Introduction

Ugreen was founded in 2012 and has made its mark in the tech community by offering consumer electronic devices and accessories at reasonable prices. Indeed, I am using several Ugreen cables at home and few more at work too! The company has since added chargers and power strips to its portfolio, which makes sense, but I wasn't aware of peripherals under the Ugreen name until we published some press releases including this one of a Ugreen-branded TWS Bluetooth set of earphones. The very first comment called for a review, and I was intrigued enough to contact Ugreen, requesting a sample of their HiTune T3!


The product name in itself doesn't reveal much, but the TWS and ANC additions sure do! The HiTune T3 is a true wireless set of Bluetooth earphones featuring active noise cancellation. These are features that used to cost $100-200 just a year ago, but then China did what it does best, and brought out a plethora of mass-market SoCs and audio drivers, cutting down costs significantly. At this point you may have guessed that the Ugreen HiTune T3 is relatively inexpensive, and so the only question remaining is: how it does it actually perform? Let's find out today in this Quick Look article that begins with the product specs below, many thanks to Ugreen for providing a review sample to TechPowerUp.

Packaging and Accessories

Don't start expecting luxurious packaging here, as Ugreen goes simple, with the tried and true approach of a small, white cardboard box. On the front is the Ugreen logo and product name, along with a render of the earphones with their case. I do appreciate the back of the box being dedicated to not only product specs, but also detailing the touch controls themselves. This is especially handy for those who don't read user manuals. All this is on an external sleeve, now it's time to slide out the inner box as seen above. A plastic compartment greets us right away with the case at the top and ear tips individually packed at the bottom. Remove this layer to access a printed user manual (online copy here) which goes over those touch controls in more detail, among other things.


That smaller cardboard box alongside the manual contains a short USB Type-C cable to charge the case itself. There is also a safety guide included, which I expect will be mostly ignored by end users. What you should not ignore, however, are the ear tips, which are all silicone and come in sizes XS/S/L with size M presumably pre-installed on the ear phones. Ugreen accommodating those with smaller ear canals is quite nice when you realize more expensive TWS sets don't always take that consideration.

Closer Look

At ~60x50x25 mm, the charging/storage case for the Ugreen HiTune T3 is easily pocketable. Helping this further is the use of a glossy plastic construction with rounded corners that won't snag on anything easily, but will end up a dust and fingerprint magnet as seen above. The Ugreen logo is on the back in a flush hinge, and three indicator LEDs on the front show the case battery level with one LED per 30% charge and a combination of static and flashing LEDs to indicate charging + battery level as indicated in the manual. The Type-C charging port is on the bottom so you rest the case on its longer side when not in use. The earphones arrive inside the case as expected with L/R markings indicating internal alignment. Unfortunately Ugreen does not provide any battery capacity metrics, although the battery life numbers indicate the case can provide ~2.5 charge cycles. It also takes ~2 hours to charge the case, 1.5 hours for the case to charge the earphones, and ~3 hours when both are fully depleted, based on my experience.


The Ugreen HiTune T3 are in-ear monitors after all, with the bud-shaped section inserted into the ear concha and the ear tips themselves going into the ear canal. This is also why you get four different sizes of the silicone ear tips, for you to try and get the best possible fit and seal. These adopt a stem + bud form factor allowing for microphones and the electronics to be placed lower down and closer to your mouth for better voice pickup, while also having the benefit of more room up top for the audio drivers. The set is available in black or white color options, which are functionally identical otherwise. Branding comes in the form of the Ugreen logo placed sideways on the stem, next to it is a vent for the microphone aforementioned. More vents are found elsewhere and these help not only with airflow to the acoustic chamber, but also for microphones dedicated to the active noise cancellation and transparency modes on offer. L/R markings are present on the bottom to indicate the left and right channels and there are also two gold-plated charging pins with magnetic connectors to help secure them inside the case. Removing the pre-installed size-M tips reveals a stubby and oval-shaped nozzle with a retaining notch to secure the ear tips in place. There is a mesh placed at the end to prevent contaminants from entering the acoustic chamber.

