Samsung Gear IconX Wireless Fitness Earphones Review - The Care Free Workout Buddy!

When listening to music or podcasts on the go, one of the major drawbacks to earphones were the long wires that would dangle around your body and that it could hook or get stuck at random objects along the commute. Wireless earphones emerged to solve these problems to a certain extent; however, these problems of dangling and hooking are more pronounced when listening to music or podcasts while exercising. This is apparent in different levels from different exercises like running, weight lifting or the like. The Samsung IconX serves to solve this problem and we are here to see if does.

Samsung Gear IconX IEM review, a glimpse of the future?

Samsung Gear IconX Specs

Driver Unit: Dynamic
Microphone: 2 ea (per earpiece)
Battery: 47 mAh w/ 315 mAh charging case
Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.1
Sensors: Accelerometer, hear rate sensor
Others: Capacitive touch, splash resistance, Colors: black, blue, white
Dimensions: 25.9 x 19.5 x 17.9 mm (in ear monitors), 92 x 32.5 x 30.3 mm (case)
Weight: 12.6 g (earbuds)
Price: 7,990 Pesos

Note: We received the IconX without its official retail box. It's just the earbuds, charging case, and cables. What we'd like to see is its exact retail package that should include some tip sizes and some freebies.

Build Quality / Design

The texture is smooth and they feel solid!

Build quality is premium levels of greatness. The charging cradle and the ear pieces are smooth in texture, solid when held but light when wearing them, while the USB cable and adapter are made of premium solid plastic while the write is thick and is not easily tangled.

It feels premium and more than solid enough!

The earpiece themselves look like they com from the future. It looks sleek, has smooth texture, and properly engineered for comfort. Then it also has a stylish carrying case with clever 

Comfort / Isolation

Look at those comfortable rounded eartips

There are interchangeable rubber wing like pieces to better fit your ear. They really help because in my two weeks of daily use with them, I only had one incident where the earpieces fell and it was when I was taking them off.

It would seem that no matter what activity I did, may it be the daily commute or when I was actively exercising where I did jumps, squats and push-ups, the ear-pieces never came off.

It's also highly comfortable due to its high-grade silicon eartips and rubberized body. The result, it sits comfortably in your ears and doesn't get itchy overtime.

The IconX  provides minor isolation although I believe they were not designed to be for Isolation from the beginning. This was marketed as a Fitness wireless earphones and in some cases you have to be alert with both your vision and hearing. In fact it has this ambient mode where it amplifies ambient sounds of interests like motor vehicles, voices and music.

In fact, I felt like a super spy when using this because I could unintentionally hear the conversation of the people right beside my table at a cafe I was trying to listen to my music to.

Battery Life

The IconX when used to listen to music tracks from the mobile phone via bluetooth on average will last for a little over an hour. This is perfect for most people because most people spend an hour of working out a day. It also only needs an hour to charge to maximum capacity.

When the tracks are transferred to the earpieces themselves, the IconX earpieces will last up until three hours. This however would require you to plug the earphones to the cradle and then plug the cradle to the USB cord plus micro USB adapter that is then plugged to your phone. This is a necessity as music files need to be transferred at a decent speed.

Sound Quality

Here's the easy to use software of IconX

It's a mid-centric sounding wireless IEM with lows and highs can be heard distinctively in a decent manner. The bass response is clean, fast, tight, and doesn't overpower. However, it can't go really deep and doesn't produce that crawling like sub-bass experience.

Sound quality is good for non-audiophiles.

Mids on the other hand is the forte of this set. It is HiFi like clean, clear, and crisp. There's also plenty of details that can be heard in this part of the spectrum. Highs on the other hand is quite tame. It is decent, but doesn't really have that wow sparkly effect. The good thing is it isn't peaky and doesn't have that annoying / tiring hiss.

Separation of tunes is also heardable and soundstage is decently wide. It isn't that big though, as big like listening inside a closet.

The volume can get loud at max volume with little distortion. I played FLAC files with these things and honestly, I didn't hear any form of degradation of quality with my two weeks with them. In fact, I was so pumped with the quality of music I was listening to, I think I wanted to work out because of them!

Note: When working out, one cool thing here is it's equipped with audio feedback tech which gives you a personal coach like voice to push you further with your workouts. This would be perfect to keep you going and going.

Pros -Sound quality is good for non-audiophiles, construction is nice, charging time is quick, clever charging case, almost never falls off our ears

Cons - Battery life only lasts an hour for music streamed from the phone, doesn't isolate much for private listening (not a con for outdoor workouts to keep you alert and safe)

Verdict

These maybe the best wireless active lifestyle earphones yet! It truly is wireless when you wear them! The only time you need a cord is when charging them. The sound quality is good enough to please most people and ambient mode allows us to have super hearing! So if you can get past the 1 hour battery life and want the convenience of wireless earphones, then these are for you!

GIZ Rating: 4/5 Stars