Take a look at Raycon’s about page, and you see a company that bills itself on offering high-quality audio without the expensive price tag. To the company’s credit, theRaycon Everyday Earbuds Pro
Raycon Everyday Earbuds Pro
The Raycon Everyday Earbuds Pro are the most premium buds you may buy from Raycon, but they don’t quite offer enough to justify their price. Sound quality is good, and battery life is superb. Unfortunately, the advertised hybrid noise cancelation leaves much to be desired.
are significantly cheaper than Apple’s $249.99 AirPods Pro and Samsung’s $229.99 Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, but “pro” doesn’t actually tell you anything when it comes to buds.
There are a lot of capable buds in the price range that the Everyday Earbuds Pro more directly compete with, and how do they stack compared to them?
Price and Availability
The Raycon Everyday Earbuds Pro have a launch price of $149.99. That’s almost twice the cost of the $79.99Everyday Earbudsbut the same price as theEveryday Headphones Pro.
The buds come in two colors: Onyx Black and Silk White. I reviewed the earbuds in Onyx Black.
Specifications
Basic Design with a Premium Finish
The differences between one earbud case and another are subtle. For the most part, these are all small pods that can fit in your pants' coin pocket. Raycon’s case feels very nice to hold, thanks to soft touch plastic that does feel pretty premium. I’ve never had the buds fall out accidentally or the top lift open unexpectedly, so the case does a good job of being a case.
There’s a single light on the front to convey charging information. The light changes from green to orange when the battery is under 75% and red when it dips below 25%. There’s a Raycon logo underneath this light, and you will find a USB-C port at the very bottom of the case.
The buds have a stem that extends down from the ear, like Apple AirPods and most earbuds in general. The design is black with chrome along the stem, and the Raycon logo sits inside the chrome.
I have concerns about how well the Raycon logo will hold up over time, but that’s not something I will have the unit long enough to know. Personally, I’d have preferred to do without the chrome, since I like earbuds to be as nondescript as possible, but that’s not a ding against the buds.
Nice, But Non-Customizable Controls
You control the buds using capacitive touch controls behind the Raycon branding. A single tap on the left bud turns the volume down. A tap on the right turns the volume up. Double tapping pauses or unpauses what you’re listening to. Triple tap to skip tracks. You can also hold down either to end a phone call, or hold down longer to turn the device off entirely.
The controls work pretty well. Unfortunately, if you don’t like the default setup, you can’t change it. There isn’t a Raycon app that lets you configure how your buds operate. This is a bit disappointing when you consider how much these buds cost. At $150, you can get buds from Google or Samsung that are customizable.
The Everyday Earbuds Pro talk to you to indicate status changes. You will hear “connected” when the buds have successfully paired, “disconnected” if the connection is severed, and “pairing mode” if the buds are waiting for a connection. The voice also announces when you’re switching between various sound profiles.
This means you’re rarely confused about what your buds are doing at any given moment, as you can be with buds that only communicate with beeps.
Good Sound Quality Let Down by Unimpressive ANC
I didn’t have any complaints from my time listening to music and podcasts with the Raycon Everyday Earbuds Pro. The buds come with three sound modes. Bass Sound cranks up the bass quite effectively. There is also Balanced Sound and Pure Sound. I found the default option suitable and stuck with that. I can’t say I noticed a substantial improvement over my cheaper JBLs, but at least they didn’t sound any worse.
I was able to hold conversations quite effectively, whether indoors or outside. I tried walked around the yard with a light breeze, while the neighbor cut grass. No sweat. I could walk by the side of the road, and while the person I was talking to could hear the cars, they weren’t a problem.
Only when I fired up my electric lawn mower did they start asking me to repeat myself, but that’s not exactly an everyday use case.
The buds advertise the use of six microphones to enable clear voice calls, and I haven’t encountered any issues with them in my use. I felt confident taking part in Zoom meetings with these in my ears.
The buds come with three noise canceling modes: Awareness mode, ANC On, and ANC Off. ANC attempts to block out background noise entirely, while Awareness mode allows for a degree of ambient sound to come through, so that you aren’t completely oblivious in public spaces.
Honestly, I couldn’t detect much of a difference between any of the three modes. I swiped out the tips I was using to see if fit was the issue. The earbuds come with three pairs of memory foam tops and four gel tips. Altogether, there are four different sizes. The memory foam tips offer a firmer, more substantial feel than the gel tips more like those you’d find on any set of buds. Sadly, I always heard background noise regardless of the ANC mode or the tip size.
There’s a chance the buds simply don’t fit my ears well, so your mileage may vary. But if I were personally buying these to block out sound, I’d have to send them back to the store.
Long-Lasting Battery Life and Accessible Charging
As I mentioned earlier, the USB-C port is at the bottom of the case. I like this positioning, since it allows you to plug in your buds to charge while they are resting on their back. This contrasts with my old JBL buds whose rear charging port meant the case needed to stand upright to charge naturally.
Raycon’s pro buds also come with wireless charging. While this is to be expected at this price range, this perk is one reason to justify paying more for nice buds. It opens up the ability to drop your case on a wireless charging pad, which charge up decently fast due to the relatively small batteries in an earbud case compared to a phone. You can also charge your buds on the back of a phoneusing reverse wireless charging.
That said, I didn’t actually spend much time thinking about charging. The buds had more than enough staying power to get me through my workday and my evening routines. I charged the case back up before it ever hit red, and that was simply to test out charging, not because I had to.
Should You Buy the Raycon Everyday Earbuds Pro?
TheRaycon Everyday Earbuds Proare perfectly fine buds. The substantial battery life made keeping them charged something I didn’t have to think about. They performed well during phone calls and Zoom calls, with no one complaining about hearing me.
I don’t have much negative to say about them, but I still don’t know if that is enough to justify the price. Competition is strong, with other buds offering more features at a lower cost. Even within Raycon’s own lineup, theImpact Earbudswith over twice the battery life and an IP67 rating for the same price.
The Raycon Everday Earbuds Pro didn’t wow me. I’d gladly keep them as a gift with few complaints, but I wouldn’t opt to buy them when there are ways to get comparable or better buds for less money.
