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A few years ago, when true wireless earbuds were just about catching everyone’s eyes, there was a clear segregation between feature-rich ones, and relatively limited options that you’d buy on a strict budget. It was often a matter of choosing between the two. Times have changed, quite quickly too. It is not as much a choice anymore. In that era, what the likes of OnePlus and subsequently Nothing (these are just a few examples) managed is being followed through in their own distinct personality by Indian tech company Noise. More specifically, the Noise Buds Xero earbuds, with adaptive noise cancellation.
The new Noise Buds Xero earbuds. (Official handout image) There is a lot at stake for Noise. First, the numbers. Research firm International Data Corporation indicates that earwear shipments in India crossed 80.4 million units, a 16.9% growth in 2023 year-on-year. Within the broader earwear category, true wireless earbuds have a 67.3% share, up from 55.2% the previous year. For the brand, there’s a trajectory they’d want to take complete advantage of – an increase of 33.3% in terms of share of shipments for wearables in 2023 compared to the previous year.
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Noise, perhaps reflective of its attempts to stay ahead of the competition, has upped its game tremendously. Perhaps more so than most of its rivals, and it shows in the new Noise Buds Xero. The price tag too, which at around ₹4,499 and for its aspirational trajectory, gives them the significant challenge of also delivering on the value proposition that consumers expect. Little things, such as an option to engrave (that is only on the official website) something on the new buds before they’re delivered, could help make that case.
But nothing overshadows performance, and the more a consumer pays for true wireless earbuds, the greater the expectation. The Buds Xero have 12.4mm audio drivers, made from a combination of polyetheretherketone (PEEK) and titanium materials. Sound, at its default settings, works well for most genres of music. Why I point that out at the outset is because there is no separate companion app for your paired phone which would allow you to tweak the sound. That is perplexing, to say the least. You’re left to just touch controls on the earbuds for everything – adaptive noise control, volume and Siri (or Google Assistant on Android).
The lack of an app is a glaring gap in the Noise Buds Xero’s toolkit. The experience feels restrictive, and incomplete, without an ability to tweak the equaliser, noise cancellation and other settings. Most of all, no chance of a firmware update too.
Beyond this, as it is, the Noise Buds Xero handles most music quite well. The large audio drivers provide a solid hardware baseline. It is not exactly a neutrally tuned EQ (equaliser), but the lower frequency bias is very minimal. Just enough to give a perceptible boost to the bass effect in up-tempo music tracks, which a few genres demand, to be fair. What you’ll notice is that vocals come through quite well, be it for music, podcasts or any video streaming content. Mid-frequencies do get slightly overshadowed from time to time, depending on the composition of the soundstage. If and when an app is ready, you’ll be able to further tweak the sound – at least that’s the expectation.
Noise’s tuning of the adaptive noise cancellation works rather well to block out most of the ambient noise. That takes care of traffic and even a ringing phone (so much so that it is easy to miss calls if you don’t notice a lit up phone). Some sounds will still filter through, such as the humming of an AC unit. As of now, you can only turn this on or off, and finer controls such as custom transparency modes do not exist.
Noise claims about 50 hours of playtime before the battery needs a recharge. That is a combination of the battery on the buds, topped up by the charging case, till both eventually run out. Your mileage on each charge will vary depending on the quality of connection and volume levels. We noticed that an hour of listening to music at around 40% volume drops the battery level by around 2%, but it isn’t a consistent level of discharge, which is also indicative of different refresh times for the charge counter you see on the paired phone.
The chrome finish, available in three colours (I would pick ‘Blue’), along with the somewhat reassuring IPX5 water resistance and a rather nice design, do add more to your argument for potentially splurging on these earbuds. The Noise Buds Xero are taking forward the case for true wireless earbuds as a must-have accessory. What it now must have is the app that’s truly missing.
