These ANC earbuds do the trick

Finding the right earbuds can seem as daunting as finding the best match for your next car or pet. After all, you plan to spend a lot of time together and you want to be comfortable with each other.

My current ear buddies are the Truly Wireless Noise Cancelling Earbuds from iLive and so far, we’ve made a pretty sweet match. 

These buds have all the features that are important to me, starting with clean, crisp sound. In addition to music, I listen to a lot of spoken audio from podcasts and audiobooks and with my hearing level, the middle registers are especially important. I want to hear dialogue and lyrics and not be overwhelmed with heavy bass lines and the iLive buds are right on the money. 

I also appreciate that the buds come with a well-designed charging case. When I’m not using them, the buds get their fuel topped off while they’re nestled safely in the case.          

But perhaps the most welcome feature for me is Automatic Noise Cancellation. I want my everyday buds to filter out a good bit of traffic sounds when I’m walking my dog and tone down the hum from my weed trimmer and other tools when I’m working in my yard. 

I think noise cancelling is a big challenge for any earbuds and I don’t expect them to deliver the filter power of expensive over-the-ear headphones. 

But I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the active noise cancellation I get with the iLive buds. My ears say it’s comparable to the noise cancellation I’ve experienced with buds that cost more than twice as much as these.

The iLive buds were easy to set up and put to work. When fully charged and removed from the charging case, they automatically created a link to each other and went into pairing mode. After a few seconds, the model number popped up as a new Bluetooth partner option on my iPhone. 

The short stalk on each bud has a flat surface with a touch-sensitive area at the top. Hold your fingers on that spot for 5 seconds to turn each bud on or off. A 3-second press cycles the bud between normal, transparent and active noise cancellation modes. A friendly voice will announce each stop. 

Taps also launch other functions. For example, a single tap will play or pause music or answer or end a phone call. A double on the right bud will skip a track while triple taps adjust the volume.

The buds are also said to be sweat proof for those of us who exercise to that level (me, not so much) and they let you deliver voice commands to personal assistants on Apple or Google devices.

The Truly Wireless Noise Cancelling Earbuds also come with a pretty nice price tag: $69.99 on the iLive website. That’s about half of what some of the big-name brands charge for their buds with the same features. 

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Written by Ric Manning

Follow me on Twitter @ricmanning and read my technology columns at My Well Being.