PROS
Interesting noise-canceling and hearing-enhancing modes. Comfortable.
CONS
Expensive. Noise cancellation isn't up to par with competitors. Weak lows and low-mids.
BOTTOM LINE
Nuheara promises noise cancellation and hearing enhancement with its wire-free IQBuds earphones, but their performance doesn't merit the high price.
BYWILL GREENWALD
Wire-free earphones are still a new category, and manufacturers are trying to put a spin on the concept to make it their own. Nuheara's going beyond music with noise-canceling earphones that can also enhance your hearing. The IQBuds feature noise-processing technologies that blot out background sound to help you hear speech in noisy environments. But at $299 they're expensive, and don't sound good enough to justify the price. Although the hearing enhancement is a neat trick, the noise cancellation isn't up to par with what you get from industry leaders like the Bose Quietcontrol 30.
Design, Battery, and Pairing
The IQBuds are black-and-silver, teardrop-shaped plastic earpieces with eartips that protrude at an angle from the ends. Unlike traditional Bluetooth earphones, there's no wire connecting the two buds. A touch-sensitive control sits on the back panel of each earpiece, providing play/pause/call answer functionality for the left ear and listening mode selection for the right. You can also activate your phone's voice assistant by double tapping either earpiece, but you can't rewind or skip tracks.
Large L and R letters embossed on the inner sides of the earpieces indicate which ear they fit in, and four recessed contact points on the same side charge the earphones with the included case. The earphones themselves feel comfortable, and while they lack any sort of stabilization fins, they fit securely in my ears. This is thanks to the eight pairs of included silicone eartips. You can choose between extra small, small, medium, or large round or oval tips. The wide selection helps ensure you find a pair that form a comfortable seal in your ear canal, no matter the shape of your ear.
The charging case is a 1.3-by-4.0-by-1.8-inch (HWD) black plastic clamshell that opens up to reveal two recesses the earphones fit in while charging. When you open the case, indicator LEDs for each earphone glow green if fully charged and red if charging, and a row of four LEDs below them show how much power is left in the battery pack. When you close the case, left and right LEDs glow red to indicate the earpieces are charging (and to let you know that you need to reseat the earpieces if they don't light up).
Nuheara claims a battery life of four hours of listening to music or eight hours of hearing processing (explained below). The charging case can top them off three times, for an additional 12 hours of music or 24 hours of hearing processing. By comparison, the Apple AirPods last for up to five hours of music per charge, with their charging case holding an additional 24 hours of battery life.
Pairing the IQBuds is simple. Just hold the touch sensors on both earpieces down for a few seconds to put them in pairing mode, then connect via your phone's Bluetooth menu. A free Android and iOS companion app also walks you through the pairing process if you use it. A New Noise Cancellation
The big appeal of the IQBuds isn't simply the ability to listen to music, but to enhance your hearing. Nuheara calls this technology SINC, or Super Intelligent Noise Cancellation. The IQBuds have a variety of listening modes. Music, obviously, is optimized for listening to tunes. The rest use the earphones' microphones (a pinhole located on each back panel) to enhance the sound around you based on your location. There are modes for Driving, Home, Office, Plane, Restaurant, Street, and Workout, and you can select up to four of them as favorites through the app. Once selected, it's easy to toggle between them with long presses on the right earpiece.
Each location mode is designed to block out different levels of background noise while still letting you hear people talk. It lets the IQBuds function like a cross between noise-canceling earphones and hearing aids, but without quite the singular purpose and engineering of either device. While noise-canceling earphones precisely block outside noise, the IQBuds simply dampen it to different extents. And while hearing aids are built specifically for patients with significant hearing impairment, the IQBuds boost certain frequencies to help you better make them out.
The IQBuds app lets you control just how much noise is canceled out or enhanced for each mode. You can make the earphones lean more heavily toward low, middle, and high frequency noises, and even individually adjust each earphone's settings. The app is clean and minimal, but a lack of identifying text means adjustments can feel obtuse and confusing unless you look up the app's documentation, which is on Nuheara's site.
All the non-Music listening modes are set to bring out voices while blocking other noises like street sounds or the hum of vehicles, while Music mode blocks out all outside noise like standard noise-canceling earphones. You can also set any mode to completely block out noise by tapping the SINC icon in the app, but there's no way to toggle this feature on the earphones themselves besides just switching back to Music mode by tapping the right earpiece.
The variety and customization options are impressive, but pure noise cancellation doesn't hold a candle to the wired Bose QuietComfort 20$249.00 at Amazon or wireless (but not wire-free) Quietcontrol 30. I still heard a fair amount of background noise on the subway wearing the IQBuds, while the Bose headphones and the Plantronics Backbeat PRO 2 are able to keep train rumbling to a minimum.
The hearing enhancement effect is interesting, but to my ears doesn't sound particularly powerful or vital. I tried the Office, Street, and Subway modes in their respective locations. In each case, voices sounded fairly clear while the IQBuds suppressed sounds like foot traffic and street noise. However, because the earphones are bringing out some frequencies while canceling others, it tends to result in a constant low-level whine or hiss, depending on the mode. It's an irritating noise that I found outweighed any hearing benefits. If you have pronounced hearing difficulties you might find this feature more useful than I do, but at a certain level of hearing impairment, a medical solution should be sought over a consumer electronics one. Music Performance
The IQBuds handle bass fairly well, though with the relative lack of power we've come to expect from wire-free earphones. They play The Knife's "Silent Shout," our bass test track, without a hint of distortion at maximum volume. However, even at maximum volume both the bass synth and kick drum lack the deep low-end force that gives the track its thumping power (and makes many headphones dangerous to listen to at those volume levels). See How We Test Headphones
The Protomen's "Light Up The Night" shows off the IQBuds' tendency to lean toward mids and mid-highs. The steady 80s-style snare hits sound more poppy than punchy. Both the main vocals and the backing chorus sound clear. However, when the lead singer hits lower notes his voice fades a bit, highlighting the relatively weak low-frequency performance.
This can be heard in Yes' "Roundabout" as well. The acoustic guitar notes sound crisp and the texture of the strings really comes through, but when the slap bass kicks in it lacks the low-end force necessary to really drive the opening of the song. Without more powerful low-mids to help accommodate the missing sub-bass, the sound is slightly brittle and lacks much warmth or fullness. I tried adjusting the EQ settings in the app to bring out the low frequencies as much as possible, but it didn't help much.
The AirPods deliver a stronger sense of bass depth, but the lack of an in-canal seal means you need to fiddle around a bit to experience it. The Bragi Dash earphones also deliver more powerful low frequency response, along with built-in fitness tracking features and memory for storing music. Conclusions
The Nuheara IQBuds are promising wire-free earphones that don't fully deliver. The hearing processing features are potentially useful for keeping up with conversations in noisy areas, but they produce a noise artifact of their own and don't have the precision of true hearing aids. And on the noise cancellation front, the IQBuds simply fall short. If you want a set of wire-free earphones for listening to music, you're better off with the Apple AirPods. If the wire-free aspect isn't vital to you, the Beats BeatsX and Jaybird X3 both offer excellent audio performance for half the price (or less). And if noise cancellation is your biggest priority, the Bose QuietControl 30 offers the best you can buy in earphone form.
NUH Price at posting:
9.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
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