TreeLineBackpacker

Another day, another pair of earbuds. What if these were a little different though? Working with Bose in their latest collaboration, Baseus has come up with a balance of features, weight, and sound quality that is rather surprising given the price. My Review:

The Inspire XC1 by Baseus are wireless, clip on style earbuds that allow the user to hear around them. These do not isolate or block any noise, making them ideal for outdoor adventures. They are IP66 rated, making them dust proof and safe to use in the rain/sweaty conditions. These, howejver, should not shouldn’t be submerged in water. They include a charge case, 4 mics with sound isolation for clearer voice calls, and a hybrid 2-way driver for audio playback. Battery life is around 8 hours per charge from the buds, with the case being able to top that up to about 40 hours in between uses. They retail for $129 and are generally available at a sale somewhere.

Let’s start with the experience of using these things outside, since that is kind of my thing, then we’ll talk about sound. First, these lock onto the ears quite well. I found that they stay in place effortlessly with little movement while hiking, jogging or even biking if you’re so bold. The buds themselves are incredibly lightweight and can barely be felt in general use. After a few uses the become almost imperceptible, or at least they did for me. They have small clicky buttons on the back, one on each unit, that allow for volume adjustments, skipping tracks, and answering calls. Sadly, these aren’t as customizable as I would have liked, even in the app. Single tap operations, for example, can’t be changed at all. So the customization is somewhat limited, for whatever reason. Still, the headphones are easy enough to use as they come configured. The buttons themselves are easy to press and feel. They’re even sort of usable with thin gloves on. The buds allow for unobstructed hearing all around, and allow for good situational awareness, given the volume isn’t too high. While biking they do create a bit of wind noise, but are still usable. The mics are relatively clear and sound fairly natural while in most conditions, although heavy wind gives them a little trouble.

Sound wise, these perform well for the price, but do require some heavy tweaking in the app get the acoustics under control. Out of the box these are incredibly bass heavy and boomy (thanks Bose?), but luckily the app can bring that way way down. After knocking the bass levels way down, adding a slight bump in the mids and elevating the treble just a touch, I was able to find a sound that was much more natural and balanced. The sound was still bass heavy (rare for clip style buds) but balanced and more refined. They have a decent spaciousness to the sound being open air headphones, but positioning is a little lackluster, likely due to the bass heavy drivers used. Strangely, all the built in EQ presets were rather terrible, none of which sound natural or had any real functionality. So I suggest either sticking with the Bose preset, or maybe copy what I did for your best experience.

More on sound, while getting a little pickier. These sound pretty good after tweaking but never get quite perfect. The bass is a touch muddy and the mids don’t really stand out that much. They are clear but never really…uh…sing? They’re quite functional and never left me wanting however. The treble is thankfully somewhat refined and not sharp or pitchy. The highs sound somewhat muted, but still very present and with good detail to them. It’s a very full, dynamic sound that works really well for exercising, working out, or just staying energized. It’s a sound that I overall really enjoy, but can’t really call it “audiophile” grade, even by wireless standards. There are high res audio options that can be enabled in the app that do add more detail and clarity (win!) but they also disable the EQ (bummer) and tend to introduce audio instability, so cutouts and audio drops were frequent in my testing.

For the price that I paid ($89) these are an excellent value. They offer good sound, an extremely comfortable fit, and nice features such as the app with EQ. At the full MSRP of $129 I consider these a good value but not exceptional. Without the EQ I couldn’t really recommend these, but thankfully that is present and works great.

Highly recommended, if on sale and you don’t mind a little EQ

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