PTron Tangent Evo neckband-style Bluetooth earphones Review : Acceptable performance for the price

PTron Tangent Evo neckband-style Bluetooth earphones Review : Acceptable performance for the price
VERDICT:

Priced at Rs 849, the earphones are definitely a purchase that is easy on the wallet. While you do get a comfortable and snug fit, Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity, and music and call controls on the PTron Tangent Evo earphones, some issues such as muddy bass, subpar microphone performance, lack of voice assistant support, and no IP rating deter us from whole-heartedly recommending these earphones. Still, if you only use your earphones to casually listen to music and don’t care much about the features and the microphone, the earphones could be a half-decent affordable pick.

PTron launched a new budget wireless neckband-style earphone, the PTron Tangent Evo, recently. The company is known for its affordable audio products that appeal to the masses. Priced extremely conservatively at Rs 849, the wireless in-ears come equipped with Bluetooth 5.0 and music+call controls. So, let’s see how these inexpensive Bluetooth earphones fared in our review.

Build and design

Sporting a price tag of Rs 849 (Rs 799 on Amazon), you wouldn’t expect the PTron Tangent Evo wireless earphones to feature high-grade materials. So, the earphone is predominantly made up of plastic, however, the earbuds do feature metal housings which look striking.

However, the rest of the build feels plasticky and cheap to the touch, as you’d expect from budget wireless earphones. The plastic neckband is flexible enough that you can store the earphones in tiny bags and the modules are not too bulky as well.

The left module merely features the PTron logo, but the right one houses the three physical buttons (Power, + and -), and the micro-USB charging port, which is tucked under a tiny flap. The buttons are tactile and have a satisfying click sound.

The neckband also features two cable adjusters that allow you to reel back the wires if needed. Speaking of the wires, they’re thin, round cables that don’t feel too robust, so, you should ensure to use these carefully if you want the earphone to function properly for over a year. If you don’t, the cables could easily get frayed and even break.

Lastly, the buds are tiny and ergonomic. The back of each bud comes with a magnetic housing that causes the earbuds to attach to one another when lying idle. The magnets are pretty strong too. The earbuds also come equipped with comfortable silicone ear gels or ear fins, that enhances the fit by a lot. The company also provides three different sizes of silicone tips (S, M and L) that users can pick from.

We found that the medium ear tips along with the ear gels gave us a near-perfect fit. The earphones are comfortable enough to be worn for hours without any ear fatigue and the silicone tips and ear gels ensure a snug fit even during walking and jogging. Unfortunately, these earphones don’t come with an IP rating, so sweat or rain may damage them.

Features

The PTron Tangent Evo Bluetooth earphones don’t have a ton of features to offer. They come with the bare minimum features such as Bluetooth v5.0 connectivity, 33 feet Bluetooth range (without obstacles), music playback and call controls, an inbuilt microphone and an 8-hour long battery life. There’s also basic voice prompts to tell users about the connection status, and battery level.

The three physical buttons on the earphones allow users to pause/play music, answer/decline phone calls, increase/decrease volume levels and skip or go to the previous track. One feature that’s sorely missing is voice assistant support, which we see on almost every wireless earphone now, including budget ones such as the Wings Alpha.

The PTron Tangent Evo also comes with micro-USB charging, which is standard at this price. However, it does miss out on an IP Rating, which some budget audio products do offer. So, it’s safe to say that the PTron Tangent Evo aren’t feature-rich earphones.

Performance

Now, coming to the sound quality of the earphones, it’s definitely got a characteristic warm sound profile with punchy bass that is quite common in the budget to mid-range price bracket. It’s a decent sound profile which will not blow your mind away in any way, but at the price, it is acceptable.

The bass response is definitely punchy and energetic, however, it is quite muddy. Lows and bass beats sound distorted in some tracks. In Mindstreet by Motherjane, the bass guitar sounded quite muddled. This caused the vocals to get slightly masked by the overwhelming murkiness of the bass.

The vocals, by themselves, are quite clear and male vocals, especially sound clear and sharp. Female vocals do suffer from some sibilance. The highs are quite tinny, especially at higher volume levels. However, the bass and lows definitely call most of the shots on these earphones, making them clearly warm sounding. The passive isolation on these earphones is quite good, primarily due to the snug fit of the buds.

The Bluetooth connectivity is pretty good, the connection is stable and there are no lags and skips in audio. However, sometimes, the earphones did disconnect from the phone for no reason whatsoever. We had to go to the Bluetooth menu on our phone and reconnect the earphones manually.

The microphone, again, is subpar and the receiver at the other end stated that our voice sounded slightly muffled and seemed far away from the microphone. The battery life, on the other hand, is pretty decent. The company claim is about 8 hours, but in our tests we managed to squeeze out about 7 hours of juice from the earphones, which isn’t bad for wireless in-ears.

Bottomline

Priced at Rs 849, the earphones are definitely a purchase that is easy on the wallet. While you do get a comfortable and snug fit, Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity, and music and call controls on the PTron Tangent Evo earphones, some issues such as muddy bass, subpar microphone performance, lack of voice assistant support, and no IP rating deter us from whole-heartedly recommending these earphones. Still, if you only use your earphones to casually listen to music and don’t care much about the features and the microphone, the earphones could be a half-decent affordable pick.

 

Dhriti Datta

Dhriti Datta

Perpetually sporting a death stare, this one can be seen tinkering around with her smartphone which she holds more dear than life itself and stuffing her face with copious amounts of bacon. View Full Profile

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