if you are willing For spending over $100, great headphones abound. Once Apple broke the dam on wireless headphones with its initial AirPod model, great-sounding headphones with noise cancellation, excellent microphones, and high-fidelity sound flooded the market. Put a list of brands on a board, throw a dart, and buy the pair that’s closest to $150. You’ll probably find something that’s reasonably good.
That’s why I’m so impressed with a new pair of headphones from newcomer Soundpeats, the Capsule3 Pro+. The name may be a mouthful, but for $90 retail, these headphones offer adaptive noise cancellation and high-resolution audio through a pair of drivers, including a dynamic piston for bass and an innovative solid-state driver for everything. others.
The combination of a tried and true AirPods-style design and the modern technology inside the earbuds makes them my favorite cheap earbuds right now, and possibly of all time. I’ve never heard a pair that sounds this good for so little money. The Soundpeats Capsule3 Pro+ cleans the floor with most of the more expensive models, not just many.
Standard aspects
Elon Musk would call them “Dark AirPods Pro” and frustratingly he would be right. A black AirPods Pro knockoff case pairs perfectly with two black and gold AirPods Pro knockoff earbuds, right down to the little gold hinge on the back of the earbuds case. (It’s silver on the Apple model it imitates.)
Photography: Parker Hall
The benefit of such a blatant design reproduction is that the headphones are stylish and comfortable in my ears, just like the “designed in California” version. The black color makes them more discreet in public.
I didn’t have any problems getting a good seal in my ears, thanks to the three sizes of included silicone ear tips. Anyone with experience putting AirPods or other headphones in their ears should have a similar luck.
Setup and pairing are as instant as you can expect from any modern headset. I just scrolled to find them in the Bluetooth menu on my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and they connected immediately.
Incredible audio
The true beauty of the ball is within these otherwise bland buds. A dynamic controller works in conjunction with a solid-state xMEMS controller and Sony LDAC High Resolution Audio Codec to create the most realistic audio I’ve heard with a pair of headphones, and easily the best sound I’ve heard this side of $100.
Solid-state drivers don’t have the same range of physical motion as piston-type dynamic drivers, like the ones you’re used to seeing in speakers. That means the phase and speed at which solid-state drivers can respond are superior, which in turn provides great separation between instruments and the ability to really hear each sound when you focus on it. The xMEM drivers can react faster across the entire frequency spectrum, so you essentially get the clearest possible view of what the artist wanted you to hear.