Fit, User Experience, and Audio Performance

Seen above is the right side of the Ugreen HiTune T3 placed in an anthropomorphic pinna that does well in showing my own experience with these. I have average-sized ears and found the pre-installed size M tips to work best. The relatively small shell size means those with smaller ear conchas will find these to be a good fit. This is why getting the correct tips to seal well is paramount for everyone else. There is enough wiggle room to adjust the bud-shaped segment of these earphones, while still orienting the stem towards your mouth for better voice pickup too. The units weigh ~7 g each making them not physically fatiguing at all, and of course there are no wires to be concerned about, given the TWS concept. Battery life is rated for seven hours off a single charge which found rather optimistic, given I almost never exceeded six hours with SBC and ~70% volume on my phone. Turning on ANC/transparency mode reduces autonomy to under four hours, making this a woeful use of all that space—the internal battery is clearly not large enough and is a compromise, given budget constraints. The case also isn't ideal with an additional 17 hours promised across 2+ charge cycles, but in practice yielded a total closer to 18-20 hours rather than the 24 promised. This also lowers with ANC as expected and the only silver lining is the charging times aren't too long. There is also a small quick charging feature inside the case whereby 10 min of charging yields an hour of listening time, although this does not scale past this value.

Having Bluetooth 5.2 but only AAC and SBC codecs is also a head-scratching feature—especially on the Android platform, where you could do much better. There is no mention of the SoC used and I assume this is not a Qualcomm solution. There is no mobile app either, and the pre-programmed touch controls are all you get. The touch sensor is placed towards the top of the stem and has tactile feedback which works quite well, to give Ugreen credit. We get the expected single/multi-tap controls over volume control and media playback in addition to changing the operating modes, pulling up the smart assistant, and working with phone calls too. No complaints here, except for the lack of customization of course. On the audio front Ugreen is using a single 10 mm dynamic driver, which is on the smaller side for this form factor. The driver in itself has very little information shared online except that it uses a polyurathane wool composite diaphragm and is rated for a 20 Hz to 20 kHz frequency range. Nothing is known about the rest of the tech inside, including the microphones, aside from the usual marketing spiel that is best taken with a grain of salt, given they picked up some distracting noise, and were a noticeable grade lower than those used in more expensive TWS sets that also feature cVc 8.0.


Testing was done similar to all other TWS earphones, such as the 1MORE EVO. Seen above is the measured frequency response for both channels of the Ugreen HiTune T3, which can be inspected further here if interested. I would classify this sound signature as extremely bassy and shouty at the same time, for a one-two punch that I simply don't find pleasant. If you thought the Harman in-ear target was aggressive then Ugreen pushes it further with a 14 dB SPL rise from 300 Hz going lower into the mid-bass but then dropping all that impact in the sub-bass resulting in volume without detail. It's unfortunately a poor execution of bass elevation that I can't see anyone but the most fervent of bassheads liking. Turning ANC on thankfully doesn't make the bass even more elevated, since I found it to be quite a weak ANC implementation over passive isolation, so the tonality itself doesn't change much with ANC on or off. The mids are also not very clean with baritones more pronounced over most other vocals, and instrument classes are basically a mush.

I will mention that transparency mode helps quite a bit here to pick up vocals across the board and get them forward-facing, so that's an unexpected bonus for just music listening if you are in a quiet environment. There will be a general background hiss with transparency mode if nothing is playing though. There is some pinna gain headed to the upper mids but it comes off barely felt owing to the mountain right after it at 6 kHz. As such, female vocals don't get their dues either, except for sibilance that is all around you. Some piano keys also come off weirdly prominent unexpectedly, and good luck if you are trying to listen to string instruments. For a single DD set, this probably had one of the weakest timbre too. I am struggling to come up with positives here except to let you know that Ugreen clearly decided that the mainstream audience wants bass, providing oodles of it.


For context, I have above another budget TWS set in my possession in the form of the MOONDROP Nekocake. It comes in at the same price point, has the same form factor, and even does mediocre-at-best ANC too. Ugreen gets the edge in battery life and charging if you can believe it, and I think Ugreen also executes touch controls better. MOONDROP does have a mobile app with some more options though, and it's built better too. But—far more importantly—the Nekocake is tuned significantly better and actually ends up being a relative pleasure to listen to after the Ugreen HiTune T3. The MOONDROP driver is also superior in imaging and detail retrieval, but here too tonality plays a big role in providing you that canvas to allow the technicalities to show up in the first place. Frankly I don't see any reason for people to get the HiTune T3 unless you absolutely only care about bass or can't find other options locally. If you are in such a niche market then you will find the Ugreen HiTune T3 for $39.99 from the Ugreen web store as of the date of this article. There was clearly a budget to meet and I appreciate what Ugreen is trying, but there are more compromises here than I'd like to see.