Soundpeats H3 review: Triple-driver wireless earbuds

As you might imagine, the triple drivers and fancy codecs add to the cost. To keep the H3 as affordable as possible, Soundpeat has made some compromises in other areas. The case feels cheap and a bit floppy, and it doesn’t have wireless charging. The earbuds lack wear sensors for pausing music, and despite using the latest Bluetooth 5.4 protocol, there’s no support for Auracast. You don’t get spatial audio modes or head tracking.

Once I found the right size, I was impressed with the passive noise isolation. You may find that this is all you need for non-noisy environments. You can turn on the ANC to get more, and it does a good job at lower frequencies, but don’t expect levels of silence from Bose, Sony, or Apple. Think of it as pushing some of those annoying sounds into the background instead of eliminating them completely. The same applies to transparency mode. This is good for situational awareness, but you’ll still feel a little disconnected from the rest of the world, especially when listening to your own voice.

My only real complaint is that you can’t override Normal mode when going from ANC to Transparency, unless you’re using the app, which is something I hope Soundpeats fixes with a firmware update. Speaking of the app, Soundpeats is in the midst of moving their products from the old Peats Audio app to the newer Soundpeats app. Until that happens, you won’t be able to use Peats Audio offline, which is something to keep in mind if you don’t routinely have a data connection.

As sprouts every day

With Bluetooth 5.4, the wireless connection is strong and stable, even when using LDAC’s high bitrate mode. You get multipoint support when LDAC is turned off (a fairly standard limitation with this codec), but the H3 can’t play LE Audio or Bluetooth Auracast. I realize that Auracast is still far from ubiquitous; However, if we want this incredibly useful technology to spread, it needs to be added to as many new Bluetooth devices as possible.

Call quality was another pleasant surprise. My voice lost some of its bass, making it sound less natural, but what remained was crystal clear. And he was consistent. No matter how many loud, intrusive noises occurred on either side of the call, none of it was transmitted to my callers, and it affected my voice quality only minimally. I’m not sure I’d want to rely on the H3 for longer calls and meetings, since the lack of a natural transparency option eventually proves cumbersome, but for shorter conversations that get down to just the facts, it’s more than enough. However, there’s one caveat: active phone calls will lock the ANC mode switch — even from the app — so you’ll need to select ANC mode before answering or making a call.