Prototype Test: AiPower Wearbuds Fitness Tracker with wireless In-Ears from $69

We have received an exclusive pre-production prototype of the AiPower Wearbuds – a fitness tracker equipped with wireless in-ear headphones that sound surprisingly good! The start-up belongs to the big manufacturer Aukey, which became famous and big at Amazon especially with cheap Powerbanks and other electronic devices. Good conditions for an exciting and technically mature product.

• AiPower Wearbuds Fitness Tracker with headphones
  • at Indiegogo for $69

Technical data

The AiPower Wearbuds are currently still in a rather early stage of development. Therefore our “test product”, which we got exclusively from AiPower well before the start of mass production, is a real prototype. This means that the quality and functionality are still far from meeting their own requirements for series production.

AiPower has pointed out to us in advance that this concerns above all the Fitness Tracker. It’s about:

• Quality of workmanship
• Touch screen functionality (e.g. precision and response)
• Software (fitness modes, interaction between fitness tracker and app)

On the other hand, the headphones should be already very advanced and almost reflect what we expect in the series. So in this pre-test, which will give us a rough idea of what to expect from the end product, we will focus mainly on the wireless headphones. But of course we’ll also talk about the functions of the Fitness Tracker.

The AiPower Wearbuds Fitness Tracker

Design

The AiPower Wearbuds Fitness Tracker has a total weight of 54.2 g including headphones, which is comparable to the Amazfit Stratos or the Amazfit Verge. This makes it almost two and a half times heavier than a new Xiaomi Mi Band 4, but in comparison to other watches it is perfectly within its limits.

It becomes more unusual when you look at the dimensions of the Wearbuds watch. The Fitness Tracker is 51 mm wide, which is almost the diameter of the really huge LEMFO LEM X. The Amazfit Stratos 2 has a diameter of 45 mm. It doesn’t sound like much, but it makes a bigger difference than you think.

Also the thickness of the fitness tracker with 23.5 mm is unusual and well, it just doesn’t look right on a dainty ladies wrist. On the other hand, the comparatively small headphones have to find their place somewhere and if you look at the AiPower Wearbuds Fitness Tracker without headphones, the watch is only slightly thicker than the headphones. The visible part of the tracker is rather narrow with a depth of 27 mm.

The included wristband has a width of 23.2 mm, almost normal for a men’s watch. It is 17 cm long (without the width of the watch). The clasp looks similar to the Mi Band, but works a bit differently.

In my opinion it doesn’t make sense and hopefully it has a different mechanism in the series, because the way it is now, you can only pull the strap with three hands or with the help of your teeth.

I like the design as a whole very much, on the manufacturer’s side there are a total of four colour variants. None of them look like our prototype, with white bracelet and tracker in chrome look. I think the current model still deviates from the series in this area as well.

Fitness Tracker Functions

The AiPower Wearbuds are equipped with some basic fitness tracker features and sports modes.

These include:

• Heart Rate Monitor
• 3 sports modes (walking, jogging and cycling)
• Daily evaluation

Two optical measuring sensors are installed on the underside of the AiPower Wearbuds for pulse measurement. This measurement can at least currently only be started manually. An automatic regular pulse measurement is at least currently not implemented. If one starts a sport mode, the pulse is measured automatically continuously.

The Wearbuds Fitness Tracker shows all three sports modes:

• steps
• calories
• time
• distance

Unfortunately the fitness modes do not seem to work properly with our prototype. Presumably it is failing on the software side rather than on the hardware side.

The AiPower smartphone app

The fact that AiPower is serious about the Wearbuds can also be seen from the fact that an app was developed especially for this gadget. It is already available for download in the Apple AppStore and Google PlayStore.

• Download AiPower App for Android
• Download AiPower App for iOS

The connection between app and watch works super easy. Simply select in the app that you want to connect the smartphone with the wearbuds, probably there will be more products to choose from in the future, and everything else will happen automatically.

The overview shows all daily fitness parameters and sports overviews. In addition, there is also a statistic where you can view your results over weeks or months. In the settings you can also:

• Download Firmware Updates
• Set a daily step target
• Set motion reminder
• Enable push messages for calls, messages, Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp
• activate a “Search my Wearbuds” Finder function
• and change the time from 12 to 24 hour mode

https://youtu.be/ZgbIpR57If8

Unfortunately, not all of these functions can yet be used with the clock, such as notifications. As already mentioned, the fitness tracker is still in the prototype stage.

