TREBLAB X5 Truly Wireless Headphones Review

The TREBLAB X5 are truly wireless in-ears that have an unconventional style. They have a design that resembles the overall look of the Apple AirPods (2nd generation) Truly Wireless, with long stalks that protrude out of your ears, but they're bulky and might look a bit out-of-the-ordinary at first. They also have a sporty look due to their stability fins. These come in an all-black or all-white design.

The TREBLAB X5 are decently comfortable since they don’t enter your ear canal as deeply as typical in-ears. They also come with a good amount of tip options. You get three differently-sized silicone tips and three differently-sized foam tips, which some may find even more comfortable. You also get three different stability fin options, but these feel somewhat bulky, and you might feel them inside your ears. While they're large for truly wireless in-ears, they still feel lightweight, and you barely notice them once they're on. However, the in-ear fit might not feel as comfortable for everyone, and some may feel ear fatigue after a while.

The TREBLAB X5 have a decent control scheme, but it might take a bit of time to get used to. Each earbud has two buttons that give you access to common functionalities. You can manage your calls and music, skip tracks, or access your device’s voice assistant. You also get volume control, which isn’t available on all truly wireless headphones, so that’s good. However, this control scheme has a few flaws. It might be a bit confusing to use at first. One of the most annoying commands was unpausing. To play/pause, you need to hold the upper button of either bud for a second. However, a single tap on the left button will go the previous track, which is frustrating when you’re trying to unpause your music.

Like most in-ear headphones, the TREBLAB X5 don’t trap heat under ear cups, so you won’t feel a big temperature difference when wearing them. You shouldn’t sweat more than usual, which makes them a good option for sports.

Like most truly wireless headphones, the TREBLAB X5 can easily fit in your pockets or bag if you want to bring them to the gym. They will be easy to carry around, and they also come with a hard case that doesn’t add too much bulk. They will easily fit in your pockets as well.

The TREBLAB X5's charging case is decent. It feels a bit cheaply made with thin plastic that could break. The case still fully protects the headphones against minor water exposure and scratches. It might also absorb a bit of damage from falls; however, unlike similarly designed headphone cases, the right earbud goes on the left side of the case and vice versa.

The TREBLAB X5 don’t have the best build quality and feel fairly cheap. They're made out of thin plastic and feel like they would break if you were to sit or step on them accidentally. Their case also feels thin, lightweight, and doesn’t feel like it’s protecting the headphones that well. On the upside, they're rated IPX4 for water resistance. For better-built truly wireless headphones, take a look at the Anker SoundCore Liberty Air Truly Wireless, which have a similar design, or the Anker SoundCore Liberty Lite Truly Wireless for a denser and more solid overall build.

The TREBLAB X5 are very stable headphones and are a great option for physical activity. Their stability fins are great for more intense workouts, and their overall fit feels tight. The earbuds don’t move around when exercising, even if the headphones are a bit bulkier than typical truly wireless in-ears. Also, the fit doesn’t change much when using their control scheme, which is good. Their wireless design removes the risk of a cable getting stuck on something and yanking the headphones out of your ears.

• TREBLAB X5 headphones
• 3x stability fins
• 3x silicone tips
• 3x foam tips
• Charging case
• Micro-USB charging cable
• Manuals

The frequency response consistency is excellent. If the user can achieve a proper fit and an air-tight seal using the assortment of tips that come with them, they should get consistent bass and treble delivery every time they use the headphones.

The TREBLAB X5's bass performance is excellent. LFE (low-frequency extension) is at 10Hz, excellent for bass-heavy genres like EDM and hip-hop. The whole range is flat and even, and the slight overemphasis should barely be noticeable. Low-bass is slightly overemphasized by about 3 dB. This will add a bit of excess thump to the bass, which some people may like. Mid-bass is well balanced, and the slight overemphasis in high-bass will be barely noticeable.

