Tronsmart Onyx Prime Wireless Earbuds Review

The current market for wireless earbuds is quite crowded, so if you’re looking to purchase a pair, you may find yourself a bit stumped when contemplating the vast sea of choices. Personal preferences aside, we believe that audio quality should be high on your list of priorities when deciding on what product to spend your money on. This brings us to the Tronsmart Onyx Prime Wireless Earbuds, which are marketed as “Made for audiophiles.” This review shares our impressions after using the Onxy Prime for several weeks, whether they are truly worthy of the description.

Inside the Box

Tronsmart recently expanded its premium yet affordable range of products. Called Onyx Prime, these new Bluetooth-enabled earbuds ship in a box that’s both compact and elegant.

The container has a magnetic flap that opens on the side to reveal the earbuds case. Inside there are also two extra pairs of eartips and earhooks of various sizes. Moreover, hidden in the space underneath you’ll find the charging USB cable as well as the user manual and warranty.

The earbuds case is pretty classic-looking, featuring a black finish and the standard elliptical shape that most wireless earbuds manufacturers go for these days – nothing out of the ordinary here.

Compared to other wireless earbuds I have used in the past, the Tronsmart Onyx Prime are a bit larger and perhaps less elegant. Even so, they can slide quite naturally into your ear. At least in my case they did, but if you don’t like how they fit out of the box, you can always change the eartips to a smaller or larger size.

The buds proved quite comfortable, although with prolonged use, they did make my ears hurt a bit. I must confess, however, that I have pretty sensitive ears, and that I have this problem with most headphones I use for a longer period of time, so I can’t necessarily fault the Onxy Prime. Even so, I wouldn’t recommend using these buds while you’re lying on your side. Due to their larger form factor, they can quickly become uncomfortable.

Setting Up the Tronsmart Onyx Prime

With the earbuds charged and ready, to connect them to a Bluetooth device, take them out of the box and place them in your ears. You’ll hear a “Looking for device” message, and the buds should appear on your phone’s Bluetooth section in the settings.

From there you can easily pair them – the process takes under a minute. Once connected, open your music app of choice and start playing your tunes. In my experience, I didn’t have any problems connecting the buds to my phone – the process was super smooth.

Overall Audio Quality

Before the Tronsmart Onxy Prime, I was using a set of similarly-priced Bluetooth-enabled earphones from Huawei. Upon trying out the new pair, I was immediately struck by the huge contrast in music quality.

To my ears, the Tronsmart Onxy Prime Wireless Earbuds can deliver noticeably crisper and louder audio. This quality is owed to the inclusion of the popular Qualcomm QCC3040 chip with aptX Adaptive codec. In addition, Qualcomm’s TrueWireless Mirroring technology is embedded. The former allows just one earphone to connect to your smartphone, with the buds changing roles as needed. The goal is to boost both stability and reliability of the connection between the buds.

The Onxy Prime are also the company’s first hybrid dual-driver earbuds. They leverage a standard 10mm (high-tension) dynamic driver, as well as a balanced armature one. This combination allows these buds to deliver a richer and purer audio with a wider frequency range (10Hz -25Hz).

I put the earbuds through the a headphone test, and the results were pretty encouraging. The Onyx Prime passed the frequency response test, which tests an audio product’s bass extension with flying colors. Good headphones should reproduce frequencies as low as 20Hz, which we could hear while using the Onyx Prime. The Spectral Flatness and Binaural tests were other tests in which the Onxy Prime shined. However, the performance did prove weaker in the Bass shaker test, during which I experienced some rattling when really deep bass content was being played. But the overall outcome was positive.

In other good news, Tronsmart gives you the option to optimize the sound even more via its mobile app. With it, you can customize the eight audio effects, including 3D, Deep Bass, Classical, Rock, and more.

You also get noise cancellation via Qualcomm’s cVc 8.0 to cancel out ambient noise. This feature worked pretty well in my testing, providing a listening experience without much interference.

Additional Features and Performance

Audio capabilities aside, the Tronsmart Onyx Prime Wireless Earbuds make it much more convenient to listen to music on the go, thanks to the touch capabilities. Pressing on the earbuds has various effects. For example, tapping once on the left bud will lower the volume. Alternatively, pressing for two seconds will play the previous song. These take a bit getting used to, but fortunately, they are quite precise.

When it comes to battery life, the Onxy Prime continue to shine. Charging the case takes about two hours to get many hours of playback when charging the buds between listening sessions. In my testing, I managed to get about 15 hours of playback on a single charge. And the buds still had plenty of energy to spare for extra musical sessions.

Gaming Mode

The Tronsmart Onyx Prime Wireless Earbuds offer two main operating modes: premium music mode (aka normal mode) and ultra-low-latency gaming mode. Tape either bud for three seconds to switch between these modes.

I didn’t really notice any latency in either mode. I used the buds while playing some time-management games on my Android device, and for this type of game, the Onyx Prime performance was on point.

Call Quality

The buds also include a mic so that you can take phone calls while out and about. In my experience, it works reasonably well. Even on a noisy street, I could still maintain a conversation, although there were instances when I had to repeat myself a few times to get my meaning across to the other party.

On my end, I could hear the other person clearly without noise or interference. If I changed the environment in which I was having the conversation, moving to a room or another quiet spot, the issues experienced on the street were no longer present.

Closing Thoughts

While my overall experience with the Tronsmart Onyx Prime was a positive one, I did experience a minor inconvenience during single-earbud mode. Occasionally, when I needed to remove a single earbud for a brief amount of time, like talking to the cashier at the convenience store, they audio would shut down very quickly instead of continuing to play. Fortunately, I could quickly activate them again by tapping three times on one of the buds.

The Tronsmart Onyx Prime Wireless Earbuds are currently available for just $59.99. While the headphones aren’t particularly stylish and a bit clunky, they do deliver excellent sound that’s both detailed and sharp – which is a big plus. While most budget earbuds tend to lack bass, these definitely do not. Battery life is also unexpectedly good, so you won’t need to worry about recharging your buds all that often.

To conclude, we recommend getting the Tronsmart Onxy Prime Wireless Earbuds if you’re not looking to spend alot on a pair of earbuds but still looking for quality when it comes to sound, as well as battery life.