which is common most Bluetooth headsets in the price range.
Connectivity, Pairing and AI assistant
The Bluetooth headset supports Bluetooth 5.0, so you can connect it to Android, iOS devices along with MP3 players with Bluetooth support. You need to put the earbuds into the case, keep the case open and it shows up on the Bluetooth list on the phone, if it doesn’t you can press the button on the case for 3 seconds until it flashes white slowly indicating it is in pairing mode. You just have to select the PLAYGO T44 from the Bluetooth menu on the phone to pair the earbuds. Left earphone automatically connects to right earphone, and you hear the audio feedback ‘connected’. Each earbud can be used independently. You can remove any one earbud from charger case, it automatically becomes master earpiece.
The headset doesn’t have a companion app, but you can launch Siri on iOS and Google Assistant on Android devices when you triple tap right or right earbuds thrice.
Battery Life
The company promises about 4 hours of battery life, and we managed to get about 3 and half hours of battery life on a single charge with about 70% volume, which is good. The headset automatically turns off when it’s not in use. The case has 500mAh battery in the case promises a total 20 hours of battery life. If you have Android phones running Android 8.1 or later, you can see battery life of the Bluetooth headset. It gives audio prompts to charge the headset when the battery is low.
Charging the case from 0 to 100% takes about 2 and half hours using USB Type-C port. The LED light on the case lights up indicating the charge.
- 50 to 100% Green light for 10 seconds
- 10 to 50% Orange light for 10 seconds
- <10% Orange light flashes for 10 seconds
Conclusion
Overall, the PLAYGO T44 is a good budget true wireless earbuds for a price tag of Rs. 2999. It has a light-weight design and a compact case, comes with AAC audio and good audio quality, has IPX4 certification and offers good battery life when combined with the case. Even though the case has LED indicators, the earbuds lack a dedicated low-latency mode. It is available from PLAY e-store, and Amazon.in online and PLAY offline stores across India.