I tested these budget open-ear earbuds for a week — they sound fine, but there’s a big problem

When looking for the best fitness earbuds, you’ll find that the market is saturated with open-ear wonders, with some of the best, like the Bose Ultra Open, reaching prices of $250. So when you come across some budget buds for $49, it can feel hard to say no.

However, while the Tozo OpenEgo earbuds offer a budget option, they simply do not work for their intended purpose. They are far too big to fit on my ears, or even the ears of my colleagues.

While these buds offer respectable sound quality considering their price point, there are too many pitfalls, including distortion of singer’s voices, to consider.

To find out more, read my full Tozo OpenEgo review.

Tozo OpenEgo review: Price & availability

The Tozo OpenEgo earbuds are very affordable, but the pricing is somewhat baffling, so stay with me here. The buds are available from Amazon U.S. in three different colors: Black, white and cream white. Some of the colors have different prices. The most expensive is the black colorway at $55, and the white and cream white are both $49.

But to save money, you can buy them directly from Tozo in the U.S., where the black color is priced at $39, but the white will still cost $49. Tozo doesn’t sell the cream white color directly from its website.

From Amazon U.K., the black pair cost £57 and the white £53. Again, buying directly from Tozo’s U.K. site is slightly cheaper, with the black version priced at £41, and the white at £52.

Despite the price differences between colors, these earbuds are still some of the most affordable on the market. I recently tested the EarFun OpenJump earbuds for $99, but they have terrible sound quality. The best affordable open-ears I have tested though are the Soundcore AeroClips, which are priced at $140. They were comfortable and had awesome sound quality.

Tozo OpenEgo review: Design & controls

• IPX4 water resistance
• Large charging case
• Sensitive touch controls

The Tozo OpenEgo are open-ear buds that sit on the outside of your ear. Unlike some clip-on open ears, these are designed more like traditional fitness buds, and hook around the arch of the ear. Although the Honor Open earbuds hook around your ears in the same way as the OpenEgos, they remain minimal. There is absolutely no hiding the OpenEgos.

The OpenEgos are really chunky and pretty weighty for wireless earbuds. When I was wearing them, it felt like they were mostly held in place by the weight of the battery at the end of the hook.

The charging case is so big too. And by big I mean it’ll take up most of the room in your pocket, which isn’t what I want from wireless earbuds, especially if they’re fitness buds that I’m supposed to be taking on a run or to the gym.

To me, earbuds should be compact, and fit effortlessly into your pocket or purse. The charging case measures 6.88 x 3 x 7.63cm and weighs 160.7g when the earbuds are inside.

The battery percentage of the case and the buds is displayed on the digital screen on the charging case. I like this feature as it is a super convenient way of checking charge without having to use the app or connect to your phone first. It also makes them feel like something predicted in Back To The Future, which is fun.

The earbuds have IPX4 water (and therefore sweat) resistance rating which would make them the perfect addition to my gym routine, however, they are just too big. More on that later.

The hooks of the Tozo OpenEgos are silicone, and the pads for the touch controls are a shiny, hard plastic material. The silicone is comfortable on the skin, but the hard plastic cheapens the look slightly.

The touch controls are very sensitive, and when positioning the ear hooks, I found I was stopping and starting my music constantly. You can customize the touch controls in the app to best suit you.

Tozo OpenEgo review: Comfort

• Too big
• Not secure for sport
• Heavier than other open-ear buds

You can’t do much moving with the Tozo OpenEgo open-ear earbuds on. Even though they’re aimed at fitness fans, it’s impossible to keep them in place. This is primarily because they are huge.

I wouldn’t say I have particularly small ears and have never experienced issues with earbud sizing before. To make sure it wasn’t just me, I also asked three of my colleagues to try on the earbuds for size and they all had the same complaint: they’re too big to fit securely.

I tried seeing if I could bend the ear hooks to shape them to my ears a little more but they sprung right back.

And this is a real shame as for the price, these earbuds actually have decent sound quality and minimal issues with sound leakage until you get to higher volumes. If they did fit properly, they would be an absolute steal. While heavy, they’re pretty comfortable to wear, too, which adds to the disappointment.

I ended up simply wearing the buds at my work desk where there’s minimal movement, and when I was just sitting typing, the earbuds were fine. But like I said, these buds are made and marketed for outdoor and sports use, so it’s annoying that I wasn’t able to use them for their intended purpose.

