A couple of days back, Noise launched its latest budget true wireless earbuds ‘ Noise Shots Neo 2 ‘ in the Indian market. These new Noise Earbuds comes with compact design, Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity, Low latency gaming mode, and 20h playback time, in at a highly competitive price point of just ₹2,299.
However, if you’re wondering whether you should buy these True Wireless Earbuds or not, here’s my review of the Noise Shots Neo 2 after having used them for few days.
What’s in the Box
First up, let’s take a quick look at everything that we will get inside the Neo 2 box.
- Earbuds with charging case.
- Small micro USB cable.
- Small/Large ear tips with extra pair of ear-fins (medium size is attached on the earbuds).
- User manual and warranty card.
Design and Build Quality
You know, for a pair of truly wireless earbuds that are priced under Rs. 2000, the Noise Shots Neo 2 have great build and design. It features a minimal design, which gives some kind of premium touch. It comes with a charging case that has a matte finish on the top and is entirely made up of plastic.
The quality of the plastic build is decent and definitely justify the price tag. Another best thing is that the case here is pretty tiny and lightweight (40g) which is great, you can easily carry it in your jeans pocket.
There are a couple of neat touches that I like most. Ironically, the first one is that you can’t see fingerprint marks on this thing. That’s really great, especially in a country like India where the summers mean you’ll pretty much have to hold your earbuds with sweaty hands. But please note, these types of surface is easily attract the scratches, so be careful while carrying in your backpack.
Inside the case, the earbuds sit flush and pretty. The earbuds are held tightly via magnetic pins inside the case, these do not fall off from the case even if you hold the case upside down. There is an LED light on each earbud and one on the charging case, which indicates the remaining battery and charging status.
The all-black aesthetic here is personally my favourite. It’s matte, it’s deep black, and it looks stealthy. If you don’t like the black colour then don’t worry you have three more colour options: Blue, Red, and Yellow.
The earbuds also have a matte finish on the exterior and are made up of plastic, due to which earbuds are lightweight and weigh just 5g (5g + 5g). It offers decent comfort because of tangle ear tips and lightweight design, but the story does not end here. Yes, it fits perfectly in ears but not comfortable for everyone, especially for those who have small size ears. My ears are also small and I don’t find these earbuds much comfortable, I feel a little bit pain after using for continuous one hour. Is it impossible to wear these earbuds? No, it’s not. If anything it’s a fairly decent experience.
Connectivity
The pairing process is exactly the same as the other True wireless earbuds, simply open the charging box, after which Green & Red LED on the buds should start blinking, this means that Neo 2 is now ready to be paired to a device. As soon as the connection is established, the blinking LED should go off. You can take the earbuds out of the charging case and start using it.
The connection range provide by these earbuds is around 10 meters, which is common in most earbuds. It can only be connected to one device at a time, so if you connect to a new device, the other one will be disconnected. So overall, I didn’t find any problem with connectivity and compatibility.
Control and Interactions
The Noise Shots Neo 2 come with a multi-function touch control on each of the earbuds. This touch control works really good and used to perform everything from answering and ending incoming calls, controlling music, launching the voice assistant (Google voice assistant and Siri) and more. For more info please check the user manual.
Battery
For earbuds, this small, the Noise Shots Neo 2 have surprisingly decent battery life. The company claims 5 hours of listening time from the earbuds on a single charge, at 80% volume. But after two hours of continuous listening at 80% volume, the Neo 2 had dropped down to 75% charge. So yeah, they will easily last 3 hours on a charge. So, it a little bit less than a claim by brand, but still I am happy with that because this is the average timing we can get with most of the budget true wireless earbuds.
Notably, the 380mAh battery on the case can charge the earbuds around three times, giving a total of around 12-15 hours of total playback time. Honestly, I have no complaints from the battery life. The only complaint I have that’s somewhat related to the battery is the absence of the USB type C port.
Microphone & Gaming Mode
Both the earbuds unit have an inbuilt microphone for making calls, the inbuilt microphone gets the good job in indoors use but similar to other budget earbuds, it also has a tendency to amplify ambient sound and in outdoor use. So, if the calling is your main priority then true wireless earbuds is not an ideal choice for you. You can go with Neckband and regular Bluetooth earbuds.
Gamig Mode
The Noise True Wireless Earbuds also comes with low latency gaming mode, which offers you 65ms in SBC codec and 85ms in AAC codec. Well, I do not agree with this claim. I tried many earbuds, till now I didn’t see any earbuds which claim to offer this low latency with SBC codec. According to my testing and experience, I can say the gaming mode latency may be between 100 to 120, which is the average low latency offer by SBC codec supportive wireless headsets.
Is it impossible to use these earbuds while gaming? No, it’s not. You can definitely use these earbuds while playing PUBG Mobile and Free fire.
Sound Quality
Coming to the audio quality, the Noise Shots Neo 2 offers fairly good audio quality with a decent amount of bass with the 6mm drivers. The driver’s size is fairly small, but still, the overall audio quality is loud and clear.
The Neo 2 can transfer sound by using SBC and AAC Bluetooth codec only and lacks high-quality aptX codec support, but we shouldn’t expect high-quality codes at this price point (Rs.2400).
Overall, sound quality is good, as you would expect for the price, it exceeded my expectations in terms of audio quality. The bass node is good and punchy on these earbuds, but I won’t call this bass-heavy. And that is actually a good thing because the right amount bass not overpowered the vocal and treble very much.
So, if you like the bass more than anything, then maybe you will not impress with these earbuds. The vocal and treble sound is also decent, especially I found the vocal is very clear even at high volume. Having said that, in some music tracks soundstage feels narrow, and the earbuds struggle with instrument separation in the mids sound.
Keep in mind the price of the Noise Shots Neo 2, and do not expect high-end performance from these affordable small drivers. These earbuds deliver mids well, the highs and lows nodes just fine, but it has a tendency to miss frequencies on the extremes of the spectrum. I found the bass sound good enough for my taste. Overall, sound quality offer by these budget earbuds is decent and definitely justify the price tag.
Noise Shots Neo 2: Worth the Price?
So should you get Noise Shots Neo 2? Yes, you can buy it if you can manage yo buy with 2000 Rs price tag. I wouldn’t be disappointed with what these are. It delivers on basics well, be it battery life, connectivity and won’t disappoint you with the audio performance or built. The only compromise here is in the comfort, If your ear size is small and medium then you have to compromise with comfort, a little bit. A
So all things considered, the Noise Shots Neo 2 defiantly be on third or fourth position on my list of the best truly wireless earbuds under ₹2,500 in India.
