Moondrop - Golden Ages 2

At the end of the day, it's about what you want. If you can really dial in what you want, it actually becomes slightly easier to pay less, I feel. Because then you can decide whether you want good feeling buds that sound ass or great sounding buds that work kinda shitty, or a compromise between it all. And if you want everything perfect, you have to pay for it... and even then, there's no guarantees. Nothing is perfect, and you'll have problems with something, even if it's small. I've owned three pairs of buds... The Pixel Buds Pro, CMF Buds Pro 2, and very recently Moondrop Golden Ages 2. Here are my thoughts: The less you pay, the more interesting the game of compromise gets. For £100 to £150, you get the Pixel Buds Pro's features, good build and good sound (although they did annoy me the most). For £59, less on sale, you can get the CMF Buds Pro 2, with similar build quality but less premium feel, less responsive controls, and comparable sound. For £90, you can get the Golden Ages 2, with cheap-feeling build quality, okay controls, and some kickass planar drivers. All of these go on sale now and again, so prices can drop, and it is worth mentioning that the GA2 come with a leather sheath for the buds, but I'm guessing that's to protect the slightly weaker case... still, nice they included it.

Moondrops. Fantastic earbuds for the price.

Moondrop anything tbh, even the cheapo space travels kick ass

Airpods pro 2, or moondrop golden ages for lesser (under 100)

Check the sound signature good thump resolving organic

Moondrop TWS earbuds are generally okay to good for the price. One main complaint i have is the poorly made app (it's even worse in the old app before they rebuilt it)

Get yourself some Moondrop’s. They’re like $25 on amazon, and they’re great quality

I’ll be the opposite of everyone here and say the XM5. Mine have been great, owned them since launch last year. ANC and audio quality are better than the Buds 3 Pro, so is battery life and overall features. You aren’t going to be stuck in Samsung’s (not Android but Samsung’s) ecosystem just to get some of the features. The Buds 3 Pro are also experience quality control issues and problems with the ear tips. Samsung delayed their launch until the end of August, possibly into October. My pair was fine, but they didn’t stay in my ears. They looked like Cybertruck AirPods Pro and fit exactly like the AirPods Pro 2. The clear top to the charging case doesn’t seem like it will last a long time. They look and perform similarly to Moondrop’s $75 true wireless earbuds, which already looked like silver AirPods Pro 2. Mine were returned within 24 hours of them getting to my house. They just didn’t fit, regardless of ear tip size, and both their ANC and sound quality weren’t reflective of their $250 MSRP. They were fine for what I was going to pay ($90). But even then, I think Moondrop’s true wireless were better and the XM5 are still leagues ahead.

The Golden Ages.

Moondrop Golden Ages They sound absolutely excellent. No clue about the mic quality though, but haven't received any complaints so it can't be too bad?

No, it's held back by bluetooth as usual. Otherwise, for a bluetooth pair, I find Moondrop often sounds really close for the sub-100 range. If someone stuffed these in my ears while I'm blind, I could tell. If you want a pair that'll last longer, I much prefer the Golden Ages or even Moca. And if you can, spring for the Robins if you like IEMs, they'll be better overall. Golden Ages uses the same bud design. Sound profile wise, I prefer the Golden Ages' more analytical and neutral sound, and I wish that was in the Robin. If I were to be able to choose only one for day to day, every day, I'd take the Robin. Frankly, just spring a bit higher and it'll last you a long time coming.

This is marketing and brand reach doing what it does best. There are plenty of brands doing great things in the market that aren't getting a lot of attention. JLAB's Epic Lab earbuds were fantastic; JBL, Moondrop, Nothing Ear, SoundPeats, numerous other brands tested very well against the top of my list, which consisted of the Denon Perl Pro, Technics AZ80, Sennheiser True Wireless Momentum 4, Sony XM5, AirPods Pro, B&W Pi7 S2 and Pi8. I have the AZ100s on the way, and I'm sure they'll occupy one of those top spots. It's important to note, however, that many of these brands do not need to push as many units to remain successful. At the economies of scale companies like Sony, Sennheiser, and Bose are operating at, the investment into their production, distribution, customer service, and operations pipelines is immense. They are likely expecting to sell tens of thousands of units, to the thousands that other brands need to turn a profit. And while you may see those more prolific brands everywhere, don't forget the communities of people on social media platforms that regularly market and recommend the opposing brands. They're not as common, but that's to be expected and will remain that way by nature. In other words, while the popular brands may be ubiquitous, that is by design. It doesn't mean opposing manufacturers are on a downward trajectory. This was the assumption when Jabra cancelled its TWS ANC lineup, and that may have been part of the decision, but Jabra had other, more profitable interests and chose to constrain their business goals around those interests because there was more opportunity there. As someone that's tested dozens of ANC earbuds (and has a wide ranging collection of dedicated, wired IEMs), I have very few biases when it comes to competing brands. If it works well, I'll use the thing. I have no qualms recommending a pair of Soundcore VR P10s, right alongside top-tier TWS sets if I think it fits the individual's use case. Recently, I took a long flight overseas and left all the other major TWS brands behind and took a cheap pair of PortaPros and a $20 pair of Aliexpress stem-style earbuds with me. Everyone else on the plane was wearing AirPods.