Wicked Audio's Cron earbuds have so much battery, they can charge your phone

These days, information technology seems similar nigh every company has some level of true wireless earbuds. Some earbuds want to become toe-to-toe with Apple's wildly successful AirPods, offer intelligent features and noise cancellation. Others compete by undercutting the cost while offering similar audio quality or other features.

Enter Wicked Audio's 'Cron' earbuds. While the earbuds' name leaves something to be desired, these low-cost true wireless buds make up for it in well-nigh every other fashion. Wicked Sound sent me a pair to test out and after a week of use, they've left me impressed. From phenomenal bombardment life to decent sound quality, the Cron are difficult to shell at their price.

However, the most important role of any earbud is comfort. I similar wearing earbuds like this throughout my day, every bit they're useful for making phone calls and listening to my favourite music on Spotify. With lengthy use in mind, earbuds that hurt after a while aren't ideal.

The Cron handle this aspect fairly well. The buds are small and lite. I constitute they fit well. On the dorsum of each bud is a 'secure loop fin' that helps it stay in your ear, which besides worked well. Substantially, you lot put the bud in your ear tip first, then twist information technology downwardly so the fin locks in place behind the ridge of your ear.

While information technology worked for me, someone with larger ears may have some trouble locking the buds in identify. Oddly, you can remove the rubber fins, just the box didn't include other sizes for someone with bigger ears. Even so, at that place are unlike rubber tips in the box, as with nearly earbuds.

Battery for days

Equally comfy every bit the earbuds were, I did find that prolonged employ would make the border of my ears sore. Adjusting the bending of the bud then the fin didn't press into my ear as much helped in that regard. Regardless, I was still able to wear the Crons for longer than I could other true wireless buds.

It was a practiced affair, too, since the battery on these is difficult to kill. The buds themselves sport about six hours of battery life, which I found to exist authentic. Nonetheless, the instance pushes the full bombardment upwardly to an impressive 60 hours. The Cron case doubles as a portable powerbank as well, sporting a USB-A port and then you tin can plug your telephone into it. It's a handy feature, but one I didn't find necessary — I've already got a sizable powerbank with USB-C and fast charging. For someone who wants to save some money, still, the Cron earbuds offer an excellent 2-in-i solution.

They too take about two hours to recharge, which is probably 1 of Cron'southward biggest bug. Bated from the earbuds taking a long time to juice up, the conveying case also takes forever to recharge — about 5 hours, to be exact. Considering how much power the case holds, I tin forgive the long charge time, merely it'd exist nice if there was some level of quick charging included.

The case does support Qi wireless charging, which is user-friendly, but also rather dull. Annoyingly, the Cron case doesn't have an easy way to tell what level the case battery is at. The single LED light on the back of the case flashes orangish when charging and turns solid when fully charged.

However, the LED too flashes orange when charging the buds, so it tin exist difficult to tell what's actually happening when it comes to charging. I'd prefer if the Crons offered a set of LEDs that could give a rough idea of the battery level.

One other drawback is the instance is bulky due to the large battery. It's non heavy, just big and bad-mannered.

Rock-solid connections

Another important metric for true wireless earbuds is connection quality. Most wireless buds like this daisy-concatenation the buds together. In other words, one bud connects to the phone and the other connects to the first bud. Some other wireless earbuds I've tried had connection problems, either from bud to phone or bud to bud. The Crons did not — my music never stuttered while walking with my phone in my pocket, and 1 bud never lost connexion with the other.

Pairing the buds to my phone was a elementary process and subsequent employ was a cakewalk. When you accept the Crons out of the charging example, they turn on automatically, connect to each other and then connect to the phone. When the buds successfully connect, they make a 'whoosh' sound to allow you lot know they're set to go.

Virtually every fourth dimension, the buds were already making the sound by the time I was placing them in my ears.

Finally, the Crons support a 'unmarried bud' fashion, which is helpful if you want to use them simply don't want both buds in your ears. For instance, I used single bud manner every bit a makeshift Bluetooth headset when driving.

Since the right bud acts equally the 'communicator' between the left bud and your telephone, the easiest manner to employ single bud mode is to merely take the correct Cron out by itself and put it in your ear. If y'all leave the left bud in the case, it stays off and the right Cron goes into single bud style. If you lot apply the left bud, you lot'll have to pair information technology again since it doesn't normally communicate with your phone.

To go dorsum to normal usage, just put the single bud back in the example with the other Cron, and so remove them both.

Passable sound quality

Finally, the Cron earbuds offering decent sound. They're not the best sounding earbuds I've always used, just for the price and other features, they're more fine.

On the hardware side, the Crons sport a 6mm neodymium driver with 105dB sensitivity, 16-ohm impedance and xx-20,000Hz frequency.

In your ear, still, the buds offer a surprising amount of bass and respectable range. For me, I found the earbuds more capable for listening to music and podcasts while commuting on the train and streetcar. The Crons feature noise isolation, then they block out some sound, only they don't have total racket cancellation similar the AirPods Pro. That said, I didn't find the typical noise of my commute to be a problem.

My biggest gripe with the sound quality is a lack of clarity in the sound. Compared to some high-terminate headphones I utilize, the Cron seemed noisy and lacked detail. Don't get me wrong, the Cron still sound okay. But if you want to hear the nigh in your music and podcasts, you'll want something more.

It all comes downwardly to coin

At the end of the day, the Cron offer a lot for $129.99 CAD. Compared to $329 for the AirPods Pro or even $269 for the AirPods with wireless charging, the Cron are significantly less expensive. When you cistron in the longer battery life, it's hard to deny the value in these earbuds.

That said, there are some drawbacks to the Cron. Namely, the earbuds don't offer agile dissonance cancellation. On top of that, Cron don't take smart features either. That ways no Siri on iOS devices and no Google Assistant on Android. The center push on the Cron lets you reply incoming calls, play/intermission music and skip to the next or previous rail, and that's about information technology.

If you're looking for earbuds with phenomenal battery life and you don't want to break the banking concern, look no farther than Cron. However, if you desire noise cancellation, high-fidelity sound, or even access to smart features similar Siri or Google Banana, you may want to wait elsewhere.

Fifty-fifty if you do make up one's mind the Cron is the way to go, you may accept a hard time finding them. A Wicked Audio spokesperson confirmed to MobileSyrupthe earbuds would retail for $129.99 in Canada but didn't share where to buy them. Further, Wicked sells several other truthful wireless earbuds in Canada through Amazon, but Cron currently isn't listed on the company'southward products page. Hopefully they'll be available in that location presently.

In the concurrently, those interested tin purchase the Crons from Wicked Sound's website, merely the pricing is in USD ($99.99 to be exact, which works out to just a few dollars more than the $129.99 Canadian toll with the conversion). While not ideal, at to the lowest degree there isn't significant markup if you want to purchase them that manner.