Baseus WM01 Plus Review: These $20 Earbuds Will Surprise You

At S$27 or approximately US$20, these are probably the cheapest pair of true wireless earbuds I’ve tried, and… well, they don’t sound like $20 earbuds. You might think the Baseus WM01 Plus are super lousy because they literally cost less than some wired earphones. But hey, they are actually really good for their price.

Let’s talk about the case. It’s a matte plastic case with a soft-touch coating, and it surprisingly comes with a USB-C charging port on the back. Major thumbs up here. If $20 earbuds can offer USB-C, there’s really no reason for MicroUSB to still be a thing. Anyway, moving on to the inside of the case, what’s really unique here is that there’s a digital display that can toggle between showing the charge left in the case, as well as how many hours of battery life is left in each earbud. It’s a very nice feature that I think is super convenient. I don’t like having to open a companion app to figure out how much battery is left in the charging case or earbuds, so I was pretty impressed by this. There’s a button at the bottom to toggle between which to display, so that’s easy.

And that’s it for the case. I mean, what else were you expecting for this price?

The earbuds are pretty minimalistic. There’s a touch-sensitive area on the faceplate, which is pretty responsive. What I hate is that whenever you tap the sensor to trigger controls, there’s a loud beep. Sure, it’s to indicate that the earbuds know you’re triggering a command, but it’s loud and intrusive and just not nice. A softer, more subtle beep would be better.

As for touch controls, they’re pretty simple. Double-tap on right controls play/pause, while double-tap on left pulls up the voice assistant. Long press on right skips to the next track and long press on left skips to the previous track. Unfortunately, there’s no option for volume controls here.

The sound quality is actually pretty good for $20. There’s a good amount of bass, even though it’s not as detailed or as clear as I would like. For people who think that bassy earbuds equal good earbuds, they’ll be super pleased with these. The midrange and treble are pretty decent too, although the vocals are slightly recessed and not really clear.

Soundstage is pretty average, and if you enjoy listening to complex pieces of music, you can forget about it. I could hear static and really soft crackles when listening to classical music or when string instruments were at the forefront of the song. Again, this typically isn’t the genre of music that people who buy these earbuds will listen to, so I’m nitpicking here, and for $20, nobody should be expecting to get the same quality as they would from $100 or $200 earbuds either.

These run on Bluetooth 5.0 and they can be used individually, which is great. There isn’t wear detection though, so they’ll keep playing even if you remove a bud from your ear.

With all that being said, I think these are definitely very entry-level true wireless earbuds. If you just need a pair to use at work or when you’re out and about, these work great. They’re cheap, so even if they spoil, it’s not that painful to replace them. So along those lines, if you’re looking to get some wireless earbuds for your kids or your elderly parents or whatever, these work fine since they’re most likely not going to nitpick at the quality. If you’re looking for a pair of cheap true wireless earbuds just to use as and when, these work really well and you won’t even have to fumble with a new MicroUSB cable to accommodate these. Sound quality is pretty decent, as long as you’re listening to mainstream pop and the likes. The seal that the earbuds give also work well enough as passive noise isolation. With music playing, I can only barely hear my mechanical keyboard clacking away.

For $20, these are pretty tough to beat. If you’re searching for them on AliExpress or something, you could probably use coupons or vouchers to get the price even lower, so you might even be able to get these at closer to US$15, which is really cheap for true wireless earbuds.

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Content by Cheryl Tan