When Tronsmart got in touch with me, it was originally about another set of TWS earbuds I might well do a quick look of if I have the time. The Apollo Air+ came up because it was what we had done a news post on, and the feature set seemed quite good for the money—Bluetooth 5.2, aptX adaptive, hybrid noise cancellation, and cVc microphones for under $80. The Apollo Air+ is not bad in this regard, and the form factor helps as there is enough room for a larger dynamic driver while having the rest along the shaft for more optimal microphone placement, which in turn makes for a good set of microphones for audio or video calls on the go. If these features are more relevant to you, consider getting these. Just make sure it is at the lower price point, at which these are much more competitive than at MSRP.

The problem is that pretty much everything surrounding the listening experience needs a do-over. The 10 mm custom-graphene dynamic driver sounds promising in theory, but tuning was quite bad with even worse technical performance. There is no real balance here, it's extremely boomy on the low end with lack of detail and extremely shouty on the other side, where things can even get shrill. The mids are a valley of contention where vocals reside in harmony with some instruments, but you are not paying the money to only listen to audio in a very narrow frequency range. EQ in the app is not customizable, and the various presets don't do much in alleviating the pain. Then there's the part where it takes almost two-thirds the playing time on a single charge to get another full charge. Sorry, Tronsmart, but this one needs a re-thinking and then some.