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Here One wireless smart earbuds review: Great sound, poor stamina

By Marcus Wong - 16 Aug 2017
Launch SRP: S$459

Review: Here One wireless smart earbuds


 

 

Introduction

If you’ve read our recent wireless earbuds shootout, you’ll know that "truly wireless" earbuds are the latest fad to hit the audio world. In brief, these are wireless earphones with no wire between the two earpieces and they connect to each other and to the media source via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or some form of near field wireless communication protocol.

The Here One wireless smart earbuds are the latest to join the fray, but where Doppler Labs say they differ from others is that they offer you the means to control not only the way you listen to your music, but the way you hear the world.

It’s a project that started on KickStarter back in 2015 with the Here Active Listening earbuds. These didn’t stream or play music, but rather used a digital signal processor (DSP) to give you an equalizer for the outside world. In short, you use them adjust volume, amplify certain frequencies, or add effects in real time to real world audio. You "only hear the good things" around you, so to speak.

Fast forward two years and we have the Here One, a pair of smart wireless earbuds that's supposed to give you the aforementioned DSP capabilities but which also allows you to stream music and make calls, thus better fitting into your life.

 

Design and Features      

In the realm of truly wireless earbuds, the Here One can be considered small.

In terms of looks, the Here One doesn’t deviate much from the original design, with the exception that entire microphone shell is now flush to the rest of the earbud. It’s a sleek, modern-looking design with two options: black and silver.

The case is fairly well-designed, too. It’s slim, much like the case for the Bragi The Headphone, but has four indicator lights to indicate how much charge is left. The Hear One has a playtime of up to two hours, while the carrying case offers up three extra charges when fully charged.

Four indicator lights to the right indicate the case's remaining charge.

This brings the total possible playtime with the Here One up to eight hours, but you do have to consider that it takes a full hour to charge the in-ears once they've been completely discharged. So, it’s almost a full day’s worth of listening, but not quite, as you’ll have to take a one-hour break every hour and a half or so to keep going.

One thing that stands out with these earphones is the amount of calibration you need to do at the start to create a unique profile for your ears.  Five test tones are played for each ear, while you adjust a slider to indicate at what volume you can hear each sound. All this is then saved and used to adjust the way audio is played to your ears – and by this we don’t just mean your music, but sounds from the real world too.

The Here One has a pretty long calibration process before you can start using it.

Real-world sound control is what separates these earphones from the others in the field, but the results are a mixed bag because it doesn't always work well. For example, we tried the two train presets (NYC Subway and Chicago), as well as the preset for reducing traffic noise when we were out by a noisy train platform, and there didn't seem to be much of a difference between them - they all just seemed to just push the setting for external noise down to the minimum of -22 (the volume for ambient noise ranges from -22 to + 6).

Using the 5-band equalizer provided in the Live Mix section didn’t change the sound that much, either. To be fair, a lot of this depends on what you're listening to and how sensitive you're to the changes of the frequency curves, so your mileage may vary.

Additionally, we found that surrounding noises got uncomfortably loud when we pushed the volume to the max of +6, so we’d definitely prescribe caution when making large adjustments in crowded and noisy environments.

 

Performance findings

Generally, the noise-canceling performance of the headsets is sufficient enough to let us focus on just our music, though we do think the good fit plays a part too. All that calibration for our ears must have helped as well, because overall, we're quite impressed by what the Here One earbuds put out.

Simply put, these are easily one of the best wireless earbuds we’ve heard. There’s good body to the audio, with nice depth and good clarity on the mids and highs. The midrange in particular seems to be a strength with these tiny in-ears. Vocals come out nice and clear, and both piano and guitar sounds are presented with great naturalness.

On a recording of Nils Lofgren’s Keith Don’t Go, we could pick up every squeak and squeal as he shifted from one chord to another and the high notes rang out sweet and true - so there’s plenty of detail to be had with these headphones.

Switch over to a recording of Don’t Know Why by Norah Jones, and the lower range prowess of the Here One came into focus. The headphones did a great job of rendering the bass guitar in this piece with body and just the right amount of decay. Meanwhile, there was good separation from the drum work and the vocals of the backup singers, and we could distinctly hear each of them.

 

Formal test tracks

Moving on to our formal test tracks, we thought the Here One did a good job with Sail on Soothsayer by Buckethead, rendering the piece with good detail. We liked how the earbuds are able to create a bubble of sound in this piece, flooding our senses with sound.

Elements of Life by Tiesto was presented well too, with a nice thumping bass leading the pacey track. The finer sound effects were easily picked out, and we thought the headphones did a nice job in presenting this piece with a mid-sized sound space. 

Hotel California was another piece that played to the strengths of the in-ears. They did an excellent job of recreating the concert hall the band played in with its stereo imaging, making us felt like we were right in the crowd.

Ending with Adele’s Melt My Heart to Stone, we thought the headphones did a nice job with the track, with good warmth in her vocals. They could have done a better job on the sibilance though, as we expected a more refined performance.

Audio Performance Summary
MP3 Testing Score
Hotel California - The Eagles 9.0
Sail on Soothsayer - Buckethead 8.0
Elements of Life - Tiesto 8.5
Melt My Heart to Stone - Adele 8.0
Overall audio score 8.5
 

Conclusion

At S$459, the Here One wireless earbuds are the most expensive true wireless earbuds we’ve tested thus far, but they’re also the most intelligent and the most musical we’ve tested. The earbuds are capable of a rice, robust sound that has good body and plenty of detail, and its noise canceling option does provide meaningful reduction of the external noise. The option to dial up the audio from your surrounds also works as advertised, though as we mentioned, it can get too loud if you’re not careful.

The biggest issue with these earbuds however, is the poor battery life. We averaged only about an hour and a half of listening time per charge with these headphones - barely enough to get us from home to the office - and there were instances where we had to stop testing because the earbuds just didn’t have enough juice. Given that it takes a full hour to get a full charge, it seems like you’d be charging the earbuds almost as much as you’d be listening to music with them, which is a real shame.

Note: This article was first published on 21st July 2017.

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8.0
  • Design 8
  • Performance 8
  • Features 8.5
  • Value 7.5
The Good
Very good audio performance for wireless earbuds
Noise enhancement capabilities that let you hear your surroundings better
The Bad
Very poor battery life
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