The melobuds pro is another QCY TWS earbud you can grab for about $30. The spec sheet sounds decent – bluetooth 5.3, touch control, active noise cancellation and even support for hiRes LDAC audio. Should you buy it though? Short answer is yes, this is a crazy good TWS earbud for the price. But, let’s dive deeper.
What’s in the box
As is usual for QCY, you get the earbuds themselves in the familiar pebble carry case, two pairs of extra ear tips, A USB A to USB C charging cable and the manual.
Design and build quality
Of all the QCY buds I’ve tested this December, the Melobuds Pro is my favorite when it comes to the looks department. So it’s pretty much the Ailybuds Pro + with an ear tip and somehow the ear tip just allows this to pull off that sleek, yet sophisticated look I’ve been looking forward to.
I’ve always liked the two tone finish on these recent batch QCY buds (just not the two tone on the Melobuds N50). It’s glossy on the side of the stalk and full black on other parts and overall it’s very clean both in hand and in ear.
Build quality is great. These look very well put together and at 4.3 grams they’re very lightweight as well. Somehow even though they’re about the same weight as the other QCY earbuds I’ve reviewed they feel a bit lighter in ear but more on that later. The pebble shaped carry case weighs about 33grams, about 5 grams more than the Ailybuds Pro + (even though both house a 350mAh battery) and it feels solid in hand as well. It’s portable enough to slide into your jean pocket and small enough to hold in a fist.
Fit and comfortability
The Melobud pro feels lighter in ear than it looks and I’m guessing that’s because the earpiece part of the buds are smaller than pretty much every other QCY bud I’ve reviewed so far, so they don’t exert that much pressure against the insides of your ear.
That’s all a long winded way of saying these buds are comfy. I did experience some ear fatigue after using them for an almost three hour call with the LOML, but that’s to be expected – with most earbuds in this price range I’ve tried, ear fatigue sets in at about the 2 hour mark and that’s including the pricier Melobuds N50.
The fit is snug, I didn’t have any issues using these while walking or out on a jog for that matter.
Features
The Melobuds Pro come with what’s the customary QCY feature list at this point. So you get:
- Active noise cancellation
- Bluetooth 5.3
- Touch control
- Multipoint connection
- LDAC hiRes Audio support
Noteably these don’t come with any IP rating, wireless charging or proximity sensing. QCY says these will automatically turn off or on depending on whether they’re in ear or not, but I didn’t see the sensor and the buds didn’t automatically pause when I took them out of my ear.
Active noise cancellation
The Melobuds Pro are rated for up 46db noise cancellation and while that specs up with pretty much all the buds at this price point I was interested to see how it performs in the real world. In a room with just the TV on, radio silence. Take it up a notch and add some background music and it did a good job of filtering all of that out. Out on a walk in a busy street and it was okayish at blocking the background chatter.
I had a two hour road trip with the windows down and it was quite good in this scenario as well. It did struggle to totally cancel out the wind noise but it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t listen to music on the way and mind you this was with all windows down and moving at almost 120km/h so we’re talking very serious wind noise.
So to sum it up, active noise cancellation was good on the Melobuds Pro. QCY allows you to set ANC to either of three options depending on your preference. You’ve got ANC on, transparent or ANC off. When you set ANC on you can choose either adaptive, noisy, commuting, indoor or anti wind – the names are pretty much descriptive of how these modes function.
Bluetooth 5.3
Bluetooth 5.4 is the standard now but I’ll just go ahead to say that based on my tests so far you’re not really missing anything with bluetooth 5.3. The official word is 5.4 brings better energy efficiency and better performance especially in the context of low energy audio.
Through my tests I’m yet to see buds with bluetooth 5.4 outclass those with 5.3 in battery life. And since the Melobuds ship with LDAC which is pretty much super high res audio, it doesn’t really need the improved audio performance of LE audio.
Anyways, bluetooth connection on the Melobuds pro was great. No connection drops, seamless pairing and consistently good range – even with my phone downstairs or upstairs in my house the connection was stable enough with the buds in ear as I went about my business.
Sound quality
Pretty much all the QCY buds I’ve reviewed so far, bar the Ailybuds have had very very good audio performance so I had high standards set for the Melobuds. Wasn’t disappointed. This is genuinely the best sounding under $30 earbud I’ve tested so far.
The soundstage is immersive, it’s detailed, it’s expansive, and the clarity… just crazy for a $30 TWS earbud.
Bass was deep and very punchy and as was the case with the N50, it still managed to remain very controlled. So it’s not overshadowing the other components of the soundstage which is something that’s very common with budget TWS earbuds.
I loved how clear and precise mids were. This is the buds to get if you want to experience superb/rich details on instrumentals and even vocals. Timeless by The Weeknd was an absolutely joy to listen to on the Melobuds pro. There was a clear separation of the mids from the trebles and the delivery was so smooth you’d be tempted to think you had actual over the ear headphones.
Same case for trebles, super clear, super precise. Vocals stand out where they need to and its consistent across male to female voices. And that’s saying something because on the pricier Melobuds N50, my experience was that trebles get blended in to other frequencies at higher volume.
Even more impressive is the surround sound performance. QCY really knows how to build TWS earphone with sublime surround sound and the Melobuds pro is no exception. I don’t want to use the word breathtaking cos that’s being dramatic but it’s very good.
Call quality
Most TWS earbuds you’d buy at this price point will do well with calls so I wasn’t expecting any slouch from the Melobuds Pro.l I used this for my usual fortnightly calls with the LOML and it was superb all through. No issues with her hearing through what a 3 hour call and audio quality at my end was as good as it can get.
Gaming and media playback
I experienced very little, if any latency when using this for mobile gaming. Same case for watching videos either online or offline.
With wireless TWS earbuds the fear is that latency, or the delay in synchrony between what you’re seeing and what you’re hearing can be very bad. My favorite game, clash Royale worked fine with Melobuds pro; I even used it for Call of Duty and while there’s a teeny weeny bit of lag, you notice most when shooting, it wasn’t so much that it affected my gameplay or the overall gaming experience.
Battery life
Battery life on the Melobuds Pro was decent, probably not as good as the N50 but in the same bracket all things considered. I easily got 5 hours of active listening time and about 4:30 of in call time on a full charge. With ANC on listening time gets beat down to about 4 hours. Not bad numbers, and even though some buds push better battery performance, in practice this was no limitation by any means.
On standby they can stay on for almost 48hours and with the carry case providing up to four 0-100 charging cycles these bud can easily go a week on a full buds-carry case charge if you want them to. I did mention earlier that there’s no wireless charging support on the Melobuds Pro but that’s to be expected for a TWS bud at this price range. What you get is a USB A to C charging cable (still waiting for when they start shipping these buds out with USB C to C).
App and customization
The QCY app is available on Appstore and Playstore for download. With it you can see the overall status of your buds, customize the EQ, activate or turn of ANC, and do even more granular stuff like customize the actions for touch inputs, enable or disable sleep mode, perform software updates and very impressively activate find my earbuds.
I don’t think I’ve reviewed any other TWS buds maker with a find my earbud feature. Scratch that, after testing my Haylou Mori Pro shortly before publishing this review, they too had the find my bud feature.
Granted it’s not that effective, since it just makes the buds play a tone at their loudest volume which might not hear if they’re truly lost but it’s still a nice touch and for those times where the buds just slipped into a crevice it’s been very helpful.
Should you buy the Melobuds Pro?
In very simple terms the Melobuds Pro were one of the most impressive budget TWS earbuds I had the opportunity of testing and reviewing in a long while. These were consistently good across pretty much all metrics – amazing audio, good design and build quality, excellent ANC, good enough battery life, all of that at a decent price point.
If you’re in the market for a budget TWS earbud it’s hard to go wrong with the Melobuds Pro and matter of fact I recommend it above the melobuds N50 or the CMF Buds 2A (both of which are pricier by the way). I’m still waiting to get my Melobuds N60 and N70 to try them out, so we’ll see if the Melobuds Pro edge out those as well, even though they’re pricier, newer gen QCY earbuds.
