Earin makes tiny, stylish true wireless earbuds.
The $249 M-2 earphones are the company's high-end pair, as well as one of the more expensive options we've seen recently.
While they have an undoubtedly attractive design, they offer merely average audio performance for the price.
If you have $250 to spend on wire-free earphones, there are plenty of stronger options to choose from.
Design
Available in black or silver-and-white, the M-2 earphones ship with a cylindrical charging case with a slide-out drawer that houses the dock for the earpieces.
Internally, the earpieces deliver audio through Knowles balanced armature drivers.
There's no left or right earpiece—they're interchangeable.
Controls on either ear are relatively simple, as well as the same regardless of earpiece.
A single tap plays or pauses music, or answers calls.
A double tap rejects incoming calls or ends current calls.
Two taps skips a track, and three taps goes backward a track.
Google Assistant or Siri can be accessed with a long press.
There's no way to adjust volume on the earpieces, which is frustrating, but there's not much real estate to work with here—these earpieces are tiny.
That said, they somehow manage to stay in place well enough.
Earin includes one pair of silicone eartips and three pairs of memory foam eartips in various sizes.
We found the foam tips to provide the best fit and also help enhance the bass depth slightly.
While the fit is always secure, it's possible to get some variation from ear to ear, and that secure seals can loosen over time, which affects the perceived bass response and volume levels.
It's easy to think you have an optimal fit because things feel good, only to press play and realize you have to fiddle with the earpieces in order for the bass response or balance to sound right.
The built-in mic offers average intelligibility.
Using the Voice Memos app on an iPhone 8, we could understand every word we recorded, but the mic sounded distant, and like most true wireless in-ear mics, it only records in one ear.
All phone conversation audio is only in one ear as well.
The pairing process is among the worst we've seen since the true wireless category was introduced.
At this point, you shouldn't have to pair two earpieces separately, but that's exactly what the app tells you to do, and it often doesn't work on the first try.
Once things are successfully paired, you can then adjust some parameters in the app, but not the ones you likely want to adjust, like EQ.
In fact, the Earin app has little to offer.
There's a battery life indicator, Gain (volume), Balance (you can shift between left and right ears, adding or subtracting volume from one earpiece to the other), and Transparency, which is arguably the most useful setting in the app.
It consists of two sliders that control four integrated mics on the earpieces—one slider handles volume, and one is labeled Far at the top and Near at the bottom.
Adjusting the sliders controls how you hear your surroundings.
Earin calls this "intelligent noise reduction," but in no way does it reduce noise.
It only changes how you hear the noise that the ambient mics pick up.
Don't be fooled into thinking this is active noise cancellation—it is literally the opposite.
Earin estimates battery life to be four hours, with an additional 14 hours held by the charging case.
These are run-of-the-mill numbers for true wireless earphones, which typically have meager battery life stats.
Your results will vary based on your audio levels and mix of noise reduction use.
Performance
We'll first start by noting that it's easy to have the left and right channels switched.
This might not matter to everyone, but classical and jazz lovers, especially, could find this annoying.
The earphones provide some nominal bass depth, but tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife's "Silent Shout," can push that bass to the brink of distortion.
At modest volumes, the threat of distortion isn't an issue.
See How We Test Headphones
Bill Callahan's "Drover," a track with less deep bass in the mix, sounds somewhat better, though the vocals can use more high-mid crispness, and a faint hiss papers over the entire audio performance, especially at moderate volumes.
(On an iPhone 8, after music was paused for several seconds, the hiss would drop out.
This is a common issue with cheap Bluetooth in-ears that definitely shouldn't happen in this price range.)
On Jay-Z and Kanye West's "No Church in the Wild," the kick drum loop receives enough presence to retain its punchiness, and the sub-bass synth hits have some pleasant rich depth to them.
On classical tracks, there's an added low-frequency presence, and the crispness of the higher register instrumentation remains intact, but the hiss becomes more audible.
The Knowles drivers may be solid, but drivers are only half the battle, and somewhere in the signal chain here, things devolve.
Conclusions
Earin's M-2 earphones look good, but when you consider the price, the audio performance, and the pairing process, looks simply aren't enough.
On the bright side, if you're shopping in this price range, there are plenty of other excellent pairs to choose from.
Sennheiser's Momentum True Wireless earphones are a recent favorite.
Or consider saving money with the RHA TrueConnect, BoseSoundSportFree, Jabra Elite Active 65t, or JLab Epic Air Elite.
Every one of these options sound better than the Earin M-2, and offer a better overall user experience.
Pros
The Bottom Line
Earin's wire-free M-2 earphones earn points for style but are overpriced when it comes to everything else.
