Apple changed the audio industry forever when they first released the original Airpods alongside the iPhone 7 back in 2016. Until then, companies were struggling to make the TWS concept work well and whatever products were available, they were finicky and unintuitive.
However, after the Airpods were introduced, after a brief critical period, they really took off and now they are everywhere. Why is this relevant here? Because Airpods not only changed Apple, but the change trickled down to the entire Audio industry. Fast-forward to now, in India, we have TWS earbuds available for less than Rs. 1000.
One such entry level product is what we are looking at today, the Super Buds Pro GT9. Costing Rs.1,499 these aim to offer all the convenience of a TWS at basically one-tenth of the second gen Airpods. So, let us see how successful they are in that.
Unboxing and Initial Impressions
Starting the unboxing, these are your basic run-of-the-mill TWS that come with a case, replacement set of buds (S, L packed separately and M fit on the earbuds by default), A USB A-C cable, and documentation. While the others are pretty usual stuff, the case deserves a special mention. It is shaped like a battle helmet and has a pair of red lights where the eyes would be. These light up when the case is opened or closed.
It is pretty cool to have a different case instead of the usual rectangular case you get, but apart from that, they don’t really serve a functional purpose. The case also seems extremely flimsy, so I am not sure how they will stand day-to-day rough handling in the long run, especially if you take public transport often.
Apart from the red lights, we also have three smaller green lights (0-30%,31-60%,61-100%) inside the case to indicate the battery level. The earbuds themselves also have a pair of green lights each, and they indicate when they are ready to pair or looking for the last connected device.
I have to mention that it is kinda difficult to take the buds out of the case with one hand because the case’s hinge doesn’t open very far and tends to get closed with very little force. While this may generally be a good thing from a safety standpoint, it is a little difficult to access these when you are standing in a packed bus trying to get these onto your ears. So, keep that in mind. Of course, you can always put them on your ears before you get on the bus.
Technical Specifications
- Bluetooth Version – 5.3
- Supported Codecs – SBC
- Drivers – 13 mm Single Dynamic Drive in each bud
- Microphones – MEMC Mics for high quality voice output
- Battery Life (Claimed) – 48 Hours (With 50% volume for talk time); No individual Battery Life claims for the buds and the case.
- Latency – 40 ms (With Dedicated Gaming Mode Turned on)
- Charging Time – 15 Minutes for 180 Minutes of listening (From dead, they take 2:30 hours to fully charge; personally tested twice with ± 10 minutes variation)
- Water Resistance – IPX4
- Noise Cancellation – Environmental Noise Cancellation (ENC)
How are they like to use?
I started using them right out of the box, pairing them with my phone, and was pleasantly surprised to see that they had full charge in them. These don’t support any kind of fast pairing for Android/Apple/Windows, so you just open the case and hope that they show up on your device, but I didn’t have any issues in connecting them with the three different devices I used to test them.
They make the same chime for connection/disconnection, as well as an announcement for toggling the game mode. Initial impressions told me that their claim of “high bass” is indeed true. They aim for the V curve with heightened bass response at the expense of mids and highs. Coming to the fit, they have the Airpods like design with a bulb shaped earbud that sits in your ear. You may have to change the ear tips to get the best fit, which can be done quite easily. The S ones worked best for me in terms of fitment and audio quality.
They don’t support any other codec apart from SBC; I tried using them in a variety of different scenarios and even though they sounded decent enough in all these scenarios, I still wish they at least supported AAC because that is quite common at this price point in other options. It is mentioned in the specs that these support ENC, but honestly I have no idea what that is or how effective it is here because all I could say is that if you have a good seal, you mostly have no issues hearing content, but that is called Passive Noise Cancellation (PNC).
I tried attending a few phone calls with these on, and I mostly didn’t have any issues because the other person could almost always hear me without any major issues. I may have had to repeat myself once or twice at best. That being said, the earbuds don’t get uncomfortable that easily, and I never once drained the earbuds fully for the entirety of the two weeks of testing period, so that is definitely a good thing. In that time, one full charge lasted for about a week.
