Having given us a bunch of headphones (notably the more-than-decent VMK20 and the excellent VMK25 that we reviewed a while back) and an even bigger bunch of men’s locker room-level jokes, the crazy Finns from Valco return with an earbud (or earphone, as they call it) model, the NL25. Not their first either, but the predecessor, the NL21 from some 3 years ago, came and went largely unnoticed (by us too), so either it wasn’t very good or Valco’s marketing department was on vacation at the time. In any case, we scoured the backwoods of the internet and managed to find out that the predecessors were also wireless but lacked ANC, and had touch control panels.
This year’s NL25 is a different animal. Like with their predecessors, we get completely wireless earbuds, but this time they sport active noise cancelling (and transparency mode that’s supposed to do the opposite, amplify the outside sounds), and soft touch controls have been replaced with mechanical buttons. Completely wireless, meaning they come with a charging case in the form of a well designed round box, with a nice finish, quite obviously borrowed from the VMK20 headphones.
The earbuds arrived in a large box (considering the size of the product itself) that also contained extra goodies: a roll-on deodorant with a surprisingly neutral, soapy scent and three candies with fruity-anis-salty-whoknowswhat flavours. Freebies are always nice, they won’t go to waste. In addition to the charging case, the earbuds also come with a USB-C charging cable and a set of silicone and foam tips in three sizes.
Back to the earbuds themselves, gimmick-wise, there are pretty much none. No proximity sensors to stop the music when you take the earphones out of your ears, no app with a multitude of ANC settings to chose from or additional sound tuning. If you want all those things, look elsewhere. For me, simplicity is a plus, fewer things can go wrong or stop working.
The earbuds themselves are actually quite large (good, easier to find them in your pocket/bag) and I do have two gripes with the external design. One is a relatively minor annoyance: there is no L/R marking. None. No letters, no colour coding, no little dots, nothing. And they sort of fit in each ear. The only way to tell the left earphone from the right is to put them in your ear and start pressing buttons. If you switch between the ANC modes, that’s your left earphone; anything else happens – your pressