Luckily, the SoundPEATS QY7 was not a Humpty Dumpty

On last Friday, when I was about to leave the house for work, a tragic accident occurred. I had my SoundPEATS QY7 earbuds in one hand and they got entangled with my right shoe when I bent down to tie my shoes, and the right earbud got snapped. It broke into several pieces. I picked up what I could see and put them in my backpack and left the house because it was getting too late. (Gah, I forgot to take photos again!!!)

In the bus, I got a seat and I assessed the situation. Luckily the wire connections were intact; however, there were some pieces missing. And I wasn't sure if I would be able to put it back together. To make things even worse, a woman in her middle age demanded my seat and since I know how ugly their mouths can get, I gave it away reluctantly. I had to stand the whole way for 90 minutes.

It was a horrible day. I had nothing to do while commuting. That's about 4 hrs total without nothing to do, thanks to our super road system. I could have surfed the Internet on my phone, but looking at the screen makes me nauseous, this time due to the ride being so rough: braking and switching tracks frequently.

I actually found out that I could play Real Racing 3, which I installed to check how good the work of devs of Fire Monkeys Studios was, but it didn't go well again due to the rough ride - I cannot how a steady line on the track, not to mention sticking to the racing line. So I just looked outside the shutters thinking about various things.

SoundPEATS QY7 Bluetooth Earbuds - Initial thoughts

Thanks to Amazon Prime, I received my new Bluetooth earphones the next day after placing the order. I will be replacing the Plantronics BackBeat Go 2 which is having an issue as discussed in this post. 

It came in a nice pouch with lots of other spare ear tips and a charging micro USB cable. The default eartips worked fine for me so I didn't change them.

At first I paired it with my iPhone 6 which is my day to day phone at the moment. I could easily pair it with the iPhone. It shows the battery level of the earbuds when it is connected just like the Backbeats. The quality is very good too, much better than the Backbeats. The quality of the Backbeats were quite poor. I didn't feel this initially, but even compared to the Apple EarPods, they were very clumsy. Remember though that I'm not an audiophile and this is a subjective claim.

The other thing I love about the QY7 is its battery life. It would work way longer than the Backbeats. I haven't measured the battery life properly, but according to my experience it would go for more than 8 hours without a charge. I listen to podcasts while commuting to work and that is about 1hr in total. I would 90% battery left according to the battery status shown on the iPhone for the earbuds a day after fully charging the battery of it. If this is accurate, it could be as high as 10hrs. It could be that these earbuds carry a larger battery than the Backbeats because they are a bit larger. Also it appears that the earbuds turn themselves off after a while if it is not connected to a device. Not the most amazing design but I'm up for longer battery life.

The Plantronics Backbeat Go 2 Bluetooth headset is unusable anymore

 

I had been using the Plantronics Backbeat Go 2 earbuds since January 2014 to listen to music and podcasts on my phone. I bought them as a birthday present for myself. Those are also my first Bluetooth earbuds. Sadly, I would have to replace them soon.

It appears that the connection between the left and right drivers of the earbuds are damaged. I no longer can hear anything from the left driver but when I wiggle the cable, the audio comes for a split second and goes away. Same thing happens when I walk while wearing the earbuds because the cable moves. And it is very irritating. So right now I'm wearing it only on the right ear. Obviously I lose the audio quality and it cannot block any noise the outside anymore.

I don't have any spare earbuds, so have to wear the Backbeats this way until I can get some new ones. Well, I do have the Apple Earpods but I don't want to use them because I plan on selling the iPhone in a few months. I don't want to use any of the accessories because it may lower the resale value.

There is no way to repair these as far as I can tell. There aren't any screws or anything so that I can disassemble it without damaging it. I was unable to find a tutorial on disassembling either. The unit appears to be sealed. But since I'll be throwing them in the garbage bin, I might as well tamper it. But I could not find time for that.

I cannot go on like this so a couple of weeks ago I ordered a new pair of earphones: SoundPEATS QY7. They are the most popular Bluetooth earphones sold on Amazon (US as well as Japan) and has a decent end user rating as well. I also watched some YouTube reviews on them and they were recommended, especially for the price. They cost fraction of what I paid for the Backbeat Go 2 and comes at ¥2,399. (I spent over ¥5,000 for the Backbeats by the way and that was with a decent discount too.)

I'll compare it with the Backbeats when I receive it, so be tuned for that post.

I’ll through the Backbeat in the garbage bin once I am confident QY7 would work for me.

P.S.

This is not the first time I had issues with the Backbeat Go 2. Several times I had the earbuds freeze on me and I had to let the battery drain before I can recharge them and use them again. I almost RMAed them when this happened the first time.