I have a confession: I am obsessed with open-ear earbuds. Open-ear earbuds allow you to listen to music without plugging your ears and completely separating you from the world. There certainly are situations where the coziness of putting on a pair of noise-cancelling headphones is unmatched. But for the office, the gym, and the outdoors, open-ear earbuds are certainly my preferred choice.
The Haylou Purfree OW01 Earbuds come to the market with a few distinct style and design features that separate them from other available open-ear earbuds. I couldn’t wait to see the differences they brought to my listening experience.
Haylou Purfree OW01 Earbuds
The packaging for the Haylou Purfree OW01 Earbuds is very satisfying. Everything was neat and tidy. The metallic black earbud case with “Haylou” embossed on the front looked very sharp. Opening the earbud case revealed the beaming scarlet interior.
The earbuds were shaped as a traditional open-ear earbud. The bright red part of the earbud with the speakers was connected to a long black rubber piece that wrapped around to the back of the ear and ended at a dense, weighted bar that kept the whole assembly in place around the ear. On the pair I opened, I noticed that this rubber piece was not jet black as I had expected, but rather a very dark purple or brown. Such a fine detail didn’t ruffle my feathers too much, but it was something I noticed.
Setting up the earbuds and connecting them to my phone was a piece of cake. I may not have even looked at the instruction manual, the process was so intuitive.
Sound Quality
Sound quality is the most important part of an earbud, and open-ear earbuds are especially susceptible to poor sound quality.
Putting on the Haylou Purfree OW01 Earbuds for the first time, I first noticed how loud they were. This is definitely atypical for open-ear earbuds, so if you’ve been looking for an open-ear earbud that can blast your tunes, definitely give these a try. In the office at work, where I like my music the quietest, I felt comfortable with my volume on the lowest setting.
The sound quality that these earbuds produced was pretty good. I was satisfied but not blown away. Some of the fine audio details were difficult to pick out, but only if I was trying to focus on them.
One little audio glitch that I did notice was that about every two hours of use, there would be maybe half a second where the earbuds would be slightly out of sync, and then would come back. However, this didn’t really affect the experience except for maybe being a little bit startling the first time.
Comfort
The Haylou Purfree OW01 Earbuds were kind of a one-size-fits-all type deal, with no adjustable pieces. However, the dark rubber portion of the earbud was flexible, and I believe this would allow the earbud to fit comfortably over ears of different shapes.
On my ears, there were no issues with comfort. In fact, not having to adjust the earbuds every time I put them on was kind of nice. Without being able to loosen or tighten the earbuds, I was almost certain that they would fall off while running or working out. But, to my surprise, they stayed on just fine! These are likely the most comfortable pair of open-ear earbuds that I’ve worn.
Another thing that was great about this pair of earbuds was that the sides of the earbuds had both touch controls, and button controls. I really enjoyed the flexibility of being able to choose how I controlled my music depending on the situation.
Battery Life
There were absolutely no issues with battery life when using the Haylou Purfree OW01 Earbuds. They were charged twice over a week’s worth of twice-a-day use and never died. However, there was no indicator on the case or the earbuds that told how much battery was left. This is something that would have been convenient.
Overall
Using the Haylou Purfree OW01 Earbuds was a great experience. The comfort, battery life, and style of the earbuds were very impressive. The only aspect for which they could be improved was sound quality, which was still very passable. These will definitely be my go-to running and workout earbuds for the foreseeable future.
