Review: Raycon Everyday Earbuds

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I watch a lot of YouTube. Whether I'm nerding out on my hobbies, or wasting time watching people build tunnels under their houses, the Google-owned video service is streaming somewhere at all hours.

If you've spent any amount of time on YouTube in the past, you're probably aware of Raycon’s Everyday Earbuds, which have been promoted by all the influencers currently walking around on planet Earth. As WIRED's resident headphone reviewer, they seemed like the schwag that content creators get in exchange for sponsorships to help pay for cameras and editing. Those plasticky-looking buds can’t be any good, right?

At the behest of coworkers, and with a dose of genuine curiosity, I decided to buy myself a pair of the $80 earbuds on Amazon and give them a shot. They're not the best I've ever used, but my experience shows that we shouldn't necessarily judge a book by its cover. Color me impressed with these buds.

They’re small and have good battery life, a compact charging case, and an IPX6 sweat and water resistance rating that make them utterly usable, er … every day. If you’re in the market for a pair with a small case that you won’t worry too much about when working out, I’d still probably opt for some cheaper JLab buds. But if you see someone wearing these around town, or you bought some already, know that they are still better than standard AirPods.

Raycon is a brand obsessed with being seen. It has an entire section on its website dedicated to celebrities that have worn one version of its earbuds or another. It could be just an attempt to prove to would-be buyers that those folks didn’t throw them on for a quick photo op before putting back in their AirPods Pro. Then again, who knows? Some of these celebrities might actually like the earbuds as much as I did.

Especially if you’re coming from Raycon's older, clunkier buds (the company routinely updates these without … really telling anyone, but these are the late 2022 model), the Everyday Earbuds are utterly decent. They come in a compact, egg-shaped charging case that easily fits in my pants pocket and supports wireless charging. You get about 24 hours of charge from the case, with the buds themselves holding around eight (depending on the volume you listen at). The passive noise isolation is comparable to light noise canceling, but there isn’t any active noise cancellation happening here.

The buds themselves are ergonomic little peanuts that come with four different pairs of silicone eartips to better seal in your ears than standard AirPods. They have simple button-based controls on the outside of each bud. You press once on the left or right bud to adjust volume, twice to play/pause, three times to skip songs, and four for voice assistant (which you’ll probably never use). You can hold the left bud for a little over a second to change the EQ preset, or hold the right to turn on Awareness Mode, which pumps in a bit of outside sound so you don’t have to remove the buds themselves. That's a pretty full feature set for a pair of earbuds this side of $100.

Sound is totally fine, too. They’re bassy but not unlistenable. I spent a lot of time with them at the gym, because of the aforementioned IPX6 rating. I appreciated the slight bump in the low end that I got when listening to classic Jay-Z records like Reasonable Doubt, where punchy bass has a way of helping me power through reps.

They aren’t really that muddy in the midrange or up top, either, a testament to how genuinely good off-the-shelf drivers and technology has gotten over the years. I like how jazz sounded through them, to be honest, as I can sometimes lose the bass lines in cheaper buds. The dynamic drivers are comparable to anything from any manufacturer in the $30 to $100 price range in wireless earbuds. It would be hard to find anything under $100 that sounds dramatically better than these. 

I like that you can get them in different colors (though I did buy them in black), and that they use a USB-C port for recharging. The case also supports wireless charging. I have barely taken them out of my gym bag. They pair quickly with my phone, and I get about a month of gym time out of them before I have to plug the case in again. I’ve yet to have an issue.

In this price range, getting anything that seals well in your ears for good soundstage, doesn’t sound like trash, and won’t immediately break is a huge win. The Everyday Buds tick all of those boxes for me, and I intend to use them at least nearly every day; I go to the gym on alternating evenings. Damn it, YouTube. You've cost me good money again.