Oppo Enco Air true wireless earbuds are cheap AirPods rivals
Oppo’s latest buds are budget-friendly
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
If you love the style of theApple AirPods, but hate the ($159 / £159 / AU$249)price tag, Oppo’s latesttrue wireless earbudscould be worth checking out.
The Oppo Enco Air come with Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity, a 24-hour battery life, and a decidedly AirPods-esque design – but at £69, they’re much cheaper. (That works out at around $100 / AU$125, though global pricing and availability is yet to be confirmed.)
Inside the Oppo Enco Air true wireless earbuds are 12mm titanium dynamic drivers, each with a dedicated bass-boosting duct, which Oppo says “work in harmony to channel and amplify every detail”.
They come with a Vocal Enhancement mode, too, which uses a real-time algorithm to adjust the signal and make vocals stand out from the instrumental aspects of your music.
While there’s no active noise cancellation, Oppo says that the buds come with DNN (Deep Neural Network) Noise Cancellation for phone calls, which apparently makes for clearer call quality by reproducing the sound of human voices as you would hear them in person using a binaural audio algorithm.
The battery life comes in at 24 hours in total – that’s four hours from the buds themselves and a further 20 hours from the charging case. That’s not the best battery life we’ve seen, but it is about the same as the AirPods, despite the much lower price.
According to Oppo, the Enco Air have been tested on over 400 different ear shapes, so they should provide a pretty comfy fit – and they come with IPX4 water-resistance, so you could use them for working out without worrying about a little sweat or rain breaking them.
Get the best Black Friday deals direct to your inbox, plus news, reviews, and more.
Sign up to be the first to know about unmissable Black Friday deals on top tech, plus get all your favorite TechRadar content.
Should you buy them?
So, should you buy the Oppo Enco Air instead of theAppleAirPods? Well, it depends on what you’re looking for from a pair of true wireless earbuds.
Oppo earbuds that we’ve previously tested, like theOppo Enco X, have impressed with their comfy fits and assertive sound. However, they don’t offer the seamless connectivity with iOS devices that the AirPods are capable of – in fact, you can’t download the accompanying control app for the Enco Air from the App Store.
And, don’t forget – even though the Oppo buds are cheaper, the Apple AirPods could easily be discounted duringPrime Day 2021, which is coming up in June.
ViaWhat Hi-Fi?
Olivia was previously TechRadar’s Senior Editor - Home Entertainment, covering everything from headphones to TVs. Based in London, she’s a popular music graduate who worked in the music industry before finding her calling in journalism. She’s previously been interviewed on BBC Radio 5 Live on the subject of multi-room audio, chaired panel discussions on diversity in music festival lineups, and her bylines include T3, Stereoboard, What to Watch, Top Ten Reviews, Creative Bloq, and Croco Magazine. Olivia now has a career in PR.
Our favorite budget audio brand just launched super-cheap planar earbuds with a lovely wood finish
OnePlus Buds Pro 3 vs OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro
Google TV will require more RAM for future upgrades – which might leave older TVs and streaming boxes behind
