User Experience

Seen above is the Shanling MTW300 (right ear bud) installed on an artificial ear mold that is similar enough to my own average-sized ears. I have to say these are the most comfortable TWS earphones I have used to date, and may well be the most comfortable earphones overall. A lot of this comes with the ergonomic design for the shells, which gently caresses the concha as seen above. The smaller size helps too, and no doubt the availability of many differently sized ear tips in the box will appeal to a wider customer base as well. Add the 4.5 g mass of each bud and you are now looking at something that, when fit properly, will feel very secure and non-fatiguing. There is good passive isolation, and the vents help with pressure equilibration too.

Battery life is a key metric for TWS earbuds, and these promise ten hours of use when fully charged, which typically tends to be the best case scenario under low volume and AAC/SBC codecs. I hit 8-9 hours regularly at ~70% volume on my phone with aptX, and the included charging case provides for another 25 rated hours even though I was actually getting closer to three charge cycles, which exceeds the specification. So while I still think the case needs a higher capacity battery, at least this is a case of under-promising and over-delivering. Charging the ear buds with the case takes about 80 minutes, once again less than the rated 90 min, and in the better direction of different, too. For those wondering, the case does not support any quick or wireless charging.

Audio Performance

Audio Hardware and Microphones

As is the case with most TWS earphones, Shanling uses a single dynamic driver per ear bud. Marketing claims the use of a CNT diaphragm, with carbon nanotubes and graphene being the new hype for diaphragms. In practice, the CNT is just a coating over a more typical diaphragm material as with all other such implementations, including DLC (diamond-like carbon). I would have preferred more transparency here, but the average end user probably does not care about these semantics. The diaphragm is 6 mm in size, which makes for a 6 mm dynamic driver setup powering the audio experience paired with Shanling's specific tuning we will test shortly below. Driving the MTW300 takes nothing special, as is the case with all TWS earphones—a halfway decent phone with Bluetooth 5.0 will suffice, although you will get slightly lower latency with Bluetooth 5.2. Sensitivity is about average too, so you don't need to turn the volume up completely, either. The absence of any aptX Low Latency/HD or LDAC codecs does hurt, and aptX also suffers from some slight latency.

The Shanling MTW300 earphones use the Qualcomm QCC3040 SoC  with an extremely low power consumption architecture intended for TWS stereo earphones. The chipset utilizes triple-core processing delivered by two dedicated 32-bit application processor subsystems and a single Qualcomm Kalimba DSP audio subsystem. My issue with the Shanling implementation is that the QCC3040 has native ANC and voice assistant support, but the MTW300 gets none of those. In fact, the less expensive MTW200 gets voice assistant support, so the Shanling product manager has some weird priorities I don't agree with! I will say that the touch controls are implemented fairly well, with the indent in the face plate guiding your finger to where it naturally is placed. We get different single, double, and triple tap functions on either ear bud that make sense. Once you get used to the repeat delay the controller expects, consistent use of these touch controls is a piece of cake, including for media playback, volume control, and call answer/reject.

Microphone quality is about average only, with the vent at the bottom and sides susceptible to picking up noise from outside in addition to one being directed towards your mouth. There is no mention of the hardware used for the microphones, and they end up with mediocre fidelity and the compression associated with Bluetooth earphones designed more with listening in mind. They will work in an emergency if you have nothing else, but if two-way communication is an important metric to you, there are far better implementations out there.

Frequency Measurement and Listening

I will mention that I have a general preference for a warm neutral signature emphasizing a slightly elevated bass and smooth treble range with detailed mids and good tonal separation. I also generally prefer instrumental music over vocals, with favored genres including jazz and classical music.


Our current testing methodology begins with a calibrated IEC711 audio coupler/artificial ear that ear buds can feed into to where you have decent isolation similar to real ears. The audio coupler feeds into a USB sound card, which in turn goes to a laptop that has ARTA and REW running and these TWS earphones connected to the laptop through Bluetooth. I begin with an impulse measurement to test for signal fidelity, calibrate the sound card and channel output, account for floor noise, and finally test the frequency response of each channel separately. Octave smoothing is at the 1/6th setting, which nets a good balance of detail and noise not being identified as useful data. Also, the default tuning was used for testing, and no app-based settings were chosen unless specifically mentioned. Each sample of interest is tested thrice with separate mounts to account for any fit issues, and an average is taken of the three individual measurements for statistical accuracy. With the Shanling TWS earphones, I am also using the pinna mold fitted to the audio coupler for a separate test to compare how the IEMs fare when installed in an ear and cheek geometry and not just the audio coupler by itself. The raw data is then exported from REW and plotted in OriginPro for an easier comparison.


The IEC711 is such that you can't really compare these results with most other test setups, just within our own library of measurements. The raw dB numbers are also quite contingent on the set volume, gain levels, and sensitivity of the system. What is more useful information is how the left and right channels work across the rated frequency response in the Shanling MTW300, or at least the useful part of it. The left earbud was separately tested from the right one, and colored differently for contrast. I did my best to ensure an identical fit for both inside the IEC711 orifice, so note how the two channels are not the most consistent. If you normalize for the low frequencies as that graph above inadvertently does, the mids and highs are slightly further recessed for the right channel relative to the left channel. In practice, it is actually the bass that is slightly more elevated in the right channel as everything else is pretty much identical. Once past 10 kHz, things are a bit more wonky. This is of course considering that the IEC711 isn't all that reliable at higher frequencies. I will also mention that there was no discernible break-in period or effect, so reproducibility and consistency is good overall since the average response for each channel is also basically the same across the three repeated tests. Keep in mind that with TWS earphones, the fit is quite important, as is the connectivity and signal strength from the source itself.

Shanling describes the sound signature of the MTW300 as "powerful bass and energetic treble, for clean and moving sound." When I hear this, I think of a V-shaped sound signature typical of wireless earphones and even many IEMs. What it is instead in this case is a more U-shaped signature, as clearly shown by the frequency response above. Being a single dynamic driver set of earphones, having a punchy bass response is to be expected. But I was surprised by the sub-bass even so, which is rumbly and deep. Unfortunately, there is not much detail here, and it is only when you get to the mid-bass that a good balance of energy and detail enters the picture. Make sure the fit and seal is good because this is where you will appreciate bass guitar notes the most, in addition to drum beats. The bass response is ultimately still a single-layered offering and satisfactory, but not what I would buy these for.

The mids are heavily recessed, and at first glance, you might compare it to the flagship-class ThieAudio Monarch. There is certainly a lot of range here, but unfortunately no depth to allow the range to shine through. Male vocals benefit from the elevated bass, and then higher-pitched female vocals equally gain from the energetic treble. The problem is everything in between, of which there is a lot here. I know what Shanling was going for with the tuning, which we've already seen work out very well elsewhere, but the hardware here just can't handle it. Instruments in particular get hazy, and imaging is so-so at most. I have refrained from talking about timbre in my reviews because it's not something easily explained or understood objectively. Effectively a term to describe tonal quality, this is the one time where the expanded mids just don't have good timbre, if you will. Lots of vocal-oriented music genres will do fine, but brass instruments in particular suffer here.

The best feature with the MTW300, at least to me, is the treble region. I never thought I would say this about a TWS set of earphones with a single dynamic driver, but the tuning has clearly sacrificed most of the mids in favor of addressing not only the typical Bluetooth hissing at higher frequencies, but also making sure you have an enjoyable experience here. Decay in particular is relatively quick, resulting in a non-fatiguing listening experience in the highs with string instruments, pianos, and especially female vocals and opera music gaining from the tuning. The roll-off past 4 kHz can be a bit annoying, though, and some tracks can get slightly tiring before the eventual high treble roll off. The mid treble thus can get dark, and the dynamic lower treble makes this contrast more felt.

It is again the lack of higher quality codec support that makes this tough, and Bluetooth 5.2 by itself matters for very little with just aptX. Comparing the Shanling MTW300 to the Lypertek PurePlay Z3 2.0 is the obvious choice, with both having 6 mm carbon-coated dynamic drivers and likely using the same Qualcomm chipset. Both also have Bluetooth 5.2 and only aptX support, although the MTW300 has more range and is actually more balanced than the more typical V-shaped response of the Lypertek. I would say the MTW300 is better to listen to in general even if the Lypertek TWS is going to be more familiar to most people who have used wireless headphones before. In fact, I think the MTW300 may be better to listen to than even the EVA2020 x final that I quite liked, with the caveat of the deficiency in some of the aforementioned aspects. The Shanling MTW300 focuses in more on what it wants to do, which helps when compared to other tested TWS offerings from Audio-Technica and Creative.