The wireless earbud market has exploded in recent years, with more good options than ever before. Not all of those quality picks are pricey, either: with 12mm drivers, low-latency gaming mode, and active noise cancelation for a bargain-bin MSRP of $70, the SoundPeats Capsule 3 Pro are a good pick for anyone looking tosave a buck on their next pair of true wireless earbuds.
SoundPeats Capsule3 Pro
The SoundPeats Capsule3 Pro are a killer pair of earbuds for just $70. The sound is excellent (for the price), and the active noise cancelation is far better than expected. The app could use some work, and they can be a little bit uncomfortable after a few hours, but these shortcomings are easily overlooked in light of the price and everything this product does well.
Price and availability
The Capsule3 Pro usually retail for $70 on Amazon and $80 from the manufacturer website. At the moment, both sites have them on sale for $53 at Amazon and $60 from SoundPeats. The earbuds are available in black, which is accented with bronze elements, and white with silver accents. I usually prefer lighter colors for earbuds, but in this case, I think black is the best-looking option. The bronze adds flair without crossing the line into tacky.
Design, hardware, what’s in the box
Overall, I like the design of the Capsule3 Pro. The charging case is bigger than what I’m used to with my Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, but it’s still small enough to easily fit in jeans pockets. The matte black finish with bronze accents looks premium, but that’s where the premium feeling ends. The lid isn’t as tight as I’d like. It doesn’t feel like it’ll break, but it’s slightly loose and doesn’t inspire confidence. On the bottom of the case, you’ll find the USB-C charging port — there’s no wireless charging here — and the pairing button next to that.
If you’ve ever seen a pair ofApple AirPods Pro, these buds will look familiar. They have rubber tips that fit into the ear canal for better sound isolation with a small-ish stem, as opposed to something like the Galaxy Buds Live that just sit in the outer ear.
Like their case, the matte plastic and bronze accent pieces on the earbuds look good. Comfort is also okay, but I find the silicone tips feel rough and harsh in my ears. Buying some softer tips from Amazon might be a sound idea, so long as they fit in the charging case. In the box, you’ll find a USB-A to USB-C charging cable and spare ear tips of various sizes.
Sound quality
Sound quality is where the Capsule3 Pro impressed me most. Almost all of the budget earbuds I’ve ever used have had poor sound quality and awful latency, which they typically try to cover up with a massive bass boost. In addition to excessive bass, a lot of earbuds distort at higher volumes or when playing higher frequencies, sometimes hissing onSsounds.
The Capsule3 Pro has a slightly higher bass than the standard, but it doesn’t overdo it. Volume is good too. I found that I never needed to turn these up past 55%, whereas my Buds 2 Pro are usually around the 70% mark most of the time. Voices are clear and crisp which made podcasts a joy to listen to, and the earbuds were able to handle a wide variety of music. Complex arrangements like Derezzed from the Tron Legacy soundtrack sounded great, as did more conventional music like Fall Out Boy’s So Much For Stardust and NF’s Hope.
Mic quality is good. Those I called couldn’t tell I was using earbuds and assumed I had the phone next to my head, and the quality on my end was solid. Some earbuds I’ve used have had good sound quality for music but struggled with calls, but the Capsule3 Pro sounded fine for me in all situations.
The ANC is impressive, too, for the price. Sitting in my office, the sound of my desk fan, gaming PC, and clacking mechanical keyboard are all but eliminated with Paramore’s Crushcrushcrush playing at about 40% volume. When someone else in the house was vacuuming with our 15-year-old Dyson, which isn’t as quiet as it used to be, only the slightest drone reached my ears.
The only times the ANC let me down were on the London Underground. The more consistent drones of the train system were blocked just fine, but the shrieking brakes made it through, andfor some of us, those are the noises that need to be blocked the most. To be fair to the Capsule3 Pro, my Galaxy Buds 2 Pro also struggled with the brakes, although not as much. Sadly, that’s justa limitation with ANC in generalas opposed to a flaw with the product.
Transparency mode is also great. Clarity is on par with my Buds 2 Pro, but I have a gripe that’s shared with both sets of earbuds. Most earbuds let you adjust the volume of transparency mode separately from media volume so you’re able to control exactly how much of the outside world is let in. Older Galaxy Buds even had this feature, but it’s missing from the Buds 2 Pro and Capsule3 Pro. Samsung is apparentlyadding it back later on, so hopefully Soundpeats can do something similar.
Latency was an issue in my testing. The speech was always out of sync, but I won’t criticize them too much for it. There’s a gaming mode available in the app that enables the low-latency mode, however, and this eliminated the lip-sync issue.
Features and app
Like many modern earbuds, the Capsule3 Pro is controlled via the Soundpeats app. To pair the earbuds you have to press the pairing button on the case while the buds are still inside it with the lid open, at which point they’ll show up in your phone’s Bluetooth menu. You don’t need the app to pair and use the buds, but it’s the only way to change settings or update the firmware.
The app isokay.The UI is basic, and one of the three navigation tabs is just a shortcut to buying more earbuds. Ignoring that, it mostly does everything you need. The central home tab shows the current battery level for each bud, and there’s a slide-out menu on the left side from which you can update the firmware.
The settings tab is where you’ll spend most of your time. In addition to increasing the volume, you can cycle between equalizer presets, create your own, toggle ANC and transparent mode, game mode, and touch controls.
The preset equalizers are pretty good and do what you’d expect them to. The ability to tweak them all to your liking and even create custom profiles is a great addition I’d love to see in more earbuds. The one feature you should enable if you’re going to be watching video is game mode. This enables the low-latency mode, and activating it completely fixed the lip-sync issues I mentioned earlier.
My biggest issue with the app is that you can’t change what the touch controls do, and it doesn’t tell you what the layout is. It’s printed in a booklet that comes with the buds, but if you lose that, you’d better have a good memory. Or download the PDF from the website.
A single tap on either bud raises and lowers the volume, and a double tap will answer/reject a call or play/pause what’s playing. After that, it differs per ear. I won’t go through the whole list of controls here, but they include toggling ANC, gaming mode, and skipping to the next track. Frustratingly, you can’t restart a song or go back to the previous track. This drove me crazy during my time using the Capsule3 Pros, and I hope this is something Soundpeats can add in an update.
Battery life and charging
Battery life is alright, but could be better. SoundPeats advertises eight hours in normal mode and five and a half with ANC switched on. That’s consistent with my experience, and it should be more than enough for most people. The case can charge the buds five and a half times for a theoretical 52 hours of total listening time. Charging the case is over USB-C only — no wireless charging support.
Competition
Sub-$100 earbuds are better now than ever before, so the competition is more fierce than ever before. The OnePlus Nord Buds, Jabra Elite 3, and Nothing Ear Stick all provide incredible value. The Nord Buds are the most compelling for just $45, and the OnePlus app is significantly better than the one from Soundpeats. All of these earbuds have strengths and weaknesses that the others do not. The Nord Buds have the lower price and better app, the Nothing Ear Sticks look cool, and the Jabra Elite 3 are best for workouts.
Which pair of buds is best for you will vary based on how you want to use them and what features you prioritize. If you want balanced audio that doesn’t overdo the bass and has above-average ANC (for the price), then the Soundpeats Capsule3 Pro are the ones to go for.
Should you buy them?
Unless you can stretch your budget a little further, you should buy these. Sound, ANC, and call quality are far better than expected at this price, and the battery life isn’t bad either. But the Capsule3 Pros are let down by a slightly cheap feeling that, for me, translates to sore ears after more than an hour or so with them in, and an app that needs some serious polish. They also lack smart device switching, although that would have been a luxury at this price. They’re also frequently on sale, currently available for $60 instead of $80, and sometimes Amazon will take an extra 15% off if you’re lucky.
What these buds do better than anything else is prove that SoundPeats has a lot of potential, even though it has been around for a while now. If it can pull off this level of quality for $80, I’d love to see what the company could accomplish with a pair of premium earbuds. If these are anything to go by, a more expensive product could put other OEMs on notice.
The SoundPeats Capsule3 Pro is a killer pair of earbuds for just $70. The sound is excellent, and the Active Noise Cancellation is far better than expected at this price. The app could use some work, and they can be a little bit uncomfortable after a few hours, but that’s easily overlooked in light of the price and everything this product does well.
