Cygnett FreePlay Earbuds Review – You get what you pay for

Cygnett are a brand known for bringing new technologies to the masses. That is to say their products are a lot better priced than their competitors. In some cases this works extremely well such as their Wide Angle Lens and Powerbase Wireless Charger, but in the case of earbuds – the jury is still out.

The good

• Very affordable.
• Decent sound quality.

The bad

• Uncomfortable in-ear.
• Voice feedback is more annoying than anticipated.
• Each ear is setup individually.

The verdict

If you’ve never used wireless earphones before, and/or have a severely limited budget – these will do. But there are many more functional options for ~$100 more. This is the type of product I would typically recommend for a kid, it’s affordable, doesn’t need to be too stylish and works – however with the voice feedback being locked at a relatively loud volume, I wouldn’t give these to someone under the age of 12.

COMFORTABILITY

A theme that was very consistent throughout this review was “This would be great if I didn’t know any better”, but I do… It’s my job to know better. Having demo’d the top of the line wireless earbuds from companies like Huawei and Apple it’s hard to look at the FreePlay’s and objectively review them.

But to be as honest and fair as is deserved, the FreePlay earbuds are big, slightly too heavy and don’t sit awfully well in-ear. The case they are held in is really nice and of a nice size.

STYLE

Aesthetically speaking, while they look modern and almost ‘futuristic’, the biggest complaint from the general public as far as wireless earbuds are concerned is that they look obnoxious – and the FreePlay’s do NOTHING to combat that stereotype. I felt like a wanker wearing these around.

The experience was the same as with the comfort factor, in that the case looks and feels really nice – but the earbuds themselves are out of touch.

PRACTICALITY

So there are a few practical issues with the FreePlay earbuds, firstly they act individually. This means you need to bluetooth sync each earbud with your phone, which isn’t a big issue as you only have to sync it once. But you also need to turn each one on and off every time you take them in or out of the case – as opposed to the other brands where they automatically do this each time. That may seem pedantic to anyone that hasn’t used wireless earbuds before, but take my word it’s genuinely annoying.

The other main practical concern I had was the ‘voice feedback’ as I’ll call it. When you either, turn the FreePlay’s on, off or sync them with a bluetooth device they ‘talk’ to you – “Power on”, “Power off”, “PWS connected”. All of these are unnecessary in both their existence and incredibly loud volume.

The battery life on the FreePlay’s is roughly 3 hours between charges and the case holds 9 hours worth of charge, all of this is relatively industry standard and worth commending at the price point.

Ultimately, you get what you pay for. That’s how the game works and that’s how Cygnett design, build and market their products. Retailing for $129 from Big W these earbuds are significantly cheaper than most others on the market.