The TREBLAB X5's mid-range is very good. The range is fairly close to our target curve, but there's a 4dB dip in the mid-mid, which pushes back the vocals and lead instruments to the back of the mix.

The treble performance is great. The range before 5kHz is fairly flat and even but gets a bit uneven in higher frequencies. The bumps around 7kHz and 10kHz will make these frequencies sound sharp and piercing. However, not everyone will hear this as sibilant.

The TREBLAB X5 have outstanding imaging. Their weighted group delay is at 0.1, which is very good. This suggests that they have a tight bass and a transparent treble reproduction. Also, the L/R drivers of our unit are exceptionally well-matched in amplitude, frequency, and phase response, which ensures an accurate placement and localization of objects (voices, instruments, video game effects) in the stereo image. However, these results are only valid for our unit, and yours may perform differently.

The soundstage of the TREBLAB X5 is bad. This is because creating an out-of-head and speaker-like soundstage is largely dependent on activating the resonances of the pinna. 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 they have a closed-back design, their soundstage won't be perceived to be as open as that of open-back earbuds like the Apple AirPods (2nd generation) Truly Wireless or the Bose SoundSport Free Truly Wireless.

The TREBLAB X5's isolation performance is good. In the bass range, where the rumble of airplane and bus engines sits, they isolate by about 7dB, which is poor. In the mid-range, important for blocking out speech, they reduce outside noise by 22dB, which is outstanding. In the treble range, occupied by sharp sounds like S and Ts and fan noises like A/C systems, they achieve more than 48dB of isolation, which is exceptional.

The TREBLAB X5's leakage performance is fantastic. A significant portion of the leakage is concentrated in a narrow band in the treble range. This results in a leakage that is very thin sounding. The overall level of the leakage is very quiet. With the music at 100dB SPL, the leakage at one foot away averages at around 22dB SPL and peaks at 27dB SPL, which is way below the noise floor of most offices.

The TREBLAB X5's integrated microphone is sub-par. In quiet environments, speech recorded or transmitted with this mic will sound noticeably thin and muffled. It will do decently in moderately noisy situations but will struggle to fully separate speech from background noise in loud places, like a subway station.

The integrated microphone's recording quality is disappointing. The LFE (low-frequency extension) of 223Hz indicates that speech recorded/transmitted with this mic will sound noticeably thin. The HFE (high-frequency extension) is at 2.7kHz, which results in speech that is noticeably lacking in detail and muffled. This is expected from most Bluetooth microphones.

This integrated microphone is mediocre at noise handling. In our SpNR test, it achieved a speech-to-noise ratio of 15dB. This means that it can separate speech from ambient noise in moderately noisy environments to a decent degree but will struggle in loud situations.

We measured just over three hours of continuous playback on one charge, which is very disappointing considering TREBLAB advertises six hours of battery life. However, you can also get up to four additional charges from their charging case, which would bring the estimated total listening time to about 15 hours, taking some breaks here and there to charge the headphones. They also have an auto-off timer to save some battery, but it's set at only three minutes, which is fairly quick and might get frustrating. According to the specs sheet, the case automatically turns off after being idle for eight hours, after taking the earbuds out from the case, or when the buds get fully charged.

The TREBLAB X5 don’t have a companion app that would let you customize their sound to your liking.

The TREBLAB X5 are pretty straightforward Bluetooth headphones. Unfortunately, they only connect to one device at a time and don’t support NFC for easy pairing with mobile phones and NFC-enabled devices. However, you can connect each earbud to two different devices.

Like most Bluetooth headphones, their latency may be a bit high for watching video content or gaming. However, some devices or apps seem to offer some compensation, so you might not notice the delay as much.

These truly wireless headphones don’t have a wired connection.

The TREBLAB X5 come with a case that acts like a charging dock. It doesn’t have any inputs, but on the upside, it gives you four extra charges for the headphones. This brings their total battery life up to 30 hours, according to their specs sheet, but we measured about half of this advertised battery life.