nuh media thread, page-672

Thanks Herb, great find - that's a very balanced and highly detailed review.

Nuheara IQBuds Review



In mid 2016 Nuheara started an Indiegogo campaign to bring “intelligent hearing” to the masses. IQBuds were designed to act as bluetooth ear buds that provide very specialized proprietary active noise canceling technology and assisted listening capabilities. By the end of their campaign they raised 1460% of their goal and were able to finalize their designs and begin mass production of these revolutionary new ear buds. Now it’s mid March of 2017 and I finally received my pair so I thought I would put them to the test and see how well they delivered on their promise to revolutionize hearing.


Nuheara isn’t the first company to promise to change the way I hear the world around me. In early 2016 I purchased Doppler Labs’ Here Active Listening System. You can find my review of them here. Get it? Anyway, the idea and technology behind Here and IQBuds is similar but the implementation and focus is very different. Here was designed primarily to augment the experience of listening to music around you. This was achieved though audio filters that would simulate different listening environments and effects like reverb and echo. It did provide decent noise canceling but the bulk of the features were a bit gimmicky. In contrast the IQBuds have focused clearly on removing the noise you don’t want to hear so you can focus on what you do.


When you first open the IQBuds box you will find the two ear buds as well as their charging case on a removable layer of thick molded cardboard. Below that are two compartments one contains a very small USB to Micro-USB charging cable. When I say small I am not exaggerating. I believe this cable is about six inches long. At that length you might expect the cable to some how fit inside the charging case but it does not. This would have been a great addition to the charging cable for a future revision. The second compartment contains what, at first glance, looks to be a pile of condoms. In fact these are the eight individually wrapped pairs of rubber ear pieces. They come in sizes from extra small to large and each is available in round and oval shape. In early testing Nuheara was very concerned with making sure you get a proper seal to your IQBuds and since no two ears are alike they provided a variety of sizes and shapes to help fit each person as well as possible. I have personally tried the large and medium ovals but I may try others to help balance comfort and a snug fit in my ears. All in all the packaging design is very reminiscent of Apple’s Phone packaging. The box looks like it would be right at home hanging in an Apple store.


