Review: Acefast Crystal T8 – listen to your fave tracks in style for less than $100
The Acefast Crystal T8s are a good choice of TWS earbuds for small budgets, despite the shortcomings these affordable Bluetooth earbuds succumb to.
I’ve spent the last week trying out the Acefast Crystal T8 wireless earbuds for size and I think they’re a great wireless solution with a cheap price tag. Although they’re not the most comfortable earbuds I’ve used, the Acefast Crystal T8s do deliver great battery life, a stylish feel with their translucent LED charging case, nifty touch controls, and a little more bang for your buck than you might expect in audio quality.
Affordable Bluetooth earbuds can swing and miss in many criteria, but the Acefast T8s offer good audio quality for casual listeners, even though noise-cancelling technology and a few other common-place features are absent. There’s no support for High-Resolution Audio nor a companion app so you can’t customise EQ profiles or receive firmware updates, but the T8 buds do have a low-latency gaming mode which is one of the best heard.
What’s in the box?
Unboxing the T8 headphones was quite surreal. For a budget pair of Bluetooth earbuds, the box is actually quite premium! After you slip the branded sleeve away you’re left with a stylish box with a plastic covering that opens much like a book, and in the box sits the charging case & buds while smaller boxes hold the charging cable, silicone sleeve for the case, another 3 pairs of ear tips as well as a silicone lanyard so you can carry the case around safely.
One thing I would say about the packaging is the plastic seems a little unneccassary. I understand that it does add a slightly premium feel with the way it opens & folds, but Acefast’s competitors such as EarFun has minimised its plastic use which is usually more desirable, particularly here in the West.
- Crystal T8 earbuds
- Translucent charging case
- USB-C cable
- Silicone protective case
- Ear tip storage box (x3 tips)
- Lanyard
Acefast Crystal T8 review
First things first, the wireless T8 earbuds utilise the latest Bluetooth 5.3 for efficient signal transfer. Still, they’re only compatible with SBC & AAC Bluetooth codecs, meaning there’s no support for high-resolution Bluetooth codecs like LDAC or aptX. However, the earbuds do detect when you’re wearing them which has become a standard feature in TWS buds – the only problem is that the buds aren’t all that snug. They slip out of my ears fairly often which strips a lot of the bass rumble away.
Therefore, anyone looking to use the T8s while running or exercising may have some issues. The buds will stay in your ears but you’ll need to readjust every so often which I know not everyone is keen on (I’m not). Though Acefast does give you another four pairs of ear tips for different ear sizes, I still found that the buds come a little loose in my ears.
Audio quality
With that said, the audio quality is decent. These are the first wireless earbuds I’ve used that have dual drivers – a 10mm driver omits bass & miss while a 6mm dome tweeter projects treble – and so I was anticipating a strong audio performance. Due to smaller drivers, earbuds suffer from a narrower sound stage compared to over-ear cans so I was hoping the 6mm tweeter would break this mould but I was wrong. However, the audio profile is largely flat – though a companion app with an EQ wouldn’t go amiss as is available with the EarFun Air Pro 3s. Companion apps & EQs are more or less standard with TWS buds, but the lower price range of the T8s does require compromises.
The mids tuck behind the bass but they’re still clear while the low end itself is well-defined with the T8s tucked in. Despite the 6mm tweeter, I found that the treble is a little boxed in on itself and there’s much room for the sound stage to stretch out. With that said, pushing the volume to near maximum came back to bite me fairly quickly – the treble distorts a little at peak levels which isn’t great when you think about how there’s no ANC; so pumping the volume is the best way to eliminate environmental noise.
No noise cancelling means these Acefast T8s do not eliminate the sound of office chatter – which is my immediate example – a busy high street, the sound of bus engines, and so on. This can be a huge straw for some camelbacks, but there is some environmental noise reduction during calls. However, the Acefast T8s offer excellent sound isolation. While environmental noise does sneak in, the Bluetooth earbuds do a fantastic job of keeping the music front & centre in your ears.
Furthermore, there is no multi-point pairing with the Crystal T8s so you can’t pair them with more than one device at a time. This may not be an issue for everyone, but it’s definitely handy being able to pair Bluetooth headphones to your computer for audio and your phone to make setting adjustments simultaneously – something which is not possible with the T8s anyway.
Call quality
The call quality is pretty clean thanks to the T8’s LDS antenna design. This is the same design used in many smartphones for a number of years for better-quality calls. Acefast claims that these are the world’s first wireless earbuds to use an LDS antenna, so that’s something worth noting. (which moulds the antenna transmitter onto a plastic strip across the earbud stem. LDS is advertised to bring stable signal transmission and improved anti-interference).
Charging
The Acefast T8 boasts about 7 hours of music playtime with ten mintes of charge buying you 2 hours of playtime, as part of a total of 30 hours of battery life with the charging case. I’ve been super impressed by the battery life in the T8s, they’ve been more reliable than the EarFun Air Pro 3’s I recently reviewed, though other reviewers had more positive experiences in regard to the battery life of the Air Pros.
Acefast does go further than its competitors by providing 6 different colour variations for the Crystal T8 earbuds, ranging from purple, blue, green, white, black, and pink. What gives the Crystal T8 buds a lot of individuality, though, is the transparency of the buds and the charging case where you can see the inner workings of the buds and case.
While there are no controls on the case, it does have a seven-segment LED display which displays the battery life of each earbud while the buds attach via magnets to the sides of the case. Both buds sit firmly on the side of the case and I have not experienced any problems with them falling out. In fact, the T8 buds weigh 5.5 grams each while the case is 47 grams, so these aren’t the light buds around. Anyway, both earbuds have 45mAh batteries and the case holds a 480mAh charge.
Touch controls
Finally, the T8 buds feature some of the most functional touch controls I’ve used. As someone with long hair, I’ve long had trouble using touch controls that work every time with no fiddliness. Well, the T8 buds are the closest I’ve found with volume controls, call management, play/pause, and summoning your device’s smart assistant. All of these controls are undertaken in the top part of the buds, but there’s no way of remapping the controls as you can with the Air Pro 3s I mentioned earlier.
Verdict
Okay, so the Crystal T8 TWS earbuds aren’t the most feature-packed, but they are downright fantastic value. Coupled with the excellent sound quality for this price tag, the wide variety of colours & stylishly translucent charging case, the T8 earbuds do offer a lot for just $73.99.
Despite the lack of ANC, there is enough sound isolation while listening to music that it’s forgivable (in my opinion, at least). While Acefast’s competitors such as EarFun do offer ANC and multi-point pairing with their affordable earbuds, I think the Crystal T8s are still a sold buy. I found that the EarFun’s get a little uncomfortable over time, and although the T8s aren’t the most comfortable they are less chunky than the Air Pro’s.
In conclusion, I think these are a good pair of affordable earbuds for causal listening on small budgets. You can currently get the Acefast Crystal T8 TWS earbuds for $73.99 down from $99.