About TREBLAB
Like most in-ear headphones, the X5 don't trap heat under ear cups, so you won't feel a big difference in temperature when wearing them. You shouldn't sweat more than usual, which makes them a good option for sports.
The X5 have a good control scheme, but it might take a bit of time to get used to. Each earbud has two buttons that give you access to common functionalities. You can manage your calls and music, skip tracks, or access your device's voice assistant. You also get volume control, which isn't available on all truly wireless headphones, so that's good. However, this control scheme has a few flaws. It might be a bit confusing to use at first. One of the most annoying commands was unpausing. To play/pause, you need to hold the upper button of either bud for a second. However, a single tap on the left button will go the previous track, which is frustrating when you're trying to unpause your music.
Like most truly wireless headphones, the Treblab X5 can easily fit in your pockets or bag if you want to bring them to the gym. They will be easy to carry around and they also come with a hard case that doesn't add too much bulk. They will easily fit in your pockets as well.
The charging case of the X5 is decent. It feels a bit cheaply made with thin plastic that could break. The case still fully protects the headphones against minor water exposure and scratches. It might also absorb a bit of damage from falls; however, unlike similarly designed headphone cases, the right earbud goes on the left side of the case, and vice versa.
The X5 don't have the best build quality and feel fairly cheap. They are made out of thin plastic and feel like they would break if you were to sit or step on them accidentally. Their case also feels thin and lightweight, and doesn't feel like it's really protecting the headphones that well. On the upside, they are rated IPX4 for water resistance, but we currently don't have a test to measure this. Also, IPX4 is lower than most sports-oriented headphones that we've reviewed so far. For better-built truly wireless headphones, take a look at the Anker Soundcore Liberty Air, who have a similar design, or the Anker Soundcore Liberty Lite for a denser and more solid overall build.
The Treblab X5 are very stable headphones and are a great option for physical activity. Their stability fins are great for more intense workouts and their overall fit feels tight. The earbuds don't move around when exercising, even if the headphones are a bit bulkier than typical truly wireless in-ears. Also, the fit doesn't change much when using their control scheme, which is good. Their wireless design gets rid of the risk of a cable getting stuck on something and yanking the headphones out of your ears.
The frequency response consistency is excellent. If the user can achieve a proper fit and an air-tight seal using the assortment of tips that come with the headphones, then they should be able to get consistent bass and treble delivery every time they use the headphones.
The bass performance of the X5 is great. LFE (low-frequency extension) is at 10Hz, which is excellent for bass-heavy genres like EDM and hip-hop. The whole range is flat and even, and the slight overemphasis should barely be noticeable. Low-bass is slightly overemphasized by about 3 dB. This will add a bit of excess thump to the bass, which some people may like. Mid-bass is well balanced and the slight overemphasis in high-bass will be barely noticeable.
The mid-range of the X5 is good. The range is fairly close to our target curve, but there is a 5dB dip in mid-mid, which pushes back the vocals and lead instruments to the back of the mix.
The treble performance is great. The range before 5KHz is fairly flat and even, but gets a bit uneven in higher frequencies. The bumps around 7KHz and 10KHz will make these frequencies sound sharp and piercing. However, not everyone will hear this as sibilant.
The Treblab X5 has excellent imaging. Their weighted group delay is at 0.1, which is very good. This suggests that they have a tight bass and a transparent treble reproduction. Additionally, the L/R drivers of our test unit were exceptionally well-matched in amplitude, frequency, and phase response, which ensures an accurate placement and localization of objects (voices, instruments, video game effects) in the stereo image. However, these results are only valid for our unit, and yours may perform differently.
The soundstage of the X5 is poor. This is because creating an out-of-head and speaker-like soundstage is largely dependent on activating the resonances of the pinna (outer ear). The design of in-ears and earbuds is in such a way that fully bypasses the pinna and doesn't interact with it. Also, because the Treblab X5 have a closed-back design, their soundstage won't be perceived to be as open as that of open-back earbuds like the Apple AirPods or the Bose SoundSport Free.
The isolation performance of the X5 is decent. In the bass range, where the rumble of airplane and bus engines sits, they isolate by about 7dB, which is okay. In the mid-range, important for blocking out speech, they reduce outside noise by 22dB, which is great. In the treble range, occupied by sharp sounds like S and Ts and fan noises like A/C systems, they achieve more than 48dB of isolation, which is excellent.
The leakage performance of the Treblab X5 is excellent. The significant portion of the leakage is concentrated in a narrow band in the treble range. This results in a leakage that is very thin sounding. The overall level of the leakage is very quiet too. With the music at 100dB SPL, the leakage at 1 foot away averages at around 22dB SPL and peaks at 27dB SPL, which is way below the noise floor of most offices.
The integrated microphone of the Treblab X5 is sub-par. In quiet environments, speech recorded or transmitted with this mic will sound noticeably thin and muffled. It will do decently in moderately noisy situations but will struggle to fully separate speech from background noise in loud places, like a subway station.
The recording quality of the integrated microphone is sub-par. The LFE (low-frequency extension) of 223Hz indicates that speech recorded/transmitted with this mic will sound noticeably thin. The HFE (high-frequency extension) is at 2.7KHz, which results in speech that is noticeably lacking in detail and muffled. This is expected from most Bluetooth microphones.
This integrated microphone is mediocre at noise handling. In our SpNR test, it achieved a speech-to-noise ratio of 15dB. This means that it will be able to separate speech from ambient noise in moderately noisy environments to a decent degree but will struggle in loud situations.
We measured just over 3 hours of continuous playback on one charge, which is very disappointing considering Treblab advertises 6 hours of battery life. However, you can also get up to 4 additional charges from their charging case, which would bring the estimated total listening time to about 15 hours, taking some breaks here and there to charge the headphones. They also have an auto-off timer to save some battery, but it is set at only 3 minutes, which is fairly quick and might get frustrating. According to the specs sheet, the case also automatically turns off after being idle for 8 hours, after taking the earbuds out from the case or when the buds get fully charged.
The Treblab X5 don't have an companion app that would let you customize their sound to your liking.
The X5 are pretty straightforward Bluetooth headphones. Unfortunately, they only connect to one device at a time and don't support NFC for easy pairing with mobile phones and NFC-enabled devices. However, you can connect each individual earbud to two different devices.
Like most Bluetooth headphones, their latency may be a bit high for watching video content or gaming. However, some devices or apps seem to offer some sort of compensation, so you might not notice the delay as much.
The X5 come with a case that acts like a charging dock. It doesn't have any inputs, but on the upside gives you 4 extra charges for the headphones. This brings their total battery life up to 30 hours according to their specs sheet, but we measured about half of this advertised battery life.