It isn’t always easy finding an affordable pair of in-ear headphones with a decent ability to cut out some of your surrounding noise with, despite many claiming to offer ANC (active noise-canceling). If you don’t mind spending as much as $150-$200 on a pair, you can easily find something, but under $100 you’ll find a lot of false promises. Blitzwolf thankfully seems to have a promising solution with their BW-ANC1 ANC earphones, weighing in at just $49.99, and delivering on its promise of features.
Freshly launched a few months ago, these earbuds take on one of the unique design approaches of ANC, where they have a module that hangs from the wire that packs your battery and ANC source inside, giving it a Y-shape. Best when kept to your front-side so that you have access to the controls, the module can clip to your clothes to keep it from swinging around, while also keeping them safe from falling from your body while wearing them.
They feature a mostly all-black (outside of a few tiny accents of silver) design to them with mostly plastic in the build. The module stretches down about the distance of your belly button, giving it plenty of slack to find a nice place in front to clip onto.
The module contains all of your track controls via the three buttons on its face, covering your typical configuration of prev/next/volume buttons with a single multi-functioning button in-between that acts as your play/pause control, as well as answer/ignore incoming phone calls, press a few seconds to trigger your voice control on your connected device or hold longer to turn the earphones on and off with. One side of the module contains both your micro USB input for charging them with, as well as a tiny button for turning ANC on and off.
In-line via the wire running to the right bud is a microphone for taking calls with, and you have the option of adding a small clip that can slide up and down, narrowing the wires to the button of your chin for added security when mobile.
Like most earphones, they come with three tip sizes to select from, including small, medium, and large. The mediums are loaded already to the buds when you get them, and we recommend switching over to the large for most older-teen to adult users in order to get the most out of your bass with (else it may escape your ears). It all comes down to comfort and getting the best tight grip you can at the same time.
Weight is about average for this style of wireless buds, keeping them comfortable while using them for long hours (at least as comfortable as earbuds can get), and the clip seems to hold well to your clothes when moving around.
Performance
Our favorite part of the story, performance is by far the most important variable in the scoring of a pair of headphones/earphones. Thankfully, Blitzwolf hits this category decently well with these, as they provide a nice range for both music and video listening.
The highs are just crisp enough to add a little extra enjoyment to what you are listening to, while the mids are about average for a pair of earphones below $100, and the lows are roomy and come with a decent amount of umph. The latter, really contributing to the universal enjoyment between music and video, since you have a large range of genres that sound just fine with these, while also bringing a great performance for things like movies.
Next is active noise canceling, as there is no point in advertising this as an option if it fails to deliver to a certain acceptable degree. With this, the BW-ANC1 earphones do deliver, although not comparable to a pair of over-ear headphones (obviously), they do have enough of an effect on the ambient noises of your surrounding environment. What I mean by this, is you won’t be able to cut everything out like a pair of over-ear solutions, but it will take certain levels of noise down–and in some cases, out completely. The mid to lower frequencies seem to be affected the most, while the higher frequencies in the noise around you does seep through with a bit of tinniness to them. So music, hammering, tapping, talking and so forth, will sneak through in one form or another, However, that low hum of a subway or bus will more than likely be filtered out some (or mostly). This is another reason that it is important to shoot for the largest size of tips that will fit your ear.
You get around 6-7 hours of use time with these, including talking on the phone or listening to your favorite music. This isn’t the best battery life on the market for earphones, but you also have to keep in mind that they are delivering ANC at the same time. This leaves these around average in battery performance, keeping them out of the dog house while not bringing anything new to the table in terms of longevity (which is fine).
They are IPX4 rated when it comes to water resistance. This is about middle range when it comes to IPX rating, keeping them safe from continuous splashes for a number of minutes, while not protecting them from submersion (this doesn’t happen until IPX7 or higher). So they are great for a jog in the rain or situations where water may be splashing you slightly as you walk by. You do not however want to take them swimming for obvious reasons. For a $50 pair of earphones, this is more than acceptable.
We did take them into a steam room for around 10-12 minutes (which goes beyond the rating slightly in both moisture contact and length of exposure), and they fared quite nicely without any drop outs or damage. Also, at the time they were around 20 ft from the connected device, including a thick tiled wall in between.
This leads to distance, where they also fared around average. For the price tag, this seems just fine as we wouldn’t have expected 50ft worth of range unless they were closure to around $80-$100. At around 20-30 ft from the connected device, if we cupped out hands tightly around the hanging module and turned out back to the direction of the device, we would experience dropouts immediatly. So it would be best to keep your connected device with or close to you at all times for the best experience.
In all, it feels and sounds like a good pair of $50-$70 earphones. Being that they are priced at $50, this is perfect for what they are. Blitzwolf seems to know how to properly price their devices in the market of things, showing that they seem to know quite well what they are doing.
What’s inside?
Beyond the discussion I already had about the three sizes of tips to choose from, you get a really short micro USB to USB cable for charging them with via that port on the hanging module. You get a few materials covering user experience and the operating manual. Then of course there is that small sliding clip you can pop onto the wires if you so choose.
Our Conclusion
For the price tag of just $50, this pair of ANC earphones seems to fit quite well into the market. They not only sound pretty good, but the highs are decently crisp and the lows have enough impact to enhance the content you are listening to, regardless of if you are listening to music or a nice action-packed movie. Their ability to filter ambient noises out is pretty effective and adds to their ability when you have something like a morning commute to help slip away from while listening. All of this helps make it quite easy to recommend them for consumers looking for quality ANC earphones at a decent price.
| Buy from Banggood | |
Our Rating | Average Price* $49.99 |
*Average price is based on the time this article was published
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Specifications:
- Bluetooth Version?4.1
- Transmission Distance?10m
- Noise Reduction Range(200-800Hz)?-20±5d
- S/N?80dB
- Impedance?32?
- Frequency Response?20-20kH
- Battery Capacity?120mAh, 3.7V
- Charging Time?2h
- Talking Time?6h
- Working Time?7h
- Standby Time?240h
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