For under $30 you can grab a QCY AilyBuds Pro plus. Sounds like a great deal if you’re looking for a nice TWS earbud on a tight budget. On paper this comes with active noise cancellation (ANC), bluetooth 5.3, touch control and very importantly support for hiRes LDAC audio.
But there are lots of other cheap options and if you’re on the fence then this review is for you. I’ve used the AilyBuds Pro+ for about a week now and I can tell you where it sucks, what it does well enough and if you should bother with picking one up.
What’s in the box
QCY likes to keep things simple (cheap) so in their customary cheap package what you get is the carry case housing the earbuds, an A to C charging cable, and the bud’s manual.
Design
I recently reviewed the Melobuds N50 and if you watched that review you’d hear me talk about the lost sleek form factor on that earbud with its chunky stalk. Now while the stalk on the AilyBuds still looks a bit chunky and I’m using my nice looking T11s as the reference here, it fits better and more flush with the overall form factor of the AilyBuds Pro+.
You still get the shiny finish on the stalk, but this is more grey than it is silver, with a soft black overlay on the earpiece to make for a two tone, suave and polished look. These are good looking in hand and in ear and I honestly prefer this look to what you get on the Melobuds N50.
Build quality is decent and somehow, probably because of the design, these look more well put together than the Melobuds N50. At 4.2grams they’re about 0.1 grams lighter too although I doubt you’d be able to tell that difference in weight apart with these in ear.
Fit and comfortability
The AilyBuds Pro+ are semi in ear earbuds, so they don’t come with silicon tips attached. Depending on how you piece it that can be a good thing – and when it comes to fit and comfortability more so the latter it certainly is a good thing.
These don’t squeeze around the walls of your ear, silicon tips on actual in ear earbuds do when you push them in to get a nice fit. As a result they’re more comfy overtime and less likely to cause in ear earbuds fatigue. The drawback is because they don’t fit snuggly these have a tendency to ‘shake’ around in your ear. I found myself constantly adjusting these in ear to get the best sound experience. They’re certainly not the earbuds you’d want to take for a workout routine.
Also, since they don’t have tips it means the size of the earbuds speaker port as I like to call it is fixed. And these are somewhat large speaker ports, so if you have a small ear, buyer beware.
Features
QCY ships the AilyBuds Pro+ with the following out of the box:
- Active noise cancellation
- Bluetooth 5.3
- IPX5
- LDAC support
- Multipoint connection
- Touch control
On paper there’s not much missing from this spec list for a typical budget TWS earbud. Maybe wireless charging and proximity sensing but you’d be hard pressed to find a TWS earbud at this price point with those in addition to what the AilyBuds Pro+ comes with.
Active noise cancellation
Active noise cancellation on the AilyBuds Pro+ is mediocre at best and that’s down to the design of the earbuds than the technology itself. Because these are semi in ear earbuds without the rubber tips, they don’t form an active seal in your ear. And if you know TWS earbuds well enough, you’ll know a lot depends on that seal.
In a room with people talking the Ailybuds might be able to cancel out the noise, maybe outdoors too on a quiet walk. Anything other than that, and this will struggle to block out the noise. I was able to get better noise cancellation by pushing the AilyBuds deeper into my ear but that’s impractical in the long run because it always found a way to come out after a few mins.
Bluetooth 5.3 and multipoint connection
There’s bluetooth 5.4 now and that’s what you’d get on the N50, N60 and N70 so this is not the industry standard anymore. Anyway 5.3 still does the job quite well and I’d argue there’s no noticeable difference in practice between the two – this still has superb audio quality at low bitrates, good energy efficiency and good latency.
With multipoint connection you can connect two phones simultaneously to the AilyBuds Pro+. So if you have two phones no need disconnecting from the current one connected to your earbuds to connect to the other.
