Within the swelling tide of open earbuds, it may be straightforward to miss an underdog. When Acefast’s Acefit Air first got here to my consideration, they appeared like every other pair of price range ear hooks, the baseline design for buds that allow you to take heed to tunes whereas conserving your ears open to the world.
I used to be delightfully shocked as soon as I bought them out of the field, beginning with their spyware-thin charging case harboring stylishly slim buds with a contact of metallic aptitude. The Acefit Air’s every day efficiency is equally satisfying, marked by responsive controls and crisp but heat sound for strong musicality throughout genres.
These aren’t probably the most feature-packed open earbuds, and the match may be finicky, particularly if you first stretch the pliable hooks throughout the again of your ears. At $80, these drawbacks are straightforward to miss, and I had a blast utilizing these buds throughout my outside actions for a number of weeks.
Slim and Stylin’
{Photograph}: Ryan Waniata
There’s one thing totally satisfying concerning the Acefit Air’s case. When peeking by way of the cumbersome field’s plastic bubble, it appears like several variety of outsized clamshells. That made it all of the extra spectacular to search out it is maybe the thinnest case of any buds I’ve examined, slipping simply into denims or shorts pockets. The flat-matte end provides to the vibe, although it tends to gather oil out of your pores and skin in and out over time.
The buds are equally glossy. Although they weigh round 7.5 grams (the AirPods Professional 2 are simply over 5), they’re lighter and fewer obtrusive than most earhook buds I’ve examined. Acefast says that’s due partly to an “ultra-fine titanium wire” inside the hooks examined for 10,000 bends. The match is so free and cozy you’d assume they’d fall off, however they’re effectively balanced and I’ve but to lose one whereas strolling, mountaineering, biking, or in any other case tramping round.
It may be powerful to get the audio system and accompanying vents correctly aligned with my ears, significantly the fitting one, as a result of approach the buds are designed to dangle outdoors your canals. I’ve gotten used to it, however I often must make some changes to the fitting bud, discovering that pulling it ahead often locks within the stereo picture.
Whereas placing the buds in, I typically hear the telltale beep of their metallic contact sensors, but Acefast has seemingly made them unresponsive for the primary few seconds, so I hardly ever make errors. Most significantly, in contrast to loads of open earbuds I check, the contact pads are responsive, letting me simply single-tap for quantity, double-tap for play/pause, and triple-tap for tune skip even in compromising conditions like an ebike journey. Merely working reliably places these buds forward of the sport.
Talking of ebikes, the buds aren’t the most effective at overcoming wind resistance, however they do an honest job, letting me take heed to tunes or podcasts at average speeds with out the necessity to blast my ears. That is an enormous advantage of open earbuds over conventional buds that depend on microphones that simply get overwhelmed by wind shear and resistance.
Triple Punch
{Photograph}: Ryan Waniata
Inside every bud’s rubbery body is a “three-magnet ultra linear speaker” that accounts for the Acefit Air’s spectacular sound high quality. Acefast says the audio system scale back distortion, they usually’re lots loud to the purpose that I hardly ever pushed them above a 3rd of max quantity. That’s a very good factor, since turning on the EQ in Acefast’s app oddly lowers mentioned quantity, however I didn’t discover the necessity to use EQ anyway.