The Earbuds are focussed towards people that are looking to mainly game with them. This is apparent from the overall design as well as the fact that they have a dedicated gaming mode at this price. I will admit that I am probably not a serious gamer myself, but I tried playing a few lightweight games and I can’t say that they actively affected my gameplay in any of those. I don’t know if they actually meet that impressive claim of 40 ms, though. So, keep that in mind if you are going to be exclusively playing first-person shooter games.
Issues that I encountered
My first major gripe with the earbuds is that there is absolutely no way to definitely know the battery life remaining in the case for sure except for the three green lights inside the case. While the buds do show the battery life when connected to a phone, that seems to be a combined battery life level, and you can’t see the battery level for each bud. There are three breath light indication on the eye lights in the case to show when the case has low battery life, but it can get confusing because the breathing light is also used for two other purposes as indicated in the manual.
Since there is no wear detection, they won’t stop if you take one or both of them out of your ears. The earbuds have a touch sensitive panel on them which you can use to trigger different actions but on top of them being a little convoluted, they don’t work very well.
When I tried to adjust them, for example, I kept triggering different actions depending on how many times I touched them. For actions that require multiple taps or a tap and hold, they worked only 20-30% of the time and mostly just paused whatever was playing. I tend to use the next/previous gestures often and if they are unreliable it can get a little frustrating, especially when I can’t use my phone.
While the buds don’t get in your way most of the time, I noticed that they do have connection issues from time to time. Sometimes, when I am connected to a device, suddenly one of the buds (happened on separate occasions with both the earbuds) loses connection and then reconnects after one or two seconds. It wouldn’t be a big issue if it happened even once in a while, but they happened a lot for me and when you are intensely watching a movie, for example, this could get annoying very quickly. I can’t bring myself to excuse this because with Bluetooth 5.3 support in them, they can definitely be better than this.
The buds also have IPX4 rating according to the website, but I would be very careful because these don’t seem to handle even normal sweating gracefully. Even a little sweat seems to affect the connection stability quite badly, and the music just stops playing.
It just kept happening over and over again that I eventually decided to stop using them and put them back in their case. Once I got home and used them again when both me and the buds were dry, they didn’t have any issues. So, if you are planning to use them while running or exercising, I would keep this in my mind or take a towel with me to dry myself and the buds. But if I have to do that, what is the point of the rating?
One more potential serious problem is that the charging indicator is extremely unreliable for when only one of the green lights are ON inside the case because I kept thinking it will charge the buds full once, and I can just charge them when the buds die, but the buds just get charged up to 30% according to my phone, but they die within 15–20 minutes each time. So, just connect them to a charger when the case shows only one light.
Warranty and other Miscellaneous Info
The box says that the earphones have one year manufacturer warranty under which any manufacturing issues are covered, but Number’s website mentions only a six months warranty for TWS, so I am not sure which is it. You need to register your device on the website to claim warranty as well as raise any issues under it, so don’t forget to do it if you get these. The brand is relatively new as far as I understand, so their long term support quality is still up for debate and there is no reliable metric yet to make a judgment here.
Please remember that they don’t support any sort of Equalizer so adjusting the sound is not an option unless you install a third party application, but that modifies the sound for your entire phone rather than just the earbuds. There is also no companion app whatsoever, so you just need to go with the information shown in the Bluetooth settings of your phone.
Conclusion
All things considered, these are decent earbuds for their price that serve their purpose and then some. It is definitely true that they are not the most power packed earbuds in the market, but they definitely make a case for themselves (pun intended) with an interesting looking case and an experience that is largely positive. So, if you are looking for a TWS that costs less while undoubtedly looking cool, check these out.
The Super Buds Pro GT9s are available for purchase at Number’s website and Flipkart.
Pros
- Bassy Sound Signature
- Good Fit
- Commendable Battery Life
- Low Latency Gaming Mode
Cons
- No AAC
- No Companion App
- Connection Issues are prevalent
Review by Stephen. He is enthusiastic about all things tech. He is interested to learn about anything that uses technology to solve a genuine problem. Besides that, he also appreciates good hardware or software design in a product.