At MWC in 2017, Sony exhibited a concept product called Xperia Ear Open style CONCEPT. Compared with the previous generation of Xperia Ear, it changed from unilateral design to bilateral design, and introduced the open design of ambient sound. One year later, this concept product was finally launched under the name of Xperia Ear Duo. As a non closed true wireless Bluetooth headset, how does Xperia Ear Duo perform and how is it different from other true wireless headsets?

Different opinions on appearance

The overall package of Sony Xperia Ear Duo is small and compact. The front cover is a display picture of the model (the black version is for boys, the gold version is for girls), and the back is about some features of the product. Because the Japanese version is purchased, the bottom is a Japanese description. The later version of the Bank of China should be replaced with Chinese.

The opening method of the split half in the middle is slightly special. On the one hand, it is the charging box and Xperia Ear Duo body, and on the other hand, it is the instructions and accessories. In terms of accessories, only the ring bracket for replacement (including three pre installed sizes) and the short USB Type-C data cable are available, but the charging head does not.

When the charging box is opened, you can see the protagonist Xperia Ear Duo. The cover has magnetic force. The hand feeling of closing the switch is good, and the firmness is also good.

At the bottom is the information sign of Xperia Ear Duo. It can be seen that the model is XEA20 (the model of the previous generation of Xperia Ear is XEA10), and the input power of the charging box is 5V/0.5A.

The charging box keeps pace with the times, and "finally" uses the USB Type-C interface. When you go out, you no longer need to prepare a microUSB cable for the headset.

The main body of Xperia Ear Duo is made of plastic, and the spherical earplug connected to the body is made of metal. The part on the bright side is the touch pad for control, without any physical keys. It can be said that Xperia Ear Duo has a very special shape. I believe you can recognize it at a glance among many wireless headsets.

A metal contact for charging is arranged on the other side, and a quadruple microphone with noise reduction function is set in the left and right units to collect sound. At the same time, you can see that the open earplug has a hollow part, which will not block the user's ear canal, so you can hear the ambient sound.

On the front, in addition to Sony's big logo, there are hidden status indicators to display the current status of Xperia Ear Duo, so that users can understand its working status.

Wear and sound quality

Just like the unique shape of Xperia Ear Duo, the way it is worn is slightly different from that of ordinary earphones: it needs to slide in from below the ear and be stuck in the ear canal. It is troublesome in the way of wearing. At the same time, due to the limited vision, it is difficult to wear Xperia Ear Duo for the first time. It can only be said that it will be smoother after many practices. In addition, it may not be suitable for users with large earlobes to wear Xperia Ear Duo.

However, the performance of Xperia Ear Duo in firmness is impressive, and with a suitable ring brace, it can completely ensure that it will not fall, unless very intense exercise is carried out, even compared with some sports real wireless earphones, it is no inferior. Moreover, because Xperia Ear Duo adopts a unique stereophonic catheter, it will not block the ear canal. In addition to feeling a small burden behind the ear, there will be no closure caused by other earphones, and the surrounding sound reception will not be affected before and after wearing, which really achieves the design goal.

As for the sound quality, it can be seen from the detailed parameters listed on the Japanese official website that this is not Xperia Ear Duo's strong point: first, the Bluetooth transmission protocol only supports SBC and AAC, and Sony's own LDAC does not support it, so the high-quality sound source cannot play its full strength; Secondly, its frequency response range is 60~16000 Hz, which does not fully cover the human ear's hearing range of 20~20000 Hz; In addition, the design concept introduces the ambient sound, which will definitely affect the listening.

In the actual test, the first concern about the environmental sound problem is that the media volume can be ignored when it is adjusted to the maximum. If it is necessary to hear some sound information nearby, such as the airport boarding broadcast and the station announcement broadcast in the subway, just slightly lower the media volume. By the way, the Bluetooth connection is not as bad as the noise reduction beans launched by Sony before. The connection of Xperia Ear Duo is very stable, and the delay is also very low. There is no rollover problem.

Actual App Experience

Since Xperia Ear Duo is not the main audio quality, it is natural to have expertise in other aspects. Similar to the previous generation of Xperia Ear, Xperia Ear Duo is also equipped with a dedicated app. However, in terms of pairing, Xperia Ear Duo is not equipped with NFC fast pairing like other Sony wireless headsets, and can only carry out traditional manual Bluetooth pairing. This is a bad comment. After all, the previous generation of Xperia Ear still has NFC. Fortunately, the automatic pairing of Apple AirPods and iPhone can be carried out through the exclusive app for the first time, which saves some face.

