Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Can the $99 Crazybaby Air Nano earbuds beat the Apple Airpods at their own game? (review)

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Truly wireless earbuds are fantastic. Not dealing with any wires at all really makes you feel like you’re living in the future. Just pop earbuds in, fire up your music and you’re on your way. Or so you’d think, right?

With as cool as these sound, truly wireless earbuds come with a lot of disadvantages too. Whether that be connection issues, battery problems, or something else, there are a lot of areas of concern to consider when picking up a pair of wireless earbuds.

That’s why it’s so refreshing to find a pair of great earbuds in 2018. More and more, earbuds are hitting the market, but how do you know if they’re really any good? Sure, you could go pick up a pair Apple Airpods and know what you’re getting, but not everyone is comfortable with a $159 price tag, or handing over their cash to Apple.

That’s why there’s a massive fight to be an Airpods competitor right now. We’ve taken a look at several models from Anker, Syllable, YEVO, Optoma, and Rowkin, among others. But, the most promising candidate might be the latest offering from Crazybaby.

The Crazybaby Air Nano truly wireless earbuds are compact, sound great, and won’t break the bank. But, are they all they’re cracked up to be?

Sound Quality

We have spent the better part of the last two months using the Air Nanos as our “daily driver” earbuds. We were initially impressed with the sound quality that these little guys put out and that hasn’t faded.

It stands to reason when you miniaturize everything, you will have to sacrifice something. Normally that’s either battery life (more on that later) or sound quality. We were pleasantly surprised that Crazybaby figured out how to keep the audio quality with the Air Nanos.

Bass response is very strong considering the size of the drivers. We found that the Air Nanos often delivered as much, or more, bass as bigger, wired earbuds. That’s truly impressive.

The mids and highs were just okay and nothing really to write home about, but nothing offensive either. Listening to strong female vocalists can be a painful experience with low-quality earbuds, but we found sounds from Hayley Williams, Ariana Grande, and Demi Lovato (stop judging me) to be pleasant, but not great.

Overall, the Crazybaby Air Nanos aren’t going to reignite your long lost love for music, but they’re “fine.” They sound bad next to any decent quality wired earbuds or headphones, but for wireless earbuds, they get the job done adequately.

You’re always going to give up some sound quality with truly wireless earbuds and that’s a compromise you have to be willing to make to get rid of cables.

Battery

Battery life was just okay. We could stretch out the listening time to about two hours with the volume near 50% on our device. When you pop the volume up, you get closer to an hour of battery life. Not ideal, especially for those long workout sessions that we routinely participate in (totally). Crazybaby says that the Air Nanos are rated for three hours but we never got close to that number.

The charging case is also supposed to recharge the earbuds a total of three times (for a theoretical 12 hours of listening time). In practice, we got a little over two charges from the battery case, although your mileage may vary. The battery case also has some quirks like the fact that it won’t charge the earbuds if you’re also charging the case. This led to some frustration on a long car trip, but, hey, at least it uses USB type-C to recharge.

Build

If there’s one thing that Crazybaby absolutely nailed, it’s build quality. The Air Nanos feel dense and solid, like a quality product. I don’t have any doubt that they would stand up long term.

The soft rubber tips that enter your ear are comfortable and provide a nice seal, keeping out outside noise. While we wouldn’t call these noise isolating, it does help keep out most outside noise for a pleasurable listening experience.

The charging case is similarly well built. It feels like it is made of high-quality plastics and has strong magnets to keep it closed when its supposed to be. With a little force, the case opens up to reveal the earbuds. The case has metal contacts that the earbuds to sit in to recharge.

We did experience a few times where the Air Nanos weren’t seated perfectly and therefore didn’t fully charge. Overall, it’s a pretty good experience, but not perfect.

Conclusion

Generally speaking, we really enjoyed our time with the Crazybaby Air Nano truly wireless earbuds. Are they perfect? No, far from it. Battery life is on the poor side and the charging situation can be sometimes frustrating.

But, when they do work, they’re a contender. Sound quality isn’t anything to write home about, but it gets the job done. The Air Nanos are some of the smallest earbuds out on the market today and do offer decent sound quality.

The bass is very present and you can tell that Crazybaby was going for a more “Beats” sound signature here. While the bass can be a bit all over the place, we’re just happy that there’s some here at all.

If you decide to pick up a pair of the Crazybaby Air Nanos, you have to keep in mind the sacrifices you’re making to stay wireless. If those are sacrifices you’re comfortable making, we can recommend these.

Crazybaby Air Nano purchase links: Crazybaby

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