Comfort can be a big issue with any earbuds. Unfortunately this is not an area that the IQBuds excel in. Even with the wide variety of rubber tips available, getting a tight seal that doesn’t hurt your ears is a bit of a chore. I started with the large oval tips and found that they made a very good seal but were uncomfortable for extended wear. Also, the buds themselves are very large. The instructions say to insert the buds at a 45 degree angle and then rotating them down to lock them into place. Though this does help hold them in place it can cause them to rub against the back of your ear which is uncomfortable at least and even some times down right painful. I’m only really comfortable wearing them for a few hours before my ears begin to hurt. This won’t be an issue for everyone but if you have smaller ears it is something to consider.
Pairing is a bit more complicated than most earbuds. Thankfully, when you first launch the IQBuds app you will be guided though the setup process step by step. The buds must first sync to your phone as a Bluetooth accessory from inside the app itself. At this point you can use all of the audio filtering modes but you can’t play music. To enable music playback you need to follow traditional headphone pairing instructions. In the case of IOS this means holding down one of the buttons on the ear buds for five seconds to enter pairing mode, opening the Bluetooth menu inside the Settings app and adding them to your Bluetooth device list. At this point they will appear in your devices list twice. One is for the app to transfer settings data to the buds and the other for music playback. After this is complete you are good to go. Once paired they will auto connect whenever powered on so you never have to mess with the settings again.
Controlling the IQBuds can seem a bit confusing at first because you have a lot of functionality built into just two buttons but after a little time with them they become fairly intuitive. Tapping the left ear bud will play and pause music. Double tapping the right or left buttons will activate Siri or Google Now voice controls. The right ear bud controls the IQbuds audio filtering features. Tapping will switch between the last two environment modes. Long pressing will cycle through the four favorite environment modes. Holding either the left or right buttons for five seconds will activate pairing mode. Music playback volume is controlled with the volume buttons on your phone while the volume of the IQBuds effects is controlled inside their app.
Absent are any controls to skip or go back a track while listening to music. If you want to restart or skip a song you will need to pull out your phone and do it manually. Personally I keep the audio playback controls active on my Apple Watch so I can skip tracks from my wrist. This mitigates the issue but still it seems that some of the button presses on the IQBuds are redundant and could have been better allocated to control other features. There really is no reason to have two ways to activate voice control or pairing mode. I would have preferred double tapping on the left bud to skip the playing track and pairing to only be accessible from on of the two ear buds.
Another area where the IQBuds could use some improvement is Bluetooth signal strength. I find that when my phone is resting on my desk I get flawless reception but when I put my phone in my right pants pocket I will get some dropouts during music playback. This gets even worse when you are outdoors. Since all the audio filtering is done inside the buds themselves this doesn’t cause any issues with noise processing but it can be a bit of an issue when listening to music. These are by no means the worst earbuds I have tried for Bluetooth signal dropouts but the aren’t the best either. Hopefully this is something Nuheara could address with a software or firmware update but it would probably trade battery life for signal strength.
Stress testing I was able to get just at 4 hours of music playback with the Music preset from a single charge. Once the battery level reaches 10% you will get a vocal warning that the battery is low. This will occur again at 2% and after that your just waiting for them to die. Compared to some other headphones I have used this is a welcome way to address the issue of low charge. The voice prompt is clear about what is happening. No random beep that could mean anything. Also only occurring at 10 and 2 percent it isn’t a major distraction. The BOHM headphones I previously reviewed would beep to indicate low battery. They would start beeping at 50% and continue to beep every five minutes until the battery finally died. This is a much nicer experience.
If you aren’t listening to music the entire time, the IQBuds can last much longer. Nuheara says they will last up to 16 hours when using only the environmental preset filtering modes. This is great news for commuters who may wish to use them on an airplane, subway or just on a busy city street. 16 hours of active noise cancelation or vocal enhancement is impressive for such tiny ear buds. It’s important to note that since you can control the volume of each bud independently, one may last longer than the other.
The IQBuds carrying case also acts as a charging station for the ear buds. The built in battery can fully charge the buds up to 4 times before the case itself needs to be recharged. Each recharge takes about an hour and 20 minutes to get the IQBuds back to full power, so there is a good bit of down time between uses. There is a single button on the front of the charging case that, when pressed, will light a red or green light for each bud to tell you when they have received a full charge. Opening the case you will find four lights to indicate the number of charges left in the case and a light for each bud to tell you if it has a full charge. Inside the lid of the charging case you will find six more lights. Four indicate the number of remaining charges in the case itself and the last two show red or green to tell you if the buds themselves are fully charged or not. A strong magnetic latch holds the case lid closed for storage and recharging the case is as simple as attaching a micro USB cable to the port on the back.
The IQBuds apps home screen shows the battery life remaining on the buds and allows you to adjust the “IQVolume.” Think of IQVolume as the amount of active volume boosting or noise cancelation is being applied to the outside world. You can also pull up the list of audio environment presets including Home, Office, Driving, Music, Workout, Street, Restaurant, and Plane. Each environment mode is tailored to enhance and filter a specific spectrum of the audio passing through the IQBuds. They can also be adjusted to change the strength of it’s effect. From this list you can chose the four different presets that you can cycle though from the ear buds themselves. This way way you don’t have to cycle though all of them when you probably only use two or three in the corse of a normal day. I picked Music, Home, Driving and Office but I will switch this up whenever I am traveling. There is also a slider controlled EQ level which gives very basic EQ controls to lower the low or high end of the equalizer.
There is also a tab for your “Personal Profile” These settings apply no matter what environment preset you select. They allow you to adjust what portion of the audio spectrum you wish the IQBuds to enhance. An EQ graph will help visualize the effect so you can make an informed decision about what you are enhancing. This setting is also configured separately for each ear. This allows you to to adjust the overall volume and filter threshold for each ear independently. This is great for people who may have a hearing disability that does not equally effect each ear or it can be used to allow you to use one ear to listen to low volume music while the other is boosting the volume of the room around you. I personally think this was a great addition on Nuheara’s part.
Lastly there is a tab dedicated just to help and documentation. You can replay the into feature walk though, get system information about your IQBuds, access a quick start guide as well as a full manual, contact support and access many other documents that you will probably never need. Regardless, it’s access to helpful information that may aid new users in getting accustomed to their new ear buds.
When a call comes in while you are using the IQBuds it will ring directly to the earbuds just like any headphones that can take calls. Tapping the left ear bud will answer the call and holding the button will end the call. While on the phone I was able to hear my caller clearly and they could hear me while I was speaking at a regular conversational volume. The audio quality wasn’t spectacular but it was perfectly reasonable for a phone call. There was also no noticeable delay in the conversation. Since you can activate Siri by double tapping the left ear bud you can use that to place calls without taking your phone out. All in all, nothing spectacular but perfectly adequate.
Before we get started with music playback testing, I would like to give a quick shout out to the Music environment preset here. This preset activates full active noise cancelation. Between the ANC and the passive isolation caused by the rubber seals on the ear buds, this mode truly blocks out the entire outside world. The effect is amazing. I don’t know how they do it but I could barley hear any outside noise in this mode at all. This is better than the ANC on my beloved B&O H8s and in my opinion may even best the Bose QC35s. Nothing gets by it and that is true an amazing feeling. If you want silence, just select the Music environment and just don’t play anything.
Now on to the music testing. As usual I turned to my trusty “Headphone Test” playlist on Spotify. This playlist is downloaded at Spotify’s highest quality setting of 320 kbit/s. It features 35 tracks covering a wide variety of different genres. Some tracks are just examples of a genre and others are examples of technical features like exemplary stereo separation or extreme low end frequencies. Since the IQBuds have tools to tune the sound output all testing was done on the Music preset with Live EQ disabled. This should provide the most comparable sound to any other headphones I have tested.
Good Mystery by Rubarth is a very interesting track. It was recorded live with a single stereo microphone in the center of the sound studio. You can hear the position of each instrument around you, not because a sound engineer digitally placed them but because that is where the instrument was in relationship to the microphone. I was surprised to feel how spacious this track was on the IQBuds. The drums in particular feel off behind you to your right. The strings are smooth and distinctly in front of you. Everything has it’s place and you can easily feel that place in these ear buds.
Ben Howard’s Old Pine features crisp acoustic guitar where each note rings out distinctly and clearly The subtle chorus on the vocals echoes ever so softly that it is easy to miss on lesser headphones. The sound is full of nuance and rich with emotion. This is the kind of track that shows how well acoustic tones can ring true.
Macklemore’s Thrift Shop provides a decent amount of bass for a pair of ear buds. Nothing like you will get from the 40mm drivers of a good pair of headphones but they do have enough thump that the low notes are well represented. That said the bass does muddy the lower mids a little bit. Macklemore’s voice comes though clearly but when Wanz is singing you can hear a bit of bleed into the bass. I wouldn’t say its bad but a little noticeable when everything else is so clear. Massive Attack’s Angel really shows how low the tiny drivers in the IQBuds can go. This track has a huge deep sub bass line that is remarkably audible but again the low mids get a bit muddy.
Electronica comes out well in Savant’s Diamond Blush. A lot is going on in this track and the samples feel clear and separate. There are a few places where the sounds play with your spacial awareness and the effect is noticeable. Hybrid’s I Choose Noise mixes synthetic sounds with samples of an orchestral string section and everything manages to play well together. The drums and strings fill most of the sound stage but other individual samples are easy to pick out. I think these buds do electronic music justice.
When it’s all said and done, the IQBuds are very competent ear buds for listening to music. They certainly don’t sound like $300 headphones but that isn’t really what they are for. Nuheara has produced an augmented reality product that allows you to filter out the background sounds of your life. You can focus on the things that matter to you and block out the rest. The ability to listen to music while you filter the sounds around you is the experience you are paying for and I think the IQBuds do a pretty good job at that. If you can get past the discomfort of wearing these buds for an extended period of time, I think they could change the way you interact with the world around you.