Meizu EP51 Bluetooth earphones review
This review exists because when after having tried out a lot of earphones, I have finally found THE one. Much as I like all the wirecutter’s headphone recommendations, I feel they really messed up by not testing these Meizu ones as well.
I have been looking for good bluetooth earphones for a long time. All the earphones thewirecutter recommends are around the $100 mark, and having listed to a couple in a shop they aren’t really worth a 100 bucks.
So, after much waiting for the internet to to advise on a alternative, I finally bought a pair of Meizu EP51 from Gearbest for $28 shipped after the theverge recommended them.
tl;dr: they are amazing, the best $28 you can spend on wireless audio.
Audio Quality
It’s great. The bass is more than a flattish earphones delivers, but not overpowering like a pair of Beats or Klipsch. In fact, I find it just right for being out and about, and exercise and all.
Proper wired earphones over a $100 sound better, yes, but the Meizu’s are good enough that I don’t bother pulling out my much more expensive award winning wired earphones most of the time.
Build quality
They are really well made, and unlike my last bluetooth earphones, the charging port rubber cover is easy to pull out. My favourite feature is that the earphones have a small magnet so they click together. This is so genius that I don’t know how the world managed to make so many bluetooth earphones without adding magnets.
The three button volume control is great — there is a dip in the middle like Apple’s earphones, so it’s super easy to find all three buttons by touch. Again, I have no idea why companies like Sony and Klipsch and so many more make control buttons which are hard to find by blind touch.
I actually found these earphones better thought out and designed then just about any other I’ve used so far. The case is great too, with a little pocket for the cable. Even the box it came in was Applesque in design and easy to open.
in the ear fit
like the dude at theverge, I found them to fit great — and really with bluetooth headphones the fit trumps all else. What else — they are light enough, the cable is good, and it just works.
And because of the fit and better bass I get with the Meizu buds, I prefer them to the $100 JLab Epic2 Bluetooth wireless fitness buds selected by both The Vergeand The Wirecutter as the best wireless buds for most fitness enthusiasts (the Epic2 is my second favorite). Hell, I even prefer the Meizu buds to the $250 B&O H5 wireless earbudsI recently received for testing, mainly because I can’t get the H5 buds to stay in my ears even while walking.
Downsides
None, except one which is really an Android shortcoming: here is no way to check the battery level, but thats true of all bluetooth headsets on Android. Google really needs to get its head out of its ass and copy IOS’s bluetooth battery level indicator in the status bar.
The main downside is that after listening to these, I am questioning what the hell other companies are doing making inferior bluetooth earphones for a lot more money.
Experience buying from Gearbest
Gearbest has a lot of negative reviews on reddit & the internet, but none of them complained about receiving a fake product — all the bad press is about shipping delays. From what I could tell, a lot of the companies on Aliexpress and on the internet deal in counterfeit products from China, so at least Gearbest is legit. For $28 I was fine to wait a while to get the real thing.
From ordering to receiving in my mailbox, it only took 8 days to get from China to Australia. I was pretty impressed! They even updated the order with a picture of the parcel being sent out.
