Sabbat E12 True Wireless Headphones Review

The Sabbat E12 earbuds are fairly stylish in-ears with a glossy metallic finish that looks nice but is slightly fingerprint-prone. The buds are small and don’t protrude too much out of your ears. They fit nicely and follow the contour of the inner ear shape. They kind of look like a truly wireless version of some KZ headphones like the KZ ZS10. They come in multiple colors, but their style and color scheme may vary depending on the seller/retailer where you buy them.

The Sabbat E12 earbuds are comfortable in-ears that come with many different tip options to help you find the most comfortable fit. They don’t go too deep inside the ear canal, but their shape and size might put a bit of pressure on your ear, which can get annoying after a while. On the upside, using their control scheme is easy and doesn’t require you to push the headphones further inside your ear canal, which is nice. If you can get a nice fit, they're comfortable and very lightweight.

The Sabbat E12 earbuds have a very straightforward and intuitive one-button control scheme. You can play/pause or take calls with a single press, and a double-press skips tracks on the right earbud and goes back with the left one. You can also control the volume with a triple-press on either bud; the left one decreases it while the right one increases it. They're very easy to use, but we had to factory reset them first as they wouldn’t pair to our devices.

Like most in-ear headphones, the Sabbat E12 don’t trap much heat, and you won’t notice a big temperature difference when wearing them. This makes them a good option for working out as you won’t sweat more than usual.

Thanks to their truly wireless design, the Sabbat E12 earbuds are very portable and will fit in pockets or a bag. They're easy to carry around and come with a decently small charging case.

The Sabbat E12's case is decent. It's fairly small and easily portable, but the materials used aren’t the best. The case feels plasticky with a glossy finish that's fingerprint-prone. The case will still protect the headphones against scratches and physical damage from falls, but the case itself doesn’t feel very durable. On the upside, it supports wireless charging, which is nice. These headphones also come with a small carrying pouch.

These headphones are well-built, and the buds are dense enough to survive a few accidental falls without too much physical damage. Unfortunately, the case feels a bit cheaper than the headphones, but on the upside, they're rated IPX5 for water resistance.

The Sabbat E12 earbuds are stable enough for a light run but won’t be as stable as other in-ears with stability fins or ear-hooks. They stay in place during casual listening, but you may break the seal when moving your head without the buds falling to the ground. Their wireless design removes the risk of a cable getting hooked on something, which would yank the headphones out of your ears.

• Sabbat E12 earbuds
• Charging case
• 7 tip options
• USB-C charging cable
• Carrying pouch
• Manuals

Like most other in-ears, they have an excellent frequency response consistency. If the user can achieve a proper seal using the assortment of the tips, then they should get a very consistent bass and treble delivery every time they use the headphones.

The Sabbat E12's bass performance earbuds is sub-par. It's well extended but overemphasized over our target curve. The bump in low-bass will add excess thump and rumble, which are common to bass-heavy genres. The response is elevated throughout the range, meaning that the hyped high bass will add boominess and muddiness to the overall bass.

The Sabbat E12 earbuds' mid-range is great. There’s a small bump in low-mid, which is the continuation of the overemphasized high-bass, which thickens vocals and lead instruments a bit. Also, there’s a small dip in mid-mid, which nudges back these sounds to the back of the mix. However, the balanced high-mid ensures their intensity and clarity.

The Sabbat E12 earbuds have a passable treble response. While the response in low-treble is over our target curve, which gives too much detail and brightness to those frequencies, there is a deep and broad dip on higher sibilants (S and T sounds). This will make those frequencies lack detail and brightness.

The stereo imaging performance is great. The GD graph also shows that the entire group delay response is below the audibility threshold. This ensures a tight bass and a transparent treble. Also, the left and right drivers of our unit were well-matched in amplitude and phase but had a very small mismatch in amplitude; this won’t be noticeable for most people. This is important for the accurate localization and placement of objects (voices, instruments, video game effects) in the stereo field. However, these results are only valid for our unit, and yours may perform differently.

The soundstage is bad. This is because creating an out-of-head and speaker-like soundstage is largely dependent on activating the resonances of the pinna (outer ear). The design of in-ears and earbuds is in such a way that fully bypasses the pinna and doesn't interact with it. Also, because these headphones have a closed-back enclosure, their soundstage won't be perceived to be as open as that of open-back earbuds like the Bose SoundSport Free Truly Wireless.

The Sabbat E12’s fit is acceptable at passively isolating ambient noise. They don’t do much against lower-end noises, which means they won’t be ideal for public transit as they won’t block out the deep rumbling of engines. On the upside, they do a pretty good job at blocking work environment noises like ambient chatter and A/C system noise.

The Sabbat E12 True Wireless earbuds' leakage performance is excellent. These headphones practically don't leak in the bass and mid ranges. A significant portion of their leakage is around the low-treble range, which results in a thin-sounding leakage. However, the overall level of the leakage is quiet. With the music at 100dB SPL, the leakage at 1 foot away peaks under the noise floor of an average office, so you shouldn’t bother surrounding colleagues.

The microphone on the Sabbat E12 has a decent recording quality. Speech recorded and transmitted with this microphone will sound full-bodied and easily intelligible. It might sound a bit muffled and dark sounding, though.

The noise handling of the Sabbat E12 earbuds' integrated microphone is mediocre. It has trouble separating speech from ambient noise and won’t fare well in moderately loud situations like a busy street. This mic will be better suited for quiet environments.

We measured only about four hours of battery life on a single charge of the Sabbat E12 earbuds, but it’s disappointing considering that they were advertised to last six hours per charge. On the upside, they only take about an hour to charge fully. The case holds up about four additional charges according to the specs sheet, and you can charge it wirelessly, which is nice.

The Sabbat E12 don’t have a dedicated companion app that would have allowed customization options.

These truly wireless headphones support Bluetooth version 5.0, but unfortunately, you can't pair them to multiple devices at the same time and don’t support NFC. We also had a lot of trouble with their pairing procedure when we first unboxed the product. We had to factory reset the headphones to be able to pair them to a device.

The Sabbat E12 have very high latency, which won’t be ideal for watching videos due to the delay between the sound and images. However, this might not be as noticeable on apps and devices that offer some compensation.

You can't use the Sabbat E12 earbuds wired.

The Sabbat E12 TWS come with a nice hard charging case that you can charge via their USB-C cable. The case doesn’t have any additional inputs, but you can charge it with a wireless Qi charger, which is nice. It also holds about four additional charges.