Introduction
Acefast isn’t a name you often hear in the wireless headphone market, but its latest TWS earbuds bring a sleek transparent design, LED display on the housing, and six bold color options that caught our eye. The Acefast Crystal (2) Earbuds T8 are under review and we’ll be going over what they have to offer.
The Acefast T8 certainly stands out in terms of design, and they offer some neat bundled accessories. They have Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity, 10mm drivers and support SBS and AAC audio codecs. Battery life is rated for up to 30 hours of use with the charging case, and the whole package is IPX4 splash-proof. Let’s see how these headphones stack up against the competition and see if they’re worthy of a place in your pocket and in your ears.
Design
Purple, pink, blue, green, black and white are the six colors offered for the Acefast T8, and they all come with transparent bits that reveal the inside of the buds and their charging case. The charging case also gets a seven-segment LED display that shows the percentage of battery left in the case and in each earbud.
There’s a definite inspiration from Nothing Ear (1), which brought a transparent headphone design last year, although you can actually see more of the motherboard in the Acefast T8’s charging case. The buds are magnetically attached to the sides of the case, a feature seen on past Acefast headphones and certainly a way to stand out from the crowd.
There are no buttons on the case itself and all the controls are on the buds. The earbuds stay in place when installed in the case and I haven’t had any issues with them falling out. The fit in the ear is good if you choose the appropriate silicone tip size.
The out-of-the-box experience and accessories featured here are a step up from your regular wireless headphones. The box has a clear plastic sheet that flips up to reveal three compartments with a silicone gel case for the charging case color to match your earbuds, a chain strap, a USB-C cable for charging, and three pairs of extra silicone ear tips housed inside. plastic container.
Each bud weighs 5.5 grams and a box weighs 47 grams. The headphones aren’t the lightest we’ve tested, though they feel good in your ears even after hours of use. The case isn’t that compact and barely fits in your jeans’ coin pockets, but it easily slips into other large pockets, even with the packaged silicone sleeve.
Features
Going by their transparent design, the Acefast T8 brings a fairly limited set of features. There’s no Hi-Res Audio support, and you’re stuck with the old SBC and AAC audio codecs. The buds support the latest Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity standard with Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) transmission via the BES 2600 IHC Bluetooth chip. Unfortunately, each earbud lacks active noise cancellation (ANC) with dual microphones offering only ENC ring noise reduction.
Multi-point pairing is another major drawback on the Acefast T8, and there’s no smartphone app to fine-tune audio profiles or receive firmware updates. The buds also release wear detection for pausing and resuming media playback, a standard feature even in budget headphones these days.
The Acefast T8 features 10mm drivers with an aluminum moving coil and 6mm dome tweeters. The headphones use a Laser Direct Structuring (LDS) antenna design, which molds the antenna driver into a plastic strip under the body of the headphones. LDS is advertised to bring stable signal transmission and improved anti-interference.
The LED display on the case is a nice touch and is definitely one of the most attractive features the T8s have going for them. When you remove the buds from the case and place them, the screen lights up for a few seconds. This is really useful because you can instantly access your buds and battery status without having to dig into the Bluetooth settings on your paired device. The LED display has a white color for battery status, while the bottom has a yellow color that illuminates the bits around the exposed part of the motherboard.
We like the design approach, although Acefast could have added a physical button that allows you to turn on the screen and check the battery level without taking the headphones out of the box each time.
The buds offer touch controls for play/pause, volume control, call management, and summoning your device’s digital assistant. The touch controls are at the top of the buds, and while the volume controls don’t always work on the first try, they work well enough. There’s no way to rearrange the touch controls, it’s a hassle.
Performance and Sound Quality
After playing some audio content, you notice that the bass output is pronounced, while the lows and mids are a bit muted. High mids sounds like vocals sound good. Acefast T8 can get very loud which is an added bonus. The sound profile is flat, and an equalizer adjustment option could potentially improve their sound output, although there is no such feature at the time of this review.
On the Acefast T8, I noticed a subtle static noise after connecting them to my devices, although this mostly occurs when listening to podcasts and audiobooks in quiet environments. Granted, this issue didn’t recur with some of my colleagues who tested the buds in the office, and it probably won’t bother you at work or at the gym.
Connection performance was seamless when tested on an iPhone, Android tablet, and laptop. Sound reception is below average when switching calls, people on the other line report that my voice sounds muffled during calls. Latency is on par with other wireless headphones we’ve reviewed, and there’s no noticeable lag between video and audio.
Battery life
The Acefast T8 is claimed to last up to 7 hours of continuous music playback at 70% volume and 4 hours on calls, with the charging case extending total listening time to 30 hours – plenty of endurance for a pair of wireless headphones and more than most competitors. there are many. . There is a 45 mAh battery in each earbud and a 480 mAh battery in the case.
I found the headphones to last 6-7 hours on a single charge during testing, which is in line with Acefast’s claimed values. A full 0-100% charge takes about 90 minutes, while a 10-minute quick charge takes 2 hours. There’s no wireless charging, so you’ll have to find a power outlet and plug in a USB-C cable for extras.
Judgment
The Acefast T8 headphones bring a unique transparent design with smart features like magnetic storage inside the case and a large LED battery indicator display. Battery life is excellent and lasts up to 30 hours with a charging case. The sound quality is average and there is no ANC or support for any of the high bitrate codecs. That wouldn’t be a problem for a pair of entry-level headphones, but the Acefast T8 is currently available at retail. 100 dollarsIt puts them in a tough spot given the fierce competition in the TWS market.
The T8s are exclusive to the Acefast online store for now, though if the T6 series is any indication, they should appear on Amazon soon. Still, we’d wait for a big discount before pulling the trigger.
We have to give credit to the Acefast design team for creating one of the best looking headphones on the market. All six color options offered on the Acefast T8 look great and we’re excited to see what future iterations in the range will bring to the table. We can only hope for a richer feature set and more control over the audio equalizer with Hi-Res Audio support.