‘Superclone’; it sounds like something that could have come straight out of a sci-fi novel, but is a name also shared by the Podsbuy Superclones – a pair of earbuds which are essentially Apple Airpods knock-offs. These caught my eye because I’m always interested to see with things like these how they actually perform and just how far-off the real thing they are. Due to the nature of this product I want to preface this article with a disclaimer that: I do not condone the infringement of copyright or patents. This article has been written purely for informative purposes and I do not have any links/receive and share or profit from the supplier of the product.
With that out of the way we can get in to the actual verdicts on these things and see if we are comparing apples with oranges or if the juice is indeed, worth a squeeze.
When the package arrived at my house and I first got these out of the box I was very impressed with the accuracy of the replica. I was sceptical about something that was named ‘superclone’, but had to admit that maybe in this case it wasn’t a complete misnomer. From a first glance it is very hard to distinguish these from the real deals. This trend continues when you look at the list of features; in-ear detection, wireless charging and probably most importantly of all – the pop-up Airpods pairing window. These fakes will only set you a back a third of the cost of the official Airpod so let’s find out how they stand up in the performance tests.
Looks: Let’s be real; a major reason behind the purchase of Airpods (be they legitimate or cheap imitations) is the way they look. Much like the Beats headphones were a few years ago, Airpods have become a fashion accessory. Both the case and the earphones themselves are almost indistinguishable from the real things unless you hold them side-by-side and really inspect them. There are a few differences; the shade of white and the font of the ‘L’ & ‘R’ are all a little different, but on the whole these things are pretty dead on. The Superclones fit perfectly into the legitimate Airpods case and visa-versa, which is a good illustration of just how closely these match the originals.
The case: Again it looks very much like the original and can charge wirelessly so it functions well. However, the difference I have found here is the way the lid snaps open and closed. Ask anyone who owns a pair of Airpods and they will probably tell you how satisfying it is to click the case open and closed due to the magnetic mechanism. The lid on the Superclones works fine, but it just doesn’t have the same satisfying click to it as you open and close the case. One slightly worrying thing I have noted about the case is that quite often after taking the earbuds out the case will make a high-pitch whining noise. This is not that audible unless you hold the case to your ear, but still something I found pretty perturbing. You can stop this by fiddling around putting the earphones away and getting them out again, but obviously this is far from ideal.
The earbuds: Like the real things they come with no adjustable tips or sizing, but they seem to fit in my ears fine and I have had no issues with them falling out. The in-ear sensor works brilliantly and I think this is a great feature; pausing the music when I remove a headphone from my ear and re-starting it when it is put back in. The gesture controls are also functional and I haven’t found them be to be particularly temperamental which is a common problem for the cheaper Bluetooth earphones. They are fairly comfortable in the ear and there is nothing particularly remarkable to mention. When testing the microphone on calls people have noted that the audio quality is workable, but often quiet and echoey.
Sound quality: I mean the sound-quality is okay. It is definitely slightly inferior to the actual Airpods and you can definitely get better sound for the price if you explore the plethora of non-Apple variants of Bluetooth headphones/earphones available. That being said the sound quality isn’t horrendous, but it seems like the attention to detail on the aesthetics have been prioritised.
Pairing: I don’t know how they have managed to replicate the Airpod’s H1 chip, but they have managed to get an iPhone to treat these exactly like the official ones. Open the lid and the proper prompt pop-up window appears, once paired you can see the charge status of the earphones and the case and the headphones even make the same pairing sounds once you put them in your ears. I was quite surprised to see this, the level of dedication to the imitation is crazy!
Conclusion: Overall visually these could pass by all but the most discerning of Apple experts as the real deal. However, the lacklustre sound quality and the worry that the case may explode at any moment really swings the scales on this one for me. What getting my hands on these has made me realise is that people may be selling these falsely as official Airpods. So at the risk of sounding like an overbearing teacher, if you take anything away from this take this PSA: be careful when buying online!
The clones featured in this article were from Podsbuy. It will be interesting to see how long the website stays up due to the blatant copyright infringement, but inevitably other websites will sprout up like weeds once this does happen.
