In short, the new Status Pro X wireless earbuds offer excellent comfort in a sleek package that’s as ready to hit the road as you are. The overall sound quality and feature set are top of the class for this price point, so if you’re in the market for Bluetooth-enabled earbuds to complement your mobile lifestyle, keep reading for our full rundown and takeaways after wearing these for a few weeks.
OUT OF THE BOX
So, as Brad Pitt would want to know, what’s in the box? You get the slim charging case and USB-C charging cable, the earbuds themselves, and a few sets of different-sized silicone tips to choose from. I found out during testing that apparently one of my ear canals needed a slightly larger sized tip, so it was handy to have 3 pairs to select from right out of the gate. One medium and one large did the trick perfectly. You get the standard paperwork and quick start guides, as well, which is really all you need to get going.
You’ll be prompted to download the app for your smartphone and once you’re in, the setup process is a breeze. You charge the buds in the case, of course, all over the now ubiquitous USB-C standard, and each charge gives you about 8 hours of on-the-go playback, and a fully charged case will get you up to about 22-24 hours of total play time in our experience. That’s excellent, and if you’re like me and just keep the buds in a plugged-in case when not in use, you’ll never even have to think about charging anyway. Just pull them out in the morning and they’re always ready to last all day long.
FIT AND FINISH
The earbuds are incredibly well-designed, featuring 3 tiny drivers including a dedicated sub for bass response, and they look ultra-futuristic in the sleek black housing. For workout enthusiasts they are sweat resistant (we can attest to this as we wore them to the gym, out on the trails and during some intense cardio) and can even sense when they’re in your ear so they’ll automatically pause music or podcast playback if you happen to take them out of your ears. Very nice touch.
Speaking of touch, controls are all touch-sensitive, so you just tap to pause and play, hold down a finger on the outer casing to adjust volume up and down and can even take and hang up calls with a simple touch. Noise cancellation and on/off functionality is touch-enabled as well, and all of this is even customizable in the app. So you can set what types of touches control which options.
SOUND QUALITY
All of that is great and all, but how do they sound? Well, for such a small form-factor, our tests were excellent. We tried out all the included EQ settings and found the default was actually bang-on in terms of what we wanted to hear. Of course you can customize your own EQ curve in the app, but after a few days on the treadmill, on nature walks, in the recording studio and falling asleep to music and audiobooks, we kept the pre-loaded EQ setting as-is.
Highs and mids were crips and well-defined, and bass was present but not flubby or boomy. Now, you’re not going to get an extended deep bass response like you would with high-end closed back over-the-ear headphones like the planar magnetic cans we’ve demo’d from the likes of Audeze, but for tiny earbuds, they did a surprisingly decent job. Just go in with realistic expectations.
These claim to be the only wireless earbuds with three drivers, which must be contributing to the quality of frequency separation and overall response. How they managed to squeeze all that in a tiny footprint is a minor engineering miracle.
COMFORT AND CONTROLS
Like we mentioned, controlling music and calls is simple via touch controls on each bud, and overall comfort was fantastic. They might look like USB thumb drives in your ears, but they simply melt away once they’re in and you even forget you’re wearing anything at all after a minute. No issues at all with movement either. Like we said, we tested these out during high intensity activities and even low-intensity trail walking and recording sessions and there was never a chance of them falling out or becoming uncomfortable even after hours of wear time. Again, the design aesthetic and style might not be up to everyone’s taste, but we dig ’em.
NOISE CANCELING AND BLUETOOTH QUALITY
ANC was off the charts in terms of impressiveness. Our treadmill has an especially loud motor, and activating the basic setting by a simple button press on the top of the buds made it fade into the background like it wasn’t even there. It made watching Netflix or enjoying a podcast while doing our morning walk so much more enjoyable. Out in nature, ambient sounds faded into the background as well, but you can also choose to add in some of the surrounding noise for a more natural effect. You may like this when using the phone. Overall, the noise-cancelling capabilities were surprisingly on par with Bose over-ears we’ve tested that ranked as some of the best we’d ever tried.
For Bluetooth, you get a new 5.3 chipset with hi-res capabilities and LDAC streaming compatibility for much better audio quality than in years past. I know Bluetooth has been a sticking point for audiophiles due to its past history as a laughably lossy format, but honestly music sounds great over Apple Music hi-res streaming.
FINAL THOUGHTS
We were a bit skeptical with how good these would actually sound in real-world testing being that they’re so small and so feature-packed, but color us impressed. At $249 they give more expensive options a run for their money and can definitely be your everyday go-to pair for work and play, no matter if you’re at home or on-the-move. Couple that with excellent battery life and charging hours with the included case, and these would be a no-brainer for anyone in the market to add wireless buds to their list of everyday carry essentials.
BONUS: at the time of publication, we’ve been informed of a new colorway, so if black’s not your thing check out the Moonbeam option as seen below.