The Wearbuds wireless in-ear headphones under test

The situation is different with the AiPower Wearbuds wireless headphones. According to the manufacturer, these are already well advanced and almost ready for series production. I have to say that the first hearing was a bit mindblowing, because I didn’t expect that this unusual gadget would contain such good headphones. But one after the other.

Design

From the outside, the Wearbuds headphones have the same colour as the housing of the fitness tracker. The inside, on the other hand, is made of white or black plastic, depending on the colour. Weighing in at 4.1g, they’re among the lightest wireless headphones we’ve ever tested and just as heavy as the Redmi Airdots. The Xiaomi Airdots Youth Edition, on the other hand, are a bit heavier with a weight of 4.6 g per listener.

The size of the listeners is also slightly smaller than that of the Redmi Airdots and even smaller than that of the slightly larger Xiaomi Airdots Youth Edition, with dimensions of 19.8 x 13.2 x 14 mm.

The small AiPower Wearbuds, with touch panels for operation, better batteries and a Qualcomm Bluetooth 5 chip aptX even have better technology than the Xiaomi or Redmi In-Ears – that’s impressive!

Even at this prototype stage, the wireless in-ears are absolutely flawless and have no manufacturing or material defects.

Sound of the AiPower Wearbuds wireless in-ear headphones

Inside the Wearbuds headphones beats a dynamic driver with graphene membrane. This is probably the most “hip” membrane material currently available, which is not only used in many China headphones.

Graphene membranes are so popular because they offer high stability and tear resistance compared to other membrane materials. In addition, graphene membranes resonate only slightly, which ensures that the sound is precise to the point and true to detail.

As already mentioned, the sound of the AiPower Wearbuds surprised me quite positively. I didn’t expect the tiny headphones in a “weird” hybrid gadget with charging box to sound so damn good in a fat fitness tracker.

The tweeter of the AiPower Wearbuds is very high resolution, clear and well defined. In addition, the midrange is not too short and voices, for example, are present and do not drown. In addition there is the bass, which is not as dominant as the TaoTronics TT-BH052, for example, but blends nicely into the overall sound. As you can already read, I’m a bit thrilled that such small listeners from a fitness tracker sound so good.

Compared to the Redmi Airdots, the AiPower Wearbuds’ highs are a bit more defined in the tweeter, otherwise the sound is very similar. Compared to the Xiaomi AirDots Youth Edition, the Wearbuds also offer a more powerful bass, which I like!

Compared to the Lenovo 1S or the Lenovo Air, the wearbuds are equipped with a slightly weaker bass, but offer a noticeably higher resolution sound in the high and mid frequencies, which is especially noticeable with snare drums or hi-hat sounds.

Last but not least, the Anker Soundcore Liberty Air offers a slightly stronger bass, especially in the sub-bass range. The Liberty Air boom very nicely at lower frequencies, which the Wearbuds don’t do quite so well. In addition, the midrange of the Liberty Air is more accentuated, but what you like better is a matter of taste.

All in all I am very positively surprised by the Wearbuds. The headphones are a great all-rounder and can be used for any kind of music. I wouldn’t have expected that in advance! In addition, the possible volume of the listeners is above average high, about 60-70% volume of the wearbuds already correspond almost 100% to Lenovo Air.

Wearing comfort

Due to their low weight and the small receivers, which do not directly exert a large leverage effect on the ear, the wireless in-ears sit very well in my ear. For me it is comparable to the Meizu Pop 2 or the Redmi AirDots. Even jerky movements, such as those that occur during sports, don’t let them slip a centimetre.

I didn’t even have to readjust them during the test phase, even though the handsets are not ergonomically shaped, as is the case with the Redmi AirDots, for example. In the scope of delivery of our prototype were only middle ear pads included, which luckily fit me well. We assume that the finished product also offers a few possibilities for individualization.

Headset

Also the headset seems to be still to be improved, my conversation partners could understand me, but quieter than usual. In some cases, background noise was also a disturbing factor. If the microphones remain as they currently function in our prototype, the headset is only suitable for short telephone calls.

