I cannot think of many pairs of earphones as eagerly anticipated
as the Tronsmart Apollo Bold True Wireless Earbuds.
For those who are unfamiliar with this brand,
Tronsmart has long been known for making budget friendly yet high quality audio related products.
Now it has upped the game with its first active noise-cancelling earbuds, the Apollo Bold.
How’s it exactly when comparing to those big brands like Apple or Sony?
We’ll find out in this video.
If you do a search of TWS earbuds on Google,
I don’t know, you’d probably get 7 or 8 out of 10 results that are Apple Airpods clone.
I don’t specifically hate Apple’s design
but I’m just tired of manufactories copying that again and again.
So, when the first time I saw Apollo Bold’s design.
Oh man, finally there is something new!
Their appearance could be best described as elegant.
They will not awkwardly protrude from your ears like Bose SoundSport Free
or easily get slipped out as some petite earbuds that I’ve tested before.
The glossy black and platinum finish of my review sample is the only option available so far.
Tronsmart told me that there will be several more other finishes later,
but I’m pretty happy with what I already have.
They look premium, minimalistic and especially low-profile.
You can just barely see them when you put on,
you can stealthily wear it during boring meetings,
happily go shopping or working out without other people’s notice.
Speaking of working out, the Apollo Bolds are IP45 rated.
“IP45. Protected from tools and small wires greater than 1 millimeter.
Protected from low pressure water jets from any direction.”
Yes, confirmed.
The outer section of each earpiece is smooth plastic
with a small Tronsmart logo on the surface of both left and right buds.
It’s actually touch-sensitive.
Tap three times on either of the earbuds to switch on or off the ANC mode and the Ambient Sound Mode;
Tap and hold the right earbud for 2 seconds to skip a track;
Tap and hold the left earbud for 2 seconds to go back a track;
Aright, you can learn more of that from my previous tutorial video,
not going to elaborate here.
If those sound complicated, it’s really not.
After several times of trying you’ll nail your moves,
besides, you can customize the gesture control in their App later in September,
it wouldn’t be a big deal.
I like the way that the Tronsmart always gives us all the controls,
not like some companies that are only giving you certain or limited controls like Airpods.
The Apollo Bold comes with three silicone ear tips,
with some slight twisting or replacement you can always choose the one that fits you snugly.
Now, the earbuds are in my ears, let’s talk about the audio quality.
Inside each unit, there’s a 10mm large graphene driver,
a quad-core Qualcomm QCC5124 noise-cancelling processor and …
alright, I’ll just leave all the specs here.
Instead of reading those “compelling” description, why not just give a direct test?
Since Apollo Bold is a pair of Active Noise Cancelling earbuds,
the first thing to test of course is the noise cancelling ability
how much decibels can it reduce exactly?
Since I don’t have those professional tools to test,
I went to a dedicated acoustical lab to test the Apollo Bold,
along with Airpods Pro and Sony WF-1000XM3 and here is the result.
The chart is a bit complicated but if you do some research you can easily understand it.
So I'll just tell you the result:
the Apollo Bold’s active noise cancelling is better than Sony’s
but slightly underperforms Airpods Pro,
very impressive.
You will find it very comfortable to use when you need to block out the annoying noise,
it’s difficult not to be impressed with what Tronsmart has managed to do with such small earbuds.
Now to the sound quality.
Folks, I’m not gonna beat you over the head with reviewer clichés
about warm sound stages and bright sound.
If you want an audiophile’s perspective, there are great reviews out there for that.
I’m like most people with my audio.
I know what sounds good, and I know what sounds thin,
and these are the former.
They have what I would call a very full-bodied sound,
they have a rich full and punchy bass,
I really like that!
Crisp clean highs and mids, no background hiss.
I think I’d go so far as to say
these are the best sounding active noise cancelling wireless earbuds I’ve ever had so far.
I also tried the Apollo with gaming,
a mixture content from YouTube and other video platforms,
I found no obvious lag at all.
As for the Bluetooth connection, it’s rock solid.
I experienced no connection failure at all even I walked across the whole office
while leaving my phone on my table, it’s just stable.
And now finally brings my conclusion.
Tronsmart has really pulled something special out of the bag with the Apollo Bold.
The Active Noise Cancelling is amazing,
hard not to be impressed with that;
The sound quality, the call quality is excellent;
The battery life is one of the best,
with the charging case you get a staggering 30 hours in total,
and what’s even better is you get 1 hour use with merely 10 minutes of the Type-C quick charging.
As you may ask, how about the wireless charging?
And that’s maybe the only downside of the Apollo Bold,
it’s 2020, and it doesn’t have wireless charging.
But if you think in a positive way,
because the case doesn’t have wireless charging module,
that’s why we can get a case that is so compact and portable,
you can basically put it anywhere you want.
And finally the price, though this is something I hate to bring in my reviews.
For $99, the Apollo Bold earbuds are definitely no-brainers.
If you're in the market for a pair of active noise-cancelling earbuds,
you can't get it wrong.
We suggest you start with the Apollo Bold earbuds. Period.
Alright, that’s the video, I hope you enjoyed watching it,
if you have any questions about the Apollo Bold,
please leave your comment below.
And if you haven’t subscribed to our channel yet, please subscribe by clicking right here.
I’m Sami, see you next time.