Oppo has been performing well in the audio segment since the brand entered the TWS space. It recently launched the Oppo Enco Buds in India at Rs 1,999, which not only has Bluetooth 5.2 but also a claimed battery backup of up to 24 hours. They do look impressive on paper, but how do they perform in real life? Let’s find out.
Comfort & Build
We have seen this type of design by Oppo before with the Oppo Enco W11, and the design of Enco Buds lies along the same lines. Build quality of both the buds and the case is plastic, but it doesn’t feel cheap. On the other hand, we appreciated how well built the Enco W11 were, and the Enco Buds are no exception.
The pill-shaped case has a sturdy and rigid lid that closes with a clap sound. It opens up smoothly and locks up if you push it far behind to prevent it from closing on its own. The case has a single LED on the front to show pairing and charging status. The magnets in the case and the earbuds are strong as well.
Moving on, each of the earbuds weighs a mere 4 grams and is very light to hold and wear. In fact, these are some of the most comfortable earbuds I have ever worn. They fit inside the ear perfectly, and once you put them in, you’ll forget they are even present in your ear.
The buds are IP54 rated as well, making them both dust and water-resistant. This makes them ideal for workouts, and if it ever rains out there while you are wearing them, you should be fine.
Audio Quality, Features
The Oppo Enco Buds use a 2-layer composite diaphragm and the AAC (Advanced Audio Coding). In addition, they come with an 8mm dynamic driver with a sensitivity of 100.6 dB and a Frequency response range of 20Hz-20KHz. For gamers, the Enco Buds come with an 80ms-latency Game Mode that improves audio-visual sync.
The audio quality was again very balanced, as was the case with Enco W11. The low-frequency sound was the most detailed, meaning bass-heads will have a good experience. With a little more tuning, I enhanced the sound signature a bit more that made the experience a bit more fun. The buds have decent mids and highs with clear and detailed vocals.
Furthermore, the Enco Buds come with touch controls so you can single tap an earbud to play or pause the music. A double-tap can switch songs or answer or hang-up calls. A triple tap will make the earbuds enter the gaming mode, and touching and holding on the earbuds still control the volume. The touch controls did miss out on some of my inputs, but it happened once out of five times.
These controls can be changed via the Earbud settings if you have an Oppo or OnePlus phone. If you don’t have these and a phone from another company, you can download the HeyMelody App from Play Store to customise the controls.
The said gaming mode is claimed to bring down the Latency to up to 80ms, but that doesn’t turn out to be as pleasant as it sounds. Even after enabling the mode, the audio-video sync delay was a bit too much.
The earbuds also have an Open-up Auto Connection feature. With the help of this, the buds connect to your device as soon as you open the case.
Call Quality & Battery Backup
The Call Quality on the Enco Buds was good in its price segment, if not the best. Although the earbuds have an AI-based intelligent call noise-cancellation feature that can differentiate between ambient sounds and human voices to block out background noises effectively, it did pick up a considerable amount of background noise. Fortunately, my voice was clear enough to the other person with a slight echo which wasn’t a major issue by any means.
Talking about the battery backup, the earbuds are claimed to last 6 hours on a single charge. With the charging case, the time can be extended up to 24 hours. The case has a charging time of 2 hours.
I easily got more than 5.5 hours of battery life with high volume, which is excellent. In addition, the case can give you three full charges, which is also enough and good for earbuds at this price point.