Been itching to get my hands on these, the QCY Melobuds N60, one of QCY recent gens TWS earbuds. The promise is the same, super impressive sound performance plus great build quality at half if not quarter the price of your typical in ear buds. Let’s see if they nailed that promise.
Design
The N60 carries on with QCY’s now familiar design language, same design you’d find on the Melobuds Pro or Ailybuds Pro Plus, so a glossy side panel paired to a matte body for a two tone finish. It’s eye catching by all standards, I especially like this shade of glossy, not too in your face but shiny enough to get your attention and in a good way.
Somehow, these look chunkier than my melobuds Pro, still not as chunky as my Melobuds N50 in my eyes so not bad. Overall solid looking buds.
The top cover of the carry case has a similar style glossy finish won’t say I’m the biggest fan of this design but I’m sure it’ll appeal to others. The case by themselves feel very solid – they open and close with a premium thunk, and I think this is the first QCY carry case Im testing that feels this good in hand.
Fit and comfortability
QCY makes in ear buds with good enough fit for most ear types and these are no exception. The fit is snug and secure and bar the occasional tug every now and then when I had them in ear for extended periods you’ll have no issues keeping them in place in whatever setting.
I’d give them a 6/10 in the comfort rating. These buds are large and they feel large in ear – put them in and you immediately feel them pushing against your ear. It’s not so bad and I didn’t experience any out of place ear fatigue even after long usage times but they’re certainly not the most comfortable buds to have on – certainly not more comfortable than the 1More Q21 or anything from the open ear buds I’ve tested recently.
Features
Out of the box the N60 comes with:
- Support of HiRes LDAC audio
- Active noise cancelation
- IPX5 rating for water resistance
- Touch controls
- Proximity sensing
- Bluetooth 6.0
So pretty much the standard QCY feature list with the difference being improved Bluetooth 6.0 and ANC that’s now rated for up to -56dB noise cancelling. They’ve also added support for fast-air technology something I really liked on buds like the CMF Buds 2A and Soundcore’s Liberty 5. Nice touch and it just makes connecting to and using the N60 way more intuitive and easy.
HiRes LDAC audio delivers super crisp audio at 990kbps on compatible devices and that has a sizable impact on sound quality but more on that soon.
The touch controls on these are quite sensitive and accurate, probably the best I’ve tested so far – it’s nothing particularly fancy but it works great and it works great 99% of the time. There’s a menu in the app to customize the three recognized inputs, long press, double tap, and triple tap to your preferred actions.
QCY always lists proximity sensing on the spec sheet of most of their buds but I never really got to see them work, true for the melobuds Pro and Melobuds N50. On these however, works like charm which was refreshing to see. So you put it in ear and it resumes playback and when you take it out it pauses the playback.
Active noise cancellation
Now is there a discernible improvement in ANC performance on the N60 given it’s better ANC rating. Well yeah, it’s ever so slight an improvement but you can definitely tell this does a better job of blocking out noise than say the Melobuds pro.
Here’s me using them in my living room with the TV playing out sound through my home theater at 60% volume and basically none of the TV sound passed through. At 70-80% the background noise begins to break through the filter. Outdoors in a park with some light winds going on and about and I was also pretty much isolated from whatever background noise was going on around me.
IPX5 Rating for water resistance
Being IPX5 rated means this was designed to handle contact with small volumes of water, so light rain showers, sweat from an intense workout, that kind of stuff. I wouldn’t take them swimming of course but they very well survived my intense spritzing test without any issues.
Sound quality
I’ve always been a fan of the sound performance on in ear buds from QCY so I came into this with high expectations especially since these are supposed to be an improvement over the Melobuds N50 and Melobuds Pro.
Well, overall I’d say there’s an improvement, where you’d feel it most is in the bass – it’s deeper and punchier and even at very high (or low) volumes there’s little to any distortion. Impressively this maintains high fidelity across all volumes levels for all frequency ranges, not just for the bas frequency. Trebles, mids everything sounds extra crisp whatever the volume level.
This improved bass performance tips the soundstage to being bass biased I think. It’s still not to the level that bass begins to dilute everything else but it’s enough to notice that bass takes precedence over pretty much everything else. Naturally that means these would do very well with hip hop, pop, amanpiano type of songs. Listening to Timeless by The Weeknd and you can hear the beat drops come off with more ummph.
Clarity and surround sound are still top notch probably a bit better than what you get on the N50. With most QCY buds you’re getting surround sound with super incredible spatial distribution that’s pretty much unrivaled at this price point. Only 1More has something that’s comparable in my opinion.
As usual there’s a native EQ in the QCY app you can use to fine tune these based on your sound preference. I just stuck with the default option since it worked good for me.
Call quality
I enjoyed making calls and receiving calls with the N60. These have 6 mics on them and in call they do a great job of picking up and isolating voice from background noise.
The superb audio performance of the N60 lends itself to the call performance so you get very super crisp audio as a receiver and with the buds ANC working overtime you can take calls in practically any setting without fear.
Battery life
On a full charge you can listen to music on a stretch for up to 5 hours, which is very good for a bud at this price and form factor. On standby you’d expect these to stay on and connected for upwards of 24 hours. In my tests, I was able to squeeze out 48 hours of on time with these buds on standby but those were on days I used the buds minimally.
The carry case on its part houses a 490mAh battery that can deliver up to four 0-100 charge cycles to the buds. So a full charge of both the buds and carry case easily translates to 3-4 days of on time if you’re using them casually.
What’s good, what’s bad
What’s good
- Great audio quality
- Good design
- Great ANC
- Good battery life
What’s bad
- Comfortability – Not the most comfortable buds out there, all things considered, a bit chunky so they sorta fill up your ear. You’ll get noticeable ear fatigue if these stay on for long enough.
Should you buy the Melobuds N60?
Tough decision for me cos on the one hand the N60 is an obvious upgrade over buds like the N50 or the Melobuds pro. Slightly better sound quality, significant quality of life improvements and maybe a better off battery performance.
But are these improvements enough? The thing is I would’ve loved if there was a cosmetic upgrade as well. This design on the N60 is so 2000 and late if you ask me. I mean it’s the same stuff on the Melobuds Pro, Melobuds N50, Melobuds N70 and even the Ailybuds Pro (just that the later is a semi in ear bud so it ditches the ear tips). It would have been refreshing to see a slight makeover but hey why change what’s not broken right?
Yeah, the design is not broken, matter of fact it’s a design language I love and since these buds cost just a slight (maybe not to slight) 8 bucks extra compared to the price of it’s predecessor and you’re getting better audio, better ANC, better battery life, and quality of life improvements, I’d say yeah, you’re better off getting them instead of the N50. The extra money you’re paying is definitely worth the extra upgrades you’re getting.
