Review of good headphones for walking Aukey EP-T32

Wireless earbuds with hooks usually aren’t the first choice for casual users. Mostly due to their size and comfort issues. However, the Aukey EP-T32 might change your mind.

These new true wireless earbuds have a smaller and more elegant over-the-ear design than other ear hook earbuds, like Treblab X3 Pro or Beats PowerBeats Pro.

Most importantly, they pack a few cool features like Qi charging, an IPX8 water resistance rating, a proximity sensor, great battery life, support for aptX and mono mode.

But extra features don’t matter that much if fundamentals, like sound quality and Bluetooth, aren’t great. Let’s find out if Aukey EP-T32 are worth picking up.

Comfort & Fit

Star Rating 4.5 Almost Perfect

These earbuds provide great comfort with minimal in-ear insertion, which is why they avoid creating pressure. Also, stability during physical activities is excellent, thanks to the ear hook design.

Ear hooks aren’t among the most comfortable designs out there, especially for users with glasses. Thankfully, Aukey’s manage to both stay securely in your ears and provide a comfortable fit.

The secret is a smaller, more elegant design with rounded corners. The ear hook is slightly shorter and smaller, too, and it perfectly grabs around your ears. You can barely notice them during use because of a lightweight construction (7g per earbud).

Shallow insertion helps to reduce wearing fatigue, with no annoying pressure inside your ear canal.

Regarding ear hooks length, you have to use both hands to stretch them around your ears. Fortunately, once they’re on there, you don’t have to readjust them anymore.

Stability is excellent and you can take them everywhere, on a light walk or intense exercise.

Noise Isolation

Star Rating 3.0 Good

Shallow in-ear insertion means overall worse passive isolation than other in-ear headphones. Although, for sport-oriented pair of earbuds, that’s a plus.

On Aukey EP-T32 earbuds, the ear tips barely go into the ear canal. While that doesn’t hurt audio quality, it does effects isolation.

Walking near a busy street, you can still hear cars passing by and people’s speech (on average volume, that is). For regular commuters, that isn’t ideal. However, outdoor sportspeople should find the lack of perfect isolation helpful. Hearing ambient noise does make you more aware, after all.

Is There Wind Noise?

Ear hooks are known to produce a fair amount of wind noise. While it isn’t as noticeable during walking, running can make the annoying noise worse.

Sound Leakage?

A very minimal one. Of course, the more you crank up the volume, the more sound will escape out. However, even at 70%, these earbuds are painfully loud.

Bluetooth

Star Rating 4.5 Almost Perfect

You can expect great coverage and connection stability with Bluetooth 5.0. Also, there’s no visible lag when watching videos, with mono mode and aptX support to seal the deal. Sadly, these don’t have multipoint connectivity.

Bluetooth 5 is proven to ensure an excellent connection and fast pairing process. Coverage is great, and you can use them throughout the house without any problem.

You get no stutters when you take them outside for a walk. Although I noticed a slight stutter once, it was due to covering my smartphone with hands. Which could mean that’s my phone’s problem.

If you’re a person who likes to use only one earbud at a time, they support mono mode. Either left or right bud work in this mode.

Multipoint?

No, you can only connect them to one device at a time. Strangely, Aukey ditched multipoint support on EP-T32, even though it’s present on EP-T31.

What Bluetooth Codecs They Use?

Earbuds have a chip with integrated support for aptX. There are also SBC and AAC Bluetooth codecs, which is plenty, especially for the price. Apple users should be content with AAC, whereas Android will find aptX very welcoming.

Is There Video Lag?

None whatsoever. If there is any, it’s barely noticeable. Watching YouTube videos and even playing games on mobile or Switch should be more than enjoyable.

Battery

Star Rating 4.5 Almost Perfect

Aukey’s come with around 7 hours of battery life on a single charge, with an additional 28 hours inside the Qi wireless charging case.

There’s more than enough battery life inside EP-T32 true wireless earbuds. 7 hours per single charge (7 hours and 27 minutes in our test) is considered above average, and it can easily last you throughout the day.

Other ear hook earbuds can last even longer, like Treblab X3 Pro (9 hours) and Beats PowerBeats Pro (11 hours), but they’re also slightly bulkier than Aukey’s.

In contrast, the case is similarly big as the rest. Its size means that whatever pocket you put it in, it creates a bulge. Not a dealbreaker, though. Just keep in mind that it isn’t the most portable TWS case out there.

Fortunately, the size results in extra 28 hours of battery life, which is 35 hours in total. We’re sure Aukey could fit more juice in it. However, since the buds themselves are larger, we can’t be too harsh on them.

Especially since the case offers both USB-C fast charging, as well as Qi charging. The latter isn’t the fastest, but with more and more phones offering reverse wireless charging, it can be handy.

Durability

Star Rating 4.5 Almost Perfect

For the price, these are built exceptionally well. Earbuds feel sturdy, and with IPX8, you can fully submerge them.

Earbuds don’t show any weak points and come with an IPX8 rating. If the Bluetooth signal would pass through water, you could’ve used them for swimming and even diving.

A high level of resistance can still come in handy when you need to wash under a tap to clean them of sweat or dirt.

The charging case is made of thick plastic, but its lightness doesn’t feel reassuring. We might be wrong, but the lid does feel like it could break easily.

Features

Star Rating 3.5 Almost Great

There are a few cool features inside the Aukey EP-T32. Proximity sensor, mono mode, Qi charging, and touch controls. However, there’s no app to customize them.

These earbuds aren’t shabby when it comes to features at this price. Some of them are quite useful, like aptX, Qi charging, summoning voice assistant, and reliable touch controls.

Some might also enjoy the automatic play/pause feature, which works nicely. But it would be nicer if you could manage them somehow.

Proximity sensors are something that we like to turn off immediately. They can get annoying when you want to clean the wax off your tips and music and constantly playing and pausing while you brush them against the shirt.

Controls also come with fixed commands that are either one tap, double tap, or long press. Most of the best earbuds under $50 also come with volume control.

Sound

Star Rating 3.5 Almost Great

Aukey opted for a very safe tuning, with the smooth midrange, shy treble, and boosted sub-bass.

These earbuds are very enjoyable to listen to, albeit they lack refinement and treble detail. The boost in the sub-bass region gives every song some extra meat that makes them more engaging.

12mm speaker drivers deliver high-fidelity audio with deeper bass response. The low-end is quite well controlled and not overly emphasized. Because of that, you can listen to rock and metal genres without experience sound congestion.

The midrange is clean, warm, and smooth, without any annoying peak that would ruin the experience. There’s a decent amount of detail, but nothing too impressive.

Compared to other frequencies, the treble feels slightly subdued. It lacks sparkle and detail, but thankfully, the airiness is still there.

Compared to the EP-T31, the T32 have better dynamics and imaging. In general, music sounds more exciting on the T32 model.