It seems like every YouTube has been sponsored by Raycon at some point within the last few months. And of course, since these creators are paid to talk highly of Raycon earbuds, they rave about their quality.
As someone who is strictly analytically minded and incessantly critical of everything that comes across my path, I thought it may be beneficial to make an honest Raycon earbuds review which is unbiased by monetary incentives and given from the perspective of engineering and design.
I’ve been using Raycon wireless earbuds pretty much every day for a couple of weeks now. There certainly are a few quality features associated with these Raycon headphones, but there’s also some problems with their design.
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Raycon Earbuds Packaging
The packaging is certainly high quality, though it is not Apple level. Then again, nothing is. So if we open up the box, there’s some information at the top. We don’t care about that. Of course, it comes with the earbuds in their charging case. It comes with plate with interchangeable silicone head sizes.
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There is the charging cord and a small cord, so you could hang the buds from a key chain or something like that. So my first issue right out of the gate is this cord. It is comically small. I can imagine very few circumstances in which a small cord like this would be practical. However, though, this little carrying cord is a thoughtful addition.
I chose to get the white version. There are many colors. The entire top half of it folds up, kind of like clamshell.
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How Good Is Battery of Raycon Earbuds?
So there are a few things that you will always hear and an ad read for Raycon headphones, one of the most prominent is something to do with the battery life.
Each individual earbud can be used for up to six hours of continuous use. And then the battery in the charging case itself holds up to five additional charges. So that means on one full charge, you should be able to get theoretically up to 36 hours of continuous use. For my experience, this seems to hold true.
The battery very rarely dies, and the case itself almost never dies. So the battery has been very impressive, especially considering. And that is noticeably longer than what AirPods are supposed to be able to do. So the battery is great.
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How Good Is The Design of Raycon Headphones?
One of the other things that you will almost always hear about Ray con is their specialized design.
They’re perfect fit. So looking at the profile of the earbud, you can clearly see that it is abnormal. Nothing is symmetrical about it. Everything is a little bit wonky. There’s even this small notch up, which hooks into the top of your ear to really keep everything in place. And then of course, there are these interchangeable Silicon tips.
You can switch them out for whatever best fits you so that the earbud can fit in your ear as perfectly as possible. I currently have the large ones in and they fit on very nicely. They’re very secure, so I have no concern that they would fall off over time or be pulled out. Much of the Raycon advertising certainly focuses on this perfect fit, and I think that it is their most considerable feature.
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When I put these in, I have no concern that they will fall out. Raycon true wireless earbuds certainly do feel like they fit perfectly, and especially with the silicone tip, they create a perfect seal with my ear, so much so that I can barely hear myself speak when I have them in just because they’re such a good physical barrier of external noise.
I will often run a few miles at a time and through the duration of my run, they never feel like they’re going to fall out. They never feel like they’re starting to loosen up or anything like that, so even when they’re being constantly jostled around, they do not feel like they’re going to come up.
So I’m very impressed by their fit and that fit is probably their greatest pro in those ad reads.
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Raycon Earbuds Price
You will also always hear about the price and the low price is actually pretty much the entire reason that I got these earbuds to begin with. With all discounts taken into account, Raycon Earbuds cost me around $75 and comparing that to a brand new set of $200 AirPods.
There’s just no competition.
So those are the benefits that you’ll hear about these Raycon ear buds, and they do certainly hold true, but there are certainly some disadvantages that tend to be glossed over.
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Cons of Raycon Earbuds
First of all, let’s begin with the charging case itself. So my case is white. So the case will correspond to whatever color you buy.
And there’s always this chromed ring around the entirety of it. I am not a big fan of this. I’ve never been a big fan of the Chrome plastic finish. I don’t think many people are. It always comes across as cheap to me. So that is a personal negative from Raycon earbuds review.
If you leave earbuds on a wireless charger for any considerable amount of time, it starts to heat up the considerable amount. I don’t think that anything damaging is occurring, but it certainly does not make me feel comfortable to have the whole thing overheating on the inside.
There are these indents which hold the earbuds in place with magnets.The earbuds are not charged through inductive charging as one may expect. Instead, there are two spring loaded copper prongs, which interface with two copper pads on the inside of the earbud. A friction based wire connection like this is not at all ideal. On the inside of the pads, there’s even a slight blackening.
That comes from insufficient connection. So the lack of inductive charging from case to bud is not ideal. But again, I don’t think it’s that big of an issue. I really have two big issues with the case. The first issue is with the paint, specifically the Chrome paint on this plastic here. Like I said, I’m already not a big fan of the Chrome plastic finish.
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But it’s made significantly worse by the paint’s inability to stick to the plastic. It’s on the Chrome to finish is already starting to peel off the edges. There’s even spots in the top where it has come off completely, and this is only after about a week and a half for use. I would not be surprised if this Chrome started to seriously degrade after any considerable length of use, so not very happy with how this Chrome finish is holding up.
Honestly, I would prefer if they just took the Chrome off in parallel and you wouldn’t have to worry about it. It’d be a better design choice in my opinion.
My second and bigger concern with this case is the hinge in the back. Since the whole thing opens up like a clam and one opens it by pushing on the front, there’s a quite considerable torque on the back point of rotation on his hinge and the hinge construction is not amazing at all.
When I close this, I can feel the entire top wiggling around a little bit, and especially when this is in my pocket all day. It just keeps on pushing it around a little bit and loosening it up. More and more, which is also partially why this Chrome finishes degrading is because the top is allowed to rub up against it.
So I fear that this hinge will just continue to degrade over time until it becomes loose or even breaks off potentially, though I don’t think it will come to that. It still doesn’t make me feel super good about as construction. All they really need to do is increase the thickness of this internal wall or bring out the outer rim of this so that when it comes down, it would be a perfect seal.
Of course, that would require some higher tolerances, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask for. If they did that this wobbling around would not be a consideration whatsoever and everything would just be much more rigid, much more robust. So from an engineering design perspective, the case is not spectacular.
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Sound Quality of Raycon Earbuds
Let’s move on to the actual earbuds. The most important thing for the earbuds is likely just the sound quality. Raycon earbuds do have very good sound quality. That’s another one of the pros that you often hear.
Of course, the primary speaker is down, but if you pull up silicone, you can see another little hole down at the base, which I’m guessing don’t take my word on it, but I’m thinking that this is probably the bass speaker and I have been consistently impressed by the bass, said these are able to produce their points in a song where it just feels like my head is vibrating and it’s a surreal experience. The sound quality on Raycon earbuds is very good.
But there are a few engineering issues. I do not have any problems with this shape. The shape of this is really good. Like I said, they fit to my ear perfectly. Even this weird notch thing, which you would think would be uncomfortable or at a place works really well and fits me. Again, there is this Chrome finish, which I am not a fan of and I wouldn’t be surprised if this Chrome paint started to degrade a little bit like it has on the case.
And the plastic with which Raycon earbuds are made out of seems to be different from that of a case and it doesn’t seem like a great engineering choice. The plastic is very hard, so hard. In fact, that it seems to be brittle.
I mean, it is an earbud anything this small and smooth should be expected to be able to withstand a fall from about hip height and because of how brittle this plastic is, it has correct slightly do I should be an inconsequential full.
Those issues are not to consider both. They’re largely cosmetic. These cracks are definitely not threatening the integrity of the earbud. They’re just inconvenient like the charging case.
I do have two primary issues with the earbud. The first one is with user interface, so the circle with the red con logo is a button.
So use this button to interact with your music or your video or whatever as you would expect to present the button which is your pause or play button, which makes sense. But double tapping, it will skip to the next song. And then if you want to adjust the volume, you have to triple press the button. I need to do the right side or the left side to increase or decrease the volume.
Personally, I think that those last two should be flipped. I am going to be adjusting the volume significantly more than I’m going to be skipping through songs and when one does adjust the volume, they’re not just doing it once. They’re doing it a few times. So sure, if I want to skip a song, I’d have to press it twice.
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It might be more convenient for that. But if I want to just bump up the volume by a few notches, I’m going to have to end up pressing this button nine times in total just to increase my volume a little bit. Personally, I wouldn’t even be against having just the single push for adjusting the volume and have a double push for pausing or playing.
But that’s just me. Either way, having to press three times just to adjust the volume by a single notch is somewhat unreasonable.
The second issue though, is far more considerable, and that’s with the engineering. The problem is that this button is way too hard to push. It requires a significant amount of force to actually push it down.
So then doing double pushes or triple pushes is very unreasonable. Especially when this is in your ear and you’re trying to push it down, you have to end up jamming it into your ear to a painful extent before you can actually get the button down. Being that this is intended to be used in one’s ear, which is not particularly hard.
The buttons should be a hair trigger. Either it should be extremely easy to push or it should be based off of capacitive touch, which is not at all difficult for something like this. The stiffness of the button is probably the biggest problem that I have with Raycon earbuds as a whole. Frankly, I’m surprised that this was allowed to get through production as it is.
It seems to me, just to be such a glaring issue that anyone who would use it would be aware of it. And that’s someone in the production line would voice the problem and let people know that this thing needs to be changed. The button is bad enough that I just don’t use it. Instead, I opt for reaching into my pocket to grab my phone and adjust the volume with the buttons on there.
So there you have the Raycon earbuds review. Those are pretty much all the positive things that you hear about them in the many ad reads that I’m sure you’ve heard do reign true. But of course there are those engineering issues that people tend to gloss over. At the end of the day, though, I do like them.
They’re not super expensive, so it’s not that big of a loss. Even if they aren’t perfectly fit for you, and the fact that I can run three or five miles or whatever and not have any concern about them falling out is the real benefit for me. I certainly could not do that with traditional AirPods. So I like them.
I would recommend them, but I would certainly like to see some of those engineering issues taken care of. If they were, I would be totally fine with them and they would be, in my opinion, the best wireless earbuds on the market. So I hope you gained something from this honest review of Raycon earbuds, but that’s all I have for now.
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