I have a pair of IconX, which in theory are a great idea. A pair of earbuds only (no hardware to connect between the earbuds) that act as a bluetooth headset or an mp3 player. They’re kind of like the Apple AirPods, except they were available (and cheaper) before AirPods were released or announced.

I received my pair “for free” because I had some credit to spend as part of my employer’s year end gift. I was on the fence about spending it on this (+ some other stuff) because there were some negative reviews centered around:

• Limited battery life: I think it was rated at 1-2 hours over BT and 3-4 hours on standalone
• Mono sound on standalone: Some reviewers/users didn’t follow instructions and copy their music to both ear buds to enable stereo sound

In the end, I persisted and got the IconX.

I think the battery life limitation is fine, because you receive a case which doubles as a battery pack. You have to use the case anyways to store the earbuds (more on that later). The earbuds are supposed to last a few hours on standalone, which is more than enough for a commute.

Since I don’t have to commute, I haven’t been using the IconX frequently, but lately I have had some opportunity to try them out. Sadly, every time I try to use them, I hit some sort of problem.

1. I setup the earbuds in standalone mode and tried them out. I listened for about 10 minutes and then took them off as they kept playing the same song over and over! It turns out that you can’t organize your music in folders as it will only play music from the root folder (and I only had a single song there).
2. I tried controlling my music, but the control mechanism (single, double, tripe clicks, and up/down swipes) is finicky. Either the tactile pickup is laggy or the timing is off. It just doesn’t feel natural to control it, and often I go to the next track when I try and pause/resume music
3. I fixed my music and the next time I tried it out, there were no batteries. I guess that even though the earbuds are in the case, they are still on/consume battery. So standby mode basically drained the batteries and I couldn’t use them. I learned my lesson and now keep them on the charger until I need them.
4. After charging the batteries, I used it again in standalone mode. It worked well for awhile, but then complained and ran out of batteries after half an hour! It turns out that even though they are operating in standalone mode; if your paired BT device is nearby, it will maintain an active connection to it. Whoops
5. Next time, I removed the pairing from my phone and used the earbuds in standalone mode again. My phone kept popping up a message saying that the earbuds wanted to pair – every time you dismiss it, it comes back after a few seconds. It turns out that the earbuds will try and pair for 3 minutes after they are removed from the case. I don’ think there’s a fix for this so it’s just annoying
6. Finally, I was able to use it for awhile, but then in some instances, the earbuds get out of sync and the audio is off by a few 100 microseconds! I guess there’s an easy fix – you just remove the earbud from your ear and put it back in.
7. Oh and pause/resume doesn’t work correctly. After you resume playback, it always starts at the beginning of the song rather than where you stopped. That’s also annoying

I’m disappointed that there are a lot of fundamental problems that make this frustrating to use. It’s too bad, because I like the idea. I guess I will have to go back to carrying an mp3 player and wired headphones.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: complaining, techlust