A new trend has blessed the truly wireless buds market, in which active noise cancellation or ANC is getting democratised. It used to be a feature reserved for high-end products, but now, budget buds under Rs 2,000 are taking advantage of it. The latest offering is the Truke Buds Vibe TWS which costs a measly Rs 1,599. Along with it, the earbuds offer up to 48 hours of playtime, Bluetooth 5.3, four preset modes, etc. All this is housed inside a funky transparent case.
Truke Buds Vibe
Rs 1,599
What Is Good?
- Punchy bass
- Decent battery life
- Comfortable fit
- ANC
What Is Bad?
- Case lid is prone to scratches
- Mid and high frequencies could have been better
- Sound starts to distort after 80% volume
So, are the Truke Buds Vibe ‘all sound and no noise’? Read on till the end of this review to find out.
Truke Buds Vibe Review: Design
The Truke Buds Vibe come in a rectangular case with a translucent lid, which looks like the OPPO Enco Air 3. The case of the buds can be opened single-handedly with just a flick of your thumb, producing a loud, satisfying click. The lid of the case uses a thinner, flimsier plastic, which catches scratches sooner than a chalkboard catches chalk dust.
The Buds Vibe is available in Blue, Yellow and Black. We have ours in blue, which is pleasing to the eye.
At the front is the novelty factor – an LCD battery level indicator. The bottom hosts a Type-C port for charging.
The magnets that hold the buds inside the case are strong. The buds have a long stem on top with some contours to help with touch controls, which can sometimes be a bit too sensitive. For example, while adjusting an earbud into the ear, even a light touch can pause the song.
The ear tip is curved and angled for a comfortable-yet-secure fit. Truke hasn’t specified the weight, but they were light and easy to carry.
During the course of our review, we jogged and worked out with these buds, and they did a good job staying put securely in our ears.
The earbuds are IPX5 protected, meaning they can only deal with water splashes.
Truke Buds Vibe Review: Audio Performance
The Truke Buds Vibe pack 13 mm dynamic drivers, which is slightly bigger than other buds in the same range. Taking advantage of the bigger drivers, these buds have the bass boost sound profile by default. You can change it to balanced, dynamic audio and movie mode by holding the left earbud. Unfortunately, there’s no companion app that helps you change the equaliser at a molecular level, and that’s something we sorely missed. The earbuds also skip the in-ear detection feature, but that’s alright for the price.
We had several music, movies and gaming sessions with these earbuds, with the volume set between 60 to 70 per cent as the sound distorts after this point.
The overall sound quality of the Truke Buds Vibe is fine for the price. The low-frequency response seems to be the main focus of Truke for these earbuds, as its target audience is youngsters who enjoy fast-paced music. So, if you are a fan of Punjabi songs from the likes of AP Dhillon, Diljit Dosanjh and Karan Aujla, you are going to like the overall output.
But the Buds Vibe need polishing when it comes to high and mid frequencies. The vocals could have been more clear, and the sound output could have been better.
Electropop songs like Unstoppable by Sia include multiple instruments that feel a bit flat. Dandelions, a song centred around the rich vocals of Ruth B, sounded a bit muddy. Suzume by RADWIMPS sounded great initially, but the narrow soundstage was very noticeable when the beat dropped.
Pairing these earbuds was easy as they come with Bluetooth 5.3 with quick pair functionality. We lifted the earbuds from the case, and they were ready to pair. The connection was mostly stable, and we didn’t encounter any major drops.
The most unique selling point of the buds is, of course, active noise cancellation. Truke claims to cancel up to 35 dB of ambient noise. The buds can easily drown out the whirring of the fan and some traffic sounds, but they struggle a bit with mixed noises, such as those in a metro commute. Entering the ANC mode is cumbersome, though; you need to hold both earbuds for three seconds.
Transparency mode gives you almost superhuman hearing, but not the way you’d expect it to be. It tends to focus more on the ambient sounds instead of the voices around you. This is something we didn’t experience on other earbuds.
Each earbud has two mics which makes the calling quality good. So not only was our voice clear in a silent room, but also inside a fully packed metro.
A dedicated gaming mode on the Truke Buds Vibe is claimed to bring down the latency to 40ms. However, we could not feel any difference while gaming after enabling it.
Truke Buds Vibe Review: Battery
The Truke Buds Vibe case has an LCD battery indicator on the front, which shows you the precise battery percentage in numbers. This seems very cool but can induce battery anxiety sometimes.
Getting down to the brass tacks, the case packs a 300mAh battery, whereas each of the buds carries about 40mAh of charge. The claimed total playback figure is 48 hours, along with the charging case.
Individually, with ANC turned on, the earbuds lasted almost four hours for us. We could extract another hour out of these after turning off the ANC. We had to charge the case twice a week to keep going.
Truke Buds Vibe Review: Verdict
Overall, the Truke Buds Vibe TWS earbuds are an ideal pick for someone who likes punchy bass and ANC. However, if you’ve set your budget strictly at Rs 1,500, we’d say an extra 100 bucks will take you a long way.
They offer a decent sound tuned for bass heads, good battery life and a comfortable fit. We would have counted the transparent design as another positive point, but after two weeks of using it, the beauty has just faded away.
If you want earbuds that have clearer vocals and are ready to sacrifice ANC, then you can check out the Redmi Buds 3 Lite (review), available at the same price.
