In-ear headphones from boAt, the Airdopes 601 ANC, are the first totally wireless earbuds. One of the world’s largest manufacturers of wireless audio equipment, boAt is an Indian audio and smartphone accessories business. If you’re on a budget and searching for an active noise-cancelling pair of earbuds, go no further than the Airdopes 601 ANC.
The earphones are housed in a slim, vertically oriented container. Plastic in matte black has a smooth touch on the casing. The magnetic clasp on the lid makes it easy to open and shut, but the hinge on my review unit was wobbly. The four white LEDs on the front of the casing indicate whether the device is plugged in or paired. On the right side, you’ll find a USB-C charging connector. A pairing button is located on the rear.
The earbuds have lengthy stalks with a conical tip that rest in your ear canal for listening to music or other audio. The microphone may be inserted into the side of the stalks, and the surface is touch-sensitive for motions. The earphones are very light and comfy to use for long periods of time.
As far as I can determine, the Airdopes 601 ANC are alone. None of boAt’s applications seem to be geared for this particular product. As a result, all of your actions must be carried out via the headphones themselves. The motions can handle play/pause, track skip, volume, and ANC settings.
Despite this, you are unable to do things like upgrade the firmware. Alternately, you may turn off features like automatic music playback while your earphones are connected to your phone. For whatever reason, the Spotify app would start playing automatically whenever these earphones were attached.
The Airdopes 601 ANC are a set of earbuds with a subpar sound quality. The inflated mid-bass dominates the sound, taking over everything as the bass kicks in. The lower and mid-mid midranges offer respectable mid-range performance, but the upper mid-range is almost non-existent, and the whole treble range sounds like downloaded stuff that you have to pay extra to acquire.
This results in a highly muffled and bassy sound with very little resolution or clarity. The imaging is fine, but the soundstage is too small and concentrated to be enjoyable. For podcasts or YouTube videos, these earphones are OK, but not for listening to music.
In addition, the microphone’s performance was noticeably lacking. As though the earphones couldn’t figure out which portion of your speech and what was background noise, the sound would flutter in and out as you spoke. In the presence of a lot of background noise, the sound would be entirely drowned out.
This is typical of earbuds in this budget level, which is why the ANC is of poor quality. Some hum from sources like your PC fan may be reduced, but the majority of other noises are still clear. An additional transparency setting exists, although it seems to be monochrome and without any kind of directional cues.
In terms of latency, it’s below the average. A delay between the audio and visual may or may not be noticeable depending on how perceptive you are, but if you are sensitive to that type of thing, it’s impossible not to notice it at every opportunity.
Last but not least, the network connection was adequate. Most of the time, the earbuds worked well, but on one occasion, the left one began to lose volume to the point where it was completely quiet. Once it was removed and reinserted, it worked as it had before. There’s no way to address problems like these since the firmware can’t be updated.
With ANC enabled, boAt claims 4.5 hours of battery life. I was able to get 4 hours and 45 minutes of use out of a single charge in my tests, which isn’t anything out of the ordinary.
The boAt Airdopes 601 ANC as a whole is a subpar item. They’re inexpensive, at INR 3,999 (about $52), but they’re not a fantastic deal. The OnePlus Buds Z2, which cost a little more, are much superior in almost every aspect. The Airdopes 601 ANC has a slew of problems and a mediocre sound, making it an unrecommended purchase even when purchased at a bargain. Source