This is not your typical unboxing.

I am sharing my own experience of using the Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 (shortened to Mi TWE2 from now on) for a week. I used these earphones during work commute (walk + cycle), in the office (relatively quiet, not shop/factory floor type of noise) and at home (mostly Youtube and music listening in FLAC format). For home use, I am normally a HD650 open-back headphone user, looking for something to use on daily commute and the occasional office calls, so the two qualities I am interested in are: decent sound quality, and good for phone/app calls. I own the Edifier W2000BT but Mi TWE2 is the first pair of true wireless that I have used for more one hour.

To be honest, of the specs that can easily found, the only information that I am interested in are:

  • Bluetooth 5.0
  • True wireless Qualcomm chip
  • Battery consumption: about 3 hours (this was also my experience)
  • Cost: RMB 399 (US$56)

To start off I’d say this is an excellent pair true wireless earphone if your use case restricts to two or less devices, in a mainly office or home environment. Build quality feels good, and good value for money. However as a disclaimer I did not search for competing devices (and frankly there is quite a few, with big range in price) but placed my faith in the Xiaomi/One more brand that is behind this pair of earphones.

Pros

  • Sound quality good (music and receiving calls). no complaints of tinny sound.
  • Each earphone can pair to a different device.
  • Light weight, where you really hardly feel the presence.

Cons

  1. (Passive) Noise cancellation is non-existent. The Mi TWE2 is more of the Air Pods 1/2 design where the earphones hang on to your ears, so environmental noises will leak in naturally. To be fair, each person’s ear is different and it may be just that this is of looser fit for me.
  2. Connection logic is sometimes hard to figure out. For example, when listening to music with Mi TWE2 with an Android phone, after removing the earphones from the ear and then replaced, restart of music needs to be done manually. When paired with the MacBook, music resumes automatically.
  3. Pairing for the first time needs to always involve placing the earphone in the case. I am not sure if this is the case with Air Pods but can be inconvenient at times.
  4. There were the occasional connection issues after pairing each earphone to different devices and want to use both with one single device. However I think this is something that can be easily solved with a software update.

Recommendations

  1. For general commute, and when noise reduction is of low priority.
  2. For office and home environment, ideal.

For now I will stick to my Edifier W2000BT, bluetooth wired but costing between RMB89-109 (US$12.60-15) that is reliable with decent sound for normal use.

Footnote: I actually had this drafted already since November 2019, so I’d better get this out as the updated hardware has been released (2S).