These $50 earbuds from ACEFAST offer quality sound and a decent battery life with style to boot but does the lower price tag affect quality?

There are hundreds to choose from in the earbud market nowadays. Every company offers their own versions of small, wireless earbuds that handle your music as well as keeping you in touch with your calls on the go. Do you need to pay hundreds for a big brand pair though?

Enter ACEFAST. They want to offer fast, subtle, and compact earbuds with high quality sound, long battery life, and most importantly; a low price. So do they deliver?

We’ve been looking at ACEFAST’s Crystal T6 earbuds to find out what $50 can get you in 2023.

The sound and playback

The most important thing when looking at a pair of earbuds is, of course, the sound quality. On first listen, the sound is crisp and clear. We’re packing 6mm speakers inside these little compact buds and they can pack a punch.

The middle and higher frequencies come out really nicely and are backed up with a strong bass – even if you’re listening with just one earbud! This is a strong outcome as they advertise the ability to use each earbud individually on separate devices.

ACEFAST Crystal T6 earbuds stereo and mono
You can use each T6 earbud individually

There is a good space to the sound, which is particularly effective when watching videos to put things in spatial perspective. This can however work subtly against it at times with music, with some tracks feeling a little washed out and distant through the earbuds.

It’s a little like a constant reverb which depending on the situation works to a great effect or lets the sound down. It’s particularly noticeable on tracks with a lot of low end. Despite a resonant bass, somehow this flattens the sound if the track has a lot of loud dynamics.

When it comes to the microphone, the Crystal T6 offers noise-cancelling. The sound quality of the microphone isn’t great and this is only exacerbated if there is lots of background noise that the earbuds need to filter out. I wouldn’t say that it fulfils their promise of “bringing the effect of face to face talking”.

The noise-cancelling effects aren’t 100% effective either. It can be very good at removing general buzz and voices around you, but I found that it didn’t always remove closer noises.

For control over playback, both earphones are touch-sensitive on the outside. Double tap either earbud to play or pause playback. Triple tap the right headphone to skip forward and the left to skip back a track. Long touch either to access the assistant. Tap once on the right to increase volume and tap once on the left to decrease volume.

ACEFAST Crystal T6 playback controls
Touch controls aren’t as simple as they should be

The controls here aren’t the most responsive and you can find yourself struggling to do one action whilst it’s doing another. In fact, trying to simply turn up the volume or skip a track often simply led it to pause playback.

Conclusion: The Crystal T6 buds can sound great, especially with clarity in the mid-to-high frequencies. The stereo space works well to create spatial sound but sometimes music feels a little flattened, particularly with strong bassy sounds. The dynamics are powerful, with the low, mid, and highs all being capable of punching through; it’s like a limiting issue at some points. The touch controls leave a lot to be desired.

The connection and battery life

ACEFAST are using Bluetooth 5 for the strongest available connections and its true that the connection is powerful. I was able to move far away, into other rooms, even two doors away from my connected device without a single blip in the audio playback.

One of the biggest concerns with buying cheaper earbuds is battery life. Quality sound doesn’t matter if you’re putting them back in the case after an hour to charge. Thankfully that’s not the case here.

The Crystal T6 pair offers a decent 4 hours of music playback in-ear, and 3 hours of call time. That’s based on 70% volume so you’ll get a little less if you blast your tunes and perhaps a little more if you play use them in a quiet environment.

ACEFAST Crystal T6 battery and charging case
The charging case is compact and sleek with its transparent design

The super compact charging case looks good with its see-through design, but it also offers a powerful battery boost. It can charge the headset 4 times for roughly 20 hours of playback before you need to plug in. The earbuds themselves reach full charge after roughly an hour in the case.

For comparison, the latest Apple AirPods offer only a little more listening time at about 4.5 hours of music playback. Their charging case offers up to 24 hours of listening time total. So Apple offers roughly the same number of full charges in their case, just promising slightly more time on one charge than ACEFAST.

Conclusion: With a strong Bluetooth connection between the buds and your device and a reasonably long-lasting battery life bolstered by the impressive storage case, the Crystal T6 offers great value for money here.

The design

ACEFAST have gone for a mono-colour, transparent “crystal” style with the Crystal T6 model. The case has a see-through outer shell that reveals the coloured insides. In the centre of the charging case is a small display that shows how much charge it has left as well as the battery life of each earbud.

it’s incredibly compact, coming in at around 2 inches square and just over an inch deep. It’s size makes it super portable, slipping easily into a pocket – but risking getting lost easily within a bag being so small-scale.

To protect the clear plastic of the charging case, a silicone slip is included. This fits snugly over the top and so doesn’t impact the size of the whole package. However, the slip does go partially over the earbuds. This is presumably to prevent them from coming out accidentally but it does make it slightly annoying to pull out the earbuds. The buds also seem to fit firmly in the charging case even without the slip to protect them.

The earbuds themselves are comfortable and ACEFAST include three different pairs of eartip sizes to find the one that suits you. Whilst the regular size fit me fine, I found that if I open my mouth in a certain way – for example, whilst eating with them in – they could squeeze and slip out a little bit. This was honestly hard to discover and was barely an issue at the time, though the more I used them the more I noticed it happening. Generally they fit quite snugly and are comfortable for long usage.

ACEFAST Crystal T6 what
3 pairs of eartips to choose the correct size for you, however a laughably small USB-C cable

The included USB-C cable is possibly the shortest cable I’ve ever seen. It is perhaps a foot long and doesn’t come with a wall adaptor. This is annoying and ultimately, you’re going to want to get a longer USB-C cable for charging the case.

Conclusion: ACEFAST’s Crystal T6 earbuds are incredibly compact for convenient travel. The included slip case makes it slightly more fiddly to access your earbuds. The earbuds themselves are comfortable and generally fit very well.

Overall Conclusion of ACEFAST Crystal T6 earbuds

These earbuds offer a fantastic alternative to AirPods and other expensive equivalents. They are compact, comfortable and offer a fantastic sound. However, the sound is at times diminished with louder tracks (mix not playback).

The design isn’t perfect, but they are comfortable and for the most part function as advertised. Whilst there are a few improvements we’d like to see, at the price point they offer a fantastic pair of earbuds with a great design and quality build.

If you’re looking for perfect sound then you may want to spend a little more. But if you’re happy with a mostly good sound – particularly clear with voices, perfect for podcasts – then you’ve nothing to worry about.

Overall, if you don’t want to go into the hundreds to get some wireless buds to soundtrack your days and keep you in touch with people, ACEFAST’s much cheaper offering is a sound option.

At the time of writing, the Crystal T6 pair are 12% off on Amazon for just $43.99. Click below to nab your pair.