Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am really torn with these earbuds from Ultimate Ears (UE.) They sound great. Amazing actually so a big part of the mission has been achieved here already. I figured as much. UE is Logitech's high end audio line up. You may not own anything from them but many of the musicians you watch perform live have them in their ears as UE's custom molded monitors are among the best in the business. However, those monitors can get very expensive and you have to send a mold of your ears to them. It is an expensive and time consuming process that most of us non-musicians aren't going to put up with. What UE is trying to do with the Fits earbuds is give us regular folks a similar custom fit experience without the time and expense commitments and, for the most part, they did it. However, there is a lot to unpack here. At $249, these buds are hunting in premium pricing (I consider $200+ premium) country and are lacking some things that may not be forgivable for many. I have owned these now for a couple of months. I will compare them to others buds at this price point to help you make a decision about whether these are the right investment for you to make. Here is the breakdown: The Good: -Sound: As I said earlier, I expected great and got it here. It is fairly natural, so you bass heads may not love it but the low end is still solid and present. The mids and highs are separated nicely. You get nice crisp highs without harshness. Both AAC and AptX codecs are here so both Android and Apple devices will perform at high levels. While there is no Active Noise Cancellation (ANC, more on that momentarily) the custom molded tips do a good job of isolating you. All and all, you shouldn't be disappointed here. These buds sound great. -Form Factor: Really, this is where these earbuds will win you over or lose you as a customer. After all, UE called these "Fits" for a reason. First off, UE accomplishes giving you a custom fit by loading these buds with light sensitive moldable tips. They are packed tight in black cardboard in the box. It is critical that you not open this cardboard until you have the app downloaded and are ready to go. Even regular light around your house will begin the hardening process. The process itself is simple. You fire up the app and follow the step by step directions. Once instructed, you push the buds into your ear and hold them in firmly. You will see the buds glow a blueish purple color. After a few minutes the process is done. It would be really hard to screw this process up but, if you do, you can buy more tips from UE. This is also nice if you ever want to sell them or gift them down the road. So, does it really work? You bet! These are so darn comfortable on, it is sometimes hard for me to go back to my other buds. The design of the buds is a little odd. It's like a tiny propeller in your ear. However, it actually works. These buds are incredibly light in your ears. When you combine the weight with the custom molding, you end up barely remembering that you have them on and, really, being able to pretty much forget you are wearing earbuds is probably the ultimate achievement in bud design. UE nailed it here. -Call Quality: It is generally good. You get some wind noise but most callers reporting that I sounded fine and vice versa. Not life altering but solid. The Bad: -No ANC: Sorry but this is simple for me. At $249 it should be here and it isn't. -Battery life: You get eight hours on bud which is solid but only another twelve hours from the case. I would expect a minimum of two more charges in the case. Battery life just isn't good enough. -The Case: This is an often overlooked piece of earbud design. It wasn't totally overlooked by UE here but there are still way too many omissions here. It is a nice lightweight low profile oval shape. I don't love the shiny plastic (prefer matte) but that is the least of the most pressing issues here. There is the aforementioned twelve hours of back-up battery. There is no external LED to indicate case life or charging status. There is no wireless charging. If we were talking about $129 earbuds, I could live with these basic features not being here but there is just no way this is okay today at $249. -Limited Controls: You can only register double taps with these. You can custom map them in the app. However, that limits you to really two commands. You will need to keep your phone close by. -Intangibles: Premium earbuds generally provide some kind of ambient pass through technology that allows you to use your mics to hear noise around you. Not here. Also, there isn't an auto-pause so you can't just pull out an earbud to pause what you are listening to. These are both omissions that I find unacceptable at this price. -Waterproofing: These are IPX3 rated which, quite frankly, sucks. If you sweat like me, these aren't workout buds which, given the secure comfortable fit, is really too bad. Conclusion: So, I have been pretty hard on these and, at $249, I should be. I originally rated these at a 4 star because I generally believe that UE has a nice foundation here. They are easily the most comfortable earbuds I own and I think that is an underappreciated consideration. Given that we are jamming these things into our ears, it should be a point of emphasis. Well done here UE. Also, the sound is great. However, all of their peers sound good as well. In this space, you have the Airpods Pro, Bose QuietComforts, Jabra 85t, Samsung Buds Pro, the Klipsch Mclaren Sports, and more. All of these buds sound amazing. Are the Fits better? No but in the same ballpark. The issue I have though is, that while they are more comfortable, nearly all of their premium level competitors offer high quality ANC, wireless charging, have better total battery, offer bells and whistles like ambient pass through and autopause. The biggest pill you have to swallow is that the UE Fits are more expensive than all of the others with the exception of Bose model which is just $30 more. With all of this, I just had to take these down to a 3 star review. To me it boils down to this question: How much do you value comfort? Or perhaps, do you have ears that just don't work well with most earbuds? If comfort is the primary goal, I can't recommend these enough. If, however, you find most earbuds generally comfortable, I think there are better overall set ups out there for you. ***Update*** So this isn't really much of a product update as it is a price update relative to UE's competition. These are still amazingly comfortable to me and sound great but the omissions still really bother me. However, they dropped the price here to $200. Still premium but right at the edge and now priced where they belong. I am not bumping a star on my review but I will add this caveat: If you want pure comfort that sounds very good, for $200, this is a more attractive option than it was at thr original list price. There are still many better buds at around this price but UE now has put the Fits at a price that, I believe, warrants further consideration. Especially if you have struggled with ear buds fitting or being comfortable. On round two I want to see UE bring the hammer down and polish these. It is a great idea. Skip ANC but make everything else better. Cheers! ***Update 2***Well, today UE rolled out firmware update V 1.1.8 and it brought some real changes. Enough for me to bump my initial review up to 4 stars. This update fixes one of my biggest issues with the buds. You can now program single taps and double taps on the buds which doubles your wireless command options. That simply means that you will not have to reach for your phone as often. They have fixed a crackling issue that has been reported while on conference calls and improved general connectivity and call quality. They also made the buds less prone to accidental taps which has never been an issue for me but it's apparently better. I am now comfortable at 4 stars here but there are many more improvements UE needs to make here before they really join the elite in true wireless. Still, the support they are offering here is top notch. I can now say they are the most comfortable buds I own with some of the best customer support! 05/31/2021 Update: So I have upped my ear buds game the last few months. I have been using the latest Master and Dynamic MW08's and the Bowers and Wilkins PI7's. Both are quite a bit more expensive than these at $299 and $399 respectively. They both have ANC, significantly better cases (especially the M&D's) and many more features. That said, after a couple of months buried in my drawer, I broke these bad boys out for some Memorial Day yard work and, I have to say, that while all of the shortcomings are still disconcerting for the price, these buds from UE sound and feel amazing. With as many buds that I test, I find that sometimes I need to really let them sit for a bit and come back for additional perspective. If you can live without ANC and some of the other afformentioned features, these are just really good. The B&W's are the first buds that stand alone for me sound wise in some time but these compare nicely all and all. My ears are so happy to have them back!