The main interface of Xperia Ear Duo's app is not complicated. There are only three options: electronic instructions, voice assistant settings, and machine related settings. The firmware update was pushed on the first day of receipt. When updating, the Xperia Ear Duo body needs to be put back into the charging box to upgrade normally.

Like the previous generation of Xperia East, the function of Daily Assist, Xperia East Duo, has been inherited. Smart reminders can be obtained by setting relevant information: for example, setting work and home addresses will provide relevant traffic information; When adding an itinerary to the calendar, a voice reminder will be given at the corresponding time; The missed call reminder and the hour time report are also not missed. What is commendable for this generation is that it has added Chinese support, but only traditional Chinese is available for the time being, and the news broadcast in Daily Assist can only choose Taiwan's news sources, hoping to add simplified Chinese and domestic news sources when the Bank of China version is launched.

In terms of the settings of the machine itself, Xperia Ear Duo has a much higher degree of customization than the previous generation of products, which is explained here one by one. For the audio quality options provided in the app, it is recommended to directly select the audio quality priority. Because of the transmission protocol, there will be no interference to the playback when using LDAC transmission; Sony officially publicizes the Clear Phase audio technology, and the music will become clearer after it is turned on. Users who do not mind the addition of "MSG" should open it generously; It is strongly recommended to enable the option of adjusting the volume with the ambient sound, Xperia Ear Duo is quite sensitive to the performance of ambient sound, and will automatically increase and decrease the volume to ensure the experience. The actual measurement is very useful, and it feels that the treatment of different ambient sounds will be different: the sound volume in the face of wind, water and roadside traffic will increase significantly, relatively speaking, if it is a voice, the increase will not be too large.

In terms of control mode, Xperia Ear Duo provides touch control panel and head sense control. The touch pad operation is slow and not smooth in the current firmware version. The right unit provides customized action processing, which can start the voice assistant of different machines to achieve voice control (for example, Google Assistant is called for Android, and Siri for iOS), or set reply information, listening schedule, etc; The left unit is basically the play settings that cannot be changed, such as clicking play/pause, double clicking the next track, triple clicking the previous track, and sliding to adjust the volume.

Compared with the touch pad, the head's somatosensory control has a smoother response and is more natural in actual use. You can nod, shake your head to answer or hang up the phone, or shake your head left and right to switch songs. It's just that the head's somatosensory control is enabled by mistake. For example, when walking on the road and looking at the surrounding environment, you may automatically cut the song, or when turning around, you may accidentally cut the song. Although the app prompts you to improve accuracy through in-depth learning, this is still a function that people love and hate, but also struggle to open.

Medium endurance

The endurance performance of Xperia Ear Duo is fairly good: the official said that it can last about 4 hours at a time, and the charging box can charge it three times, with a total endurance of about 16 hours. It is midstream in the current true wireless headset. In fact, it can be fully charged for more than 3 hours at a time, which is consistent with the official data. It may be that the right unit acts as the master control. The power consumption of the right unit is larger than that of the left unit. In many cases, the left unit and the right unit are fully charged, but the right unit is still in charge.

This endurance performance is the same as that of the previous generation Xperia Ear. Fortunately, it supports fast charging (charging for 7 minutes can last for 1 hour), but for this product that Xperia Ear Duo wants users to wear for a long time, it would be better if the endurance could be longer.

tail

Sony Xperia Ear Duo, similar to its predecessor Xperia Ear, hopes to be the assistant of users and better handle their daily work and life, so it has an open design, which aims to make it stay on users for more time. Compared with the previous generation of products, the new voice assistant access enables it to complete more functions, and the original shortcomings of Xperia Ear have also been greatly supplemented, but as mentioned in the article, the endurance is still its weakness.

Xperia Ear Duo wireless headset is not suitable for music enthusiasts. It is more suitable for simple use in daily life, and becomes a small assistant in the ear. If you want a wireless headset that can be worn for a long time without affecting your daily life and work, it can be said to be very suitable, or it is the most suitable one in the current market besides Apple's AirPods. Of course, there is a price of up to $280 blocking you (I don't know if the pricing of Bank of China will be more conscientious).

I don't know when Sony plans to prepare the voice packs of Zina and Sage Hui for Xperia Ear Duo just like Xperia Ear before. (Laughter)

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