Tozo OpenEgo review: Connectivity & mic performance

• AAC/SBC
• 10m Bluetooth range
• No multipoint connection

The Tozo OpenEgos are wireless and use Bluetooth 5.3. They have a claimed Bluetooth range of 10m, which I found to be accurate, since I could leave the room, go to the kitchen and the music would continue to play.

There are no fancy audio codecs with these buds, just standard AAC/SBC. SBC is the most basic audio codec, and AAC is the highest standard you can achieve when listening with an iPhone. This is par for the course at this price point.

Most earbuds, like the Soundcore AeroClips, now come with multipoint connection, so I was disappointed to find the Tozo OpenEgos don’t have this capability. Again, though, they are very cheap earbuds — the AeroClips are more than double the price.

Whenever I’m walking, I like to call my friends and family just to pass the time, so it is important to me that earbuds have not only good audio but good call performance too.

The OpenEgos have call noise reduction, so to put it to the test I called my mum. Her feedback was positive and she said my voice was clear, although some background noise did slip through.

Tozo OpenEgo review: Sound quality & EQ

• Custom EQ and presets
• Poor bass performance
• Muddy at high volumes

For a $57 pair of earbuds, I thought the sound of the Tozo OpenEgos was going to be awful. But in actuality, it was pretty decent. I’ve tried out more expensive earbuds that have way worse sound, like the EarFun OpenJumps.

Tozo says the OpenEgos use “air conduction technology” to deliver focused sound quality. This isn’t any sort of new technology as this is how we hear everything from what’s on the TV to having conversations with the person standing next to you. They also have “directional sound,” which simply means the speakers are angled towards the ear drums.

The directional sound did work well, though. I asked my colleague who sits opposite me to let me know when he could hear my music, and there wasn‘t an issue with sound leakage until I got to very high volumes.

The earbuds actually have good sound when using the standard EQ setting and listening at a medium volume. They perform far better than the EarFun open-ears I tested. However, messing with the EQ is when these buds start to struggle.

The earbuds use 16.2mm dynamic drivers. Since these are larger than the drivers typically found in earbuds, Tozo says they should deliver excellent bass performance. I gave this my usual test and played a Twenty One Pilots song. I chose ‘Overcompensate’ and used the custom EQ in the Tozo app to whack the bass way up.

In this song, I would have expected to have my eardrums blown out by the bass from the claims made by Tozo, but I was sorely disappointed. I hardly noticed the bass was there, and if anything, it took the bass away from this song.

In the app, there are 31 EQ presets ranging from Classical to Country. There are also some wildcard presets thrown in like Deep, Awake and Trumpet — whatever those mean.

I tried out the Pop EQ by listening to ‘Busy Woman’ by Sabrina Carpenter. The preset did do something: this is a pop song with a lot of synth, which felt enhanced, however, it completely distorted her vocals.

If I hadn't heard the song before, I’m not sure I would have been able to say with certainty who was singing. It also enhanced the backing vocals, though, which was nice, as I find those don’t always come through prominently when I listen to the song.

The earbuds get muddy and a little tinny at high volumes. When listening to ‘Medicine’ by Bring Me The Horizon, using the Heavy Metal EQ preset, the OpenEGos lost a lot of the vocals, especially in drum-heavy sections — the earbuds don’t deal very well with competing mids. I again had the issue where Oli Sykes’ voice became unrecognizable.

Tozo OpenEgo review: App

• User friendly
• Alter tap controls
• EQ personalization

The Tozo app is easy to use and looks pretty slick compared to some others I have tried, like the EarFun app, which is just a nightmare.

The tap controls are easy to alter within the app and the number of EQ options means you can spend a lot of time finding the best sound for your music taste. The app’s custom EQ settings are incredibly user-friendly.

Tozo OpenEgo review: Battery life

According to Tozo, the OpenEgos have 80 hours of battery life with the charging case when listing at around 50% volume. Apparently this equates to 80 meetings (if all of your meetings are 1 hour long) or around 1200 songs.

I used the earbuds for 4 hours and after the buds had recharged, the case dropped by 10%. The charging case takes about 2 hours to complete a full charge, and the buds take one and a half hours to charge in the case.

Tozo OpenEgo review: Verdict

While the Tozo OpenEgo open-ear earbuds are incredibly affordable, they are simply unwearable for their intended purpose. For earbuds that are designed with sport, movement, and a busy lifestyle in mind, they just don’t fit the ears of anyone who tried them securely.

The sound quality isn’t bad at all and is actually far better than other budget earbuds I have tried that were more expensive. However, they struggle at high volumes and the claims of great bass performance don’t hold up at all.