Microsoft Surface Hvm Bluetooth Truly Wireless In Ear Earbuds With Microphone Glacier

 Submitting my updated review again as amazon did not allow my first submission.

These are my first premium earbuds and I previously other regular ear buds. I have been using these ear buds for a week now and below is my detailed review on how these earbuds are working so far.

• The package is simple and contains two ear buds with charging station, charging cable (USB-C) and 3 sizes of ear buds (Small, medium and Large). Last but not least, there is an instructions manual with detailed pictures on showing how to pair and use the ear buds.
• The setup was fairly easy and similar to any other kind of blue tooth device. Press the circle at the bottom of the charging station for 5 secs and open the charging station. There is a light that would blink for a moment which should be ready to pair with your device.
• I have setup earbuds to pair with both of my surface pro 7 and my Pixel Phone. Both of them worked seamlessly and was able to see “Surface Earbuds” and paired.

Note: You need to keep the earbuds inside the charging station during this process. Otherwise, the pairing would not work.

• Once you setup the earbuds, you can use “Surface Audio” app to manage the settings of earbuds. The app does show the equalizer settings you could choose from presets like “Flat, Classical, Jazz, Pop & Rock” settings. It also provides to customize your own preset and save it.
• Unlike regular earbuds which are available on market, these ear buds have some touch gestures on both left and right ear buds.

Note: Both of the ear buds needs to be kept in charging station in correct way. Keeping them in other direction would show red light as an indicator on the charging base.

Final thoughts:
Overall, these ear buds have great sound quality, portable and compact. But, as these are 1st gen ear buds it needs some improvements.

Pros:
• Cool & stylish design with Portable charging station
• Great sound quality & Exceptional battery life
• Good Bluetooth connectivity.
• Good touch sensitivity, but it comes with its own problems (See my cons)

Cons:
• There is no battery charging indicator on top of charging station. You need to open the lid to see if its charging or not. It would have much easy if there is any display with light as an indicator.
• The ear buds needs to tuck inside the ear and twist/turn to your ear which has caused discomfort to ears sometimes.
• If the lid is open even if the ear buds are inside the charging station, blue tooth connectivity is still ON. You need to close the lid to close the blue tooth connection.
• There is no customization of touch controls to switch between left/right ear. For example, I would like to setup volume up/down controls to my left ear instead of right ear bud.
• Very minimal settings in “Surface Audio” app. Nothing much to customize anything in the app.
• When adjusting the ear buds, it keeps sending signal to wake up digital assistant which is not good experience. When listening to the songs, double tap would pause the music and at the same time if you try to adjust your ear bud to your ears, it opens digital assistant.

• For some reason, my left ear bud keeps dropping sometimes. Tried changing to different sizes and has similar issue. Not sure if it was due to my ear shape and buds doesn’t tuck properly inside. Even though I liked these earbuds,

Takeaway:
If you are looking to try out something new model, then these are great ear buds as they are unique in shape. Otherwise, nothing much fancy as these are 1st gen ear buds and needs more improvements. I have also reduced another star from rating due to discomfort to my ears and my left ear bud not fitting properly.

These earbuds are unique compared to other designs and brand earbuds. They sit on the outer ring of the ear, securely. This is designed to allow normal sound to pass through, so they can be worn at home or in the office and forget you are wearing them. Effortlessly listen to music, dictate on your notebook, zoom/skype, talk on your phone, etc.

They have two microphones per ear bud, allowing a higher quality phone conversation and audio input at higher quality levels than other earbuds like the airpods pro, etc.

If you do not like having sound blocked or do not like earbuds than push into your ear, these are the earbuds for you. These are by designed to be left in your ears all day if want, and you can forget that you are wearing them as they are light and non obtrusive.

The sound quality is really good, especially considering they sit outside the ear canal. The bass is not quite Bose level, but easily outperform earbuds from Apple or Samsung. Full range sound without any flat ranges – bright and crisp and accurate.

They work with Windows Sonic Headphones for full 3D audio reconstruction, allowing full 3D surround when watching movies, and with Windows you can also add Dolby Atmos or DTS:Headphone technology for an additional $15 licensing fee.

Controls are simple and can be easily disabled if you are more active and might accidentally touch them. They securely stay in the ear, holding on in high activity use, better than most invasive designs as they lock to the outer ear opening, and cannot be shaken loose.

Each earbud can be worn independently for calls or music.

These are also AptX compatible and offer the highest quality bluetooth audio quality. They can also be paired to several devices, and switch between them easily by connecting from the device. (Multipoint) The Swiftpair works well, even installing the App on both Android and Windows devices by just opening the case when they are not yet paired and will prompt to connect on the device if it supports Swiftpair (Windows 10 does).

I bought them because I purchased a Microsoft surface laptop and I wanted to have earbuds and even though they’re large and their surface controls are very usable since they are flat surfaced but I did return them because I discovered I couldn’t use one of the earphones independently because it uses Bluetooth arc technology. You can use one of them independently but not the other and my personal use is usually one earpiece until the battery goes out and I switch. So now I use Samsung earbuds since I also have a Samsung phone and I love it.

The most important thing I can say about this product is know you use case prior to buying. If you’re a speed runner or fast mountain biker I would not recommend these due to fit. They do not go in the ear canal but sit on the crus of helix if you look at an anatomy diagram. I have a pair of SoundPEATS magnetic earbuds which go down the ear canal and have a vertical “wing” to stabilize them like the more well known Jaybird brand. I also have Shure SE315 corded ear buds that make a tight fit in the ear canal and the cord loops over and behind the ear for stability. Both styles are more suited to active sport than the Microsoft buds. My use case was for calls while walking around the house or driving. We are in a handsfree state now and using the speakerphone while the phone is clipped to the dash vents during the summer doesn’t work very well. The audio is adequate for podcasts and some music. Because these don’t go down the ear canal there is a lot of outside noise. This is great for driving but if you are trying to tune out background noise on a call your only option is to crank up the volume. The Microsoft buds are not advertised as sound isolating or noise reducing so there was no expectation of having those features, but if you are used to passive sound isolation from ear plug style buds this will be a big change. It took about a week of trying different sized silicon to settle on size L for both ears. Don’t be afraid to have different sizes on each ear. I was doing both M and L for comfort but I decided to move to L for both for a tighter fit. Call quality is great. A colleague had no idea I got into my car and started driving. They thought I was still in my home office. Is that Microsoft Teams, the Microsoft buds, or a combination? Who knows, but the result was very impressive. I tried some after market ear gels made for Samsung buds which do give you a better fit but they don’t fit in the charging case. If you take them out several times a day this isn’t a good workaround. Overall they work well for the reasons I bought them. A better fit would bump this up to 5 stars. Depending on the shape of your ears they might be a 5 star item for you.