I'm just gonna come out and say it: there are way too many earbuds on the market. Heck, there's way too much of everything on the market. I type "earbuds" into Amazon and over 40,000 products come up! How are there so many people making so many earbuds? Most importantly, who's buying all these earbuds? Are there even enough ears on the planet to sustain this?
Okay, crash out over. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
No, but seriously. There's too much out there. Decision fatigue is real, and I've been using the same AirPods Pro 2 for three years now. What will I do when they break? Probably buy some refurbished AirPods Pro 2 off BackMarket. They might just be the best earbuds... until...
I got to talk with Mehul Kochar, SVP at Knowles, a brand known for making balanced armature drivers. In layman's terms: drivers that make music sound real nice. So, naturally, I had to ask him which earbuds he uses.
The answer made me feel oh-so vindicated — because he started talking about earbuds I gave 4.5 stars and haven't shut up about since. I told you!
Mehul Kochar is SVP of Business Development for Knowles’ specialty audio business unit. He works closely with leading headphone brands to drive innovation in earbud driver technology and hybrid designs. Mehul has nearly two decades of experience establishing and leading customer strategy and execution and excels at driving new technology into diverse user bases.
It's the Status Audio Pro X, baby
Full disclosure: Knowles engineered the balanced armature driver in the Status Audio Pro X, so it makes sense from a business perspective that Kochar recommended the earbuds to me. Of course Kochar wants more people listening to the Pro X — Knowles has skin in the game.
I, however, have zero skin in the game. I review countless audio products: every week I've got some earbuds, headphones, a speaker, or a soundbar on the go. Review, rinse, repeat. Some earbuds are good, but not memorable. Some are memorable for all the wrong reasons. A very small minority are the perfect recipe: near-perfect and memorable.
So when I am still talking about a pair of earbuds eight months later? You know it was special.
And, boy, am I still talking about the Status Audio Pro X. Sometimes I feel like I'm screaming into the void. "Please!" I cry, tears streaming down my face. "Someone please hype these earbuds! I can't do it on my own anymore!"
So when Kochar mentioned the Status Audio Pro X were his current earbuds, I grinned so hard my cheeks hurt.
Why are these earbuds so great?
Easy answer: the sound. The Status Audio Pro X sound divine. At $300, they're expensive, so you'd hope they sound good, right? I mean, yes, but the Pro X are seriously gorgeous.
In my review of the Pro X, I wrote, "Vocals sounded particularly decadent; so affecting, complex, and emotive. There was no muffled bass, no tinniness, and fantastic instrument separation."
This rang true across all genres I tested them with. Even heavy metal, often belaboured by muddy lower mids, excelled. "‘Groping Dogs Gushing Blood’ was utterly monstrous — rolling guitars reminiscent of Queens of the Stone Age thrashed their way across the soundscape, bodacious percussion rounding out the female vocal."
You don’t miss anything with these earbuds. Not a single cymbal, breath, or guitar string. Everything is laid out bare.
Detail is one of the things I look out for when testing earbuds: can I hear the music, or can I feel the music? I want to feel it. I want the vocals to jump off the page, so to speak, and dance around in my head. I want to sense the vibrancy and the dynamism in my body.
Just like the AirPods Pro 3 and the Sony WF-XM6, Status focused on detail while engineering the Pro X. Instead of womping you with bass, à la Bose (which some people like, I may add), the Pro X are delicate, expansive, and detailed. You can hear every strata of your music. "You don’t miss anything with these earbuds," I wrote in my review. "Not a single cymbal, breath, or guitar string. Everything is laid out bare, exactly as it’s supposed to be."
Thanks to the unbeatable sound quality, I've not shut up about these earbuds since testing them.
You'd hope so, for $250
So I've got good news and bad news.
The good news is this: Status Audio reduced the MSRP from $300 to $250! Yay!
The bad news is this: the Status Audio Pro X are still $250. At $250, they're premium earbuds. These are not the everyman 'buds.
I discussed this thoroughly in my review, but I'll chat about it here, too: a small-name brand pricing its debut premium earbuds the same as the AirPods Pro 3? That's certainly a choice!
How can you entice people through the door when you're no cheaper than the most popular premium earbuds in the world... and no one knows who you are? It's tricky, because the Pro X sound that good. Yes, these are $250-sounding buds. But even so, as good as they sound, they're still relatively unknown.
Priced almost as steeply as the Sony WF-XM6 and the Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2nd Gen? It's harsh competition. I really wish the Pro X were $239 — $10 cheaper than the AirPods Pro 3 — to get them over the finish line. At $239, this'd be a no-brainer.
But what do you think? Would you take the risk and drop $250 on underdog earbuds? What would make you invest?
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