There's some pretty stiff competition for truly wireless earbuds under $100. You really don't need to spend a ton of cash to get decent sounding digital audio these days, and while there's still definitely a market for expensive headphones, tons of these cheaper options are good enough for most people.
TaoTronics has thrown their hat in the ring with the SoundLiberty 79 truly wireless earbuds, and we had a chance to take them for a listen. Are they worth the wallet-friendly $60 asking price, or should you splurge and spend a bit more for quality earbuds? Let's dig in and find out.
Design
The TaoTronics SoundLiberty 79 earbuds feel, well, okay. They have a pretty unassuming design with a plastic case and generic, black earbuds. The case has a soft finish, but still keeps that plasticky feel. The hinge also doesn't feel the best, and there's no satisfying click when you open and close it. It works, but it reminds me of the biggest gripe I had with the Galaxy Buds, too. The lid also wiggles way more than I'm comfortable with when it's open.
The earbuds themselves are a marked improvement, although they are a little plain. There's a small silver accent at the tip, but otherwise there's not much to talk about. They come with fitted tips in various sizes, and a small wing to help stay secure in your ear. They're incredibly lightweight, and very comfortable to wear, so points here.
These are easily a 10/10 in the comfort zone, and I had no issues wearing them for long periods of time. They stay snug, never got irritating or bugged my ears, and weren't obnoxious while sticking out from my head. Sometimes being discrete is worth mentioning, too.
There's a microphone hole on the bottom of each earbud, and the charging case sports four LED lights around the front. It's all charged up with a USB-C port, which was a pleasant surprise; I was expecting microUSB charging at this price point.
Sound and experience
TaoTronics pulled something pretty special off here, and the SoundLiberty 79 punch well above their weight class. For a fraction of the price I think they're pretty competitive with Samsung's Galaxy Buds, especially after a little EQ work; they're not perfect, and Samsung's headphones are probably still a bit better, but I can tell you that they're not $100 better.
The low end is decent, and the fitted ear tips probably help. I wish they had a little more punch to them, but it's not like truly wireless earbuds excel at thumping bass, anyway. The mids felt just slightly too overwhelming by default, but that was fixed with a simple EQ curve, and the treble almost nailed it. I set mine to be just a little bit brighter, and these turned into some seriously good pop/rock music headphones to jam out to.
TaoTronics mentions AI noise cancelation in the description of these, which I guess is slightly true? There's no toggle to turn it on and off, so it seems like something that's just thrown in there to make passive noise canceling sound better. They do isolate noise very well, though, and just having them in my ear blocked an acceptable amount of background noise. Not sure why they feel the need to try and dress up something that they already do well.
Phone calls worked well here, and while they're not the best that I've ever tested, they're plenty capable. Background noise wasn't too bad for the other party, and voices transmitted pretty well.
Everything else
The SoundLiberty 79 earbuds are Bluetooth 5.0, but they do not support Qualcomm's aptX codec. Slight bummer. Fortunately this did make them pretty power efficient with great battery life, and kept a consistent connection with each earbud plus the phone. There were very few disconnects to deal with, and outside of some quirkiness setting them up out of the box, I never ran into any other bugs in my testing. They also seem to live up to TaoTronics' 8 hours of battery life claim, but I could never use them enough to run them completely dead.
I do wish there was a dedicated app for the headphones, especially since I mentioned earlier that I needed to tweak the EQ settings to really fall in love with these. If your phone doesn't have some dedicated sound adjustments in the settings, you're going to need to hunt down something out of the Play Store.
But the lack of an app shows off the commitment to simplicity. There are no weird touch controls or gestures, no hoops to jump through, and no fluff around these headphones. They're simple, and they work. Enough said.
Worth it?
For the $60 price tag, these are some seriously good headphones. They're marred a bit by cheap, plastic construction, but it's really hard to be too critical of that considering the aggressive price tag. They sound fantastic, have great battery life, and do a great job with phone calls.
They do lack some of the cooler features of nicer headphones, like auto-pausing when you take them out of your ear, active noise canceling, and any kind of EQ in a TaoTronics app, and they're not going to be great if you're heavily reliant on digital voice assistants. You do still get some tap controls (a single tap on the left earbud lowers the volume, while the right earbud raises volume; double tapping on either earbud pauses music, and so on) but they're not customizable and they're missing some things that you might want, like the aforementioned digital assistant keys.
But for the price? Man, they're hard to beat. They're lightweight and easy to carry, sound better than you'd expect, and you can buy a couple of these for what you'll pay for other popular totally wireless earbuds. The IPX7 rating and great battery life is just icing on the cake.
TaoTronics SoundLiberty 79 |$60 | Amazon, TaoTronics