IPX5 rating
IPX5 is an improvement to the IPX4 certification you get on the Melobuds N50, however slight it is and it means this can comfortably handle a rain shower in addition to sweat and water splashes. Some TWS earbuds at this price range come with better IP ratings but that’s not the norm, this is good enough all things considered.
Sound quality
Sound quality on the AilyBuds Pro+ wasn’t all that impressive. It’s open, with very high trebles, poor mids and almost non existent bass. Its hard to enjoy songs with detailed mids or bass. Pop, rock, rap, amanpiano, anything where the emphasis is on the beats and more less on the trebles. My favorite song Timeless (the Weeknd) felt very mediocre.
Trebles were crisp and spacious, and paired to the open soundstage on the AilyBuds it makes for a good listening experience only if you’re fixated on vocals.
Mids were subpar on every level. In actual listening experience mids feel blended into the treble. Matter of fact everything feels blended into the treble.
Bass is where you get the worst performance overall, like I said earlier it’s almost non existent. Surround sound is piss poor as well.
Practically all the deficiencies in the sound experience of this earbud can be traced back to the fact that it is semi in ear. That in ear seal is terribly important for TWS earbuds and true to that if I push the AilyBuds Pro deeper into my ear and hold it in place, the sound experience changes dramatically, possibly comparable to what you’d get on the N50 which if you’ve read my review performs very well sound wise.
Call quality
Call quality on the AilyBuds is decent, this has the same 6 mics configuration you’d get on the N50. In all the calls I made with it the other party had no issues hearing what I was saying, it does a good job of picking up and delivering your voice with clarity even when you speak in low volumes.
On the flip side even with all the let downs in sound performance this still delivers good audio from the counterparty during calls. The lack of an effective ANC might make receiving calls in noisy environments less pleasant than you’d expect but it’s still usable in that type of setting.
Gaming and media playback
I feel the major drawback with these buds in terms of gaming is how it’s unable to isolate you from from environment and put you in the gaming space sound wise. It’s not all that immersive and because of the poor sound performance the audio experience of your favorite games might feel less impressive than it usually is. Certainly felt less impressive than the experience I was getting with the Melobuds N50.
Same case for media playback. This doesn’t provide a full enough sound experience and honestly just depreciates the quality of the overall media playback experience.
Battery life
On paper QCY says this will do about five hours of active listening and 28 hours on standby. In testing I got pretty much similar values about 6 hours on average of continuous listening and up to 30 hours on standby. Very good numbers for a TWS earbud at this price point.
The carry case houses a 350mAh battery and it can do four 0-100 recharge cycles when full. Annoyingly, this comes with a USB A to C charging cable, I spoke about this in my other review, there’s no reason this should ship with a C to C cable, what’s even worse is this bud won’t charge with a C to C cable.
QCY app
QCY are big boys now so you get a fully fledged Android or iOS app to go with your cheap earbud. Its very well thought out, you get a:
- Status tab that provides an overview of the bud’s current state
- Sound tab where you can customize the EQ, noise cancellation mode and left right sound balance
- Settings tab that provides even more granular control, you can configure the touch inputs and map then to your preferred action, find your earbuds if they get missing, enable sleep mode or gaming mode and perform software updates.
My one and only gripe with the app is you need to create an account before you can use it. I honestly don’t see any reason why QCY needs my email before they allow me change the EQ on my earbuds. I’m blocking those marketing emails the very first one I see.
Should you buy the AilyBuds Pro Plus?
Seeing a sub $30 TWS earbuds with LDAC support really had me excited about the AilyBuds Pro plus but sadly the poor sound performance and shoddy noise cancellation on this TWS earbud are too much of a disappoint to ignore.
I wouldn’t recommend the AilyBuds Pro plus for any use case. Even though it’s a comfortable earbud in ear, there are way better options on the market. QCY itself has better earbuds for the money, the N50 is about the same price and its audio is wayyyy better than this. And if LDAC is a priority for you the N70 or the Melobuds Pro for a few more bucks is a better earbud to buy.