Operation with touch panels

While Xiaomi didn’t give any touch fields to the Redmi AirDots of the same size, the AiPower Wearbuds are the smallest in-ears with this practical feature so far. Touching instead of pressing has the decisive advantage that you don’t accidentally move the earphones in your ear and they don’t fit properly anymore.

Functions of the buttons

Unfortunately, like the touch screen of the Fitness Tracker, the touch panels of the listeners do not yet work 100% reliably. Here, too, the manufacturer openly communicates that there will be fine-tuning. Overall, the handsets support all important functions and much more than for example the Redmi AirDots or Xiaomi Airdots Youth Edition – very good!

Qualcomm Bluetooth Chip with aptX

Inside the AiPower Wearbuds works a high-quality Qualcomm Bluetooth 5 chip. This chip supports aptX, an audio codec that allows you to decompress the compressed audio data sent from the smartphone to the listener, thus minimizing a loss of sound quality through wireless transmission – a fine thing!

In the video streaming test, sound and picture are also absolutely synchronous. I couldn’t find any delays where the sound lags slightly behind the picture, as it occurs with many wireless in-ears.

The Qualcomm Bluetooth 5 chip also lets you choose which wireless in-ear is the master and which is the slave. With most headphones, the right earpiece is connected directly to the smartphone (master) and the left earpiece is connected only to the right earpiece (slave). If, for example, you are left-handed and your mobile phone is usually in your left trouser pocket, the stability of the Bluetooth connection can be improved with the master on the left side.

In the range test, the connection between the smartphone and the AiPower Wearbuds remains exceptionally stable for a long time. In the free area test about 25 meters are no problem, in closed rooms it is a little less because of massive obstacles like concrete walls.

All in all, the headset performs surprisingly well in the Bluetooth stability range and has so far the best Bluetooth range and stability in the test. Especially for sporty activities like jogging this is a plus point, which in combination with the Fitness Tracker also makes perfect sense, as it was taken care of during development.

Battery life

On request, we were informed that a 160 mAh battery is installed inside the watch, plus 35 mAh per handset. This explains why charging the watch in the test only took about an hour. Compared with the Huami Amazfit Stratos or Verge the value is relatively small.

Also 35 mAh per listener are not exactly much and rather below average. Due to the modern chip, however, the receivers seem to be very economical and achieve a run time of 5 hours and 15 minutes in the test at 50 – 60% volume! A value that even exceeds the manufacturer’s specification of 4 hours – I’m thrilled again.

However, with the Fitness Tracker only two complete charges of the listener are possible. Then the Fitness Tracker is as good as empty and you haven’t used it yet. I see this critically, a larger battery would have stood the AiPower Wearbuds well. I suspect a compromise here so that the watch doesn’t get any thicker than it already is.

All in all, however, you should spend about a day listening to music and doing sports in everyday life. If necessary, the band is luckily loaded again relatively quickly. Unfortunately a 2-pin magnet connector is used for loading, here I would have been happy about a universal solution.

Preliminary conclusion

The AiPower Wearbuds are already worlds better than the LEMFO M1. I guess LEMFO got wind of the idea and just threw something on the market very quickly to say, “We were the first”.

I don’t want to evaluate the Fitness Tracker at this time, we are actually still very much in the prototype stage. But if everything works the way AiPower thinks it will in theory, it will be a useful fitness tracker for walking, jogging and cycling. The already very advanced True Wireless stereo headphones let me hope for very good for the Fitness Tracker.

The True Wireless Stereo In-Ears have far exceeded my expectations in the test. In my opinion, the AiPower Wearbuds are worthwhile for the headphones alone. They offer a very good sound and can be used for practically every music genre. The manufacturer uses the latest technology to create small, full wireless in-ears that are not charged in a charging case but in a fitness tracker. They also convince with the best Bluetooth stability among all TWS In-Ears that we have already tested and also offer a battery life on top level!

Admittedly, the AiPower Wearbuds Fitness Tracker is quite thick and doesn’t look good on thin wrists. However, this new product makes our gadget hearts beat faster again. Finally a completely crazy new combination of two gadgets, which didn’t exist before – great performance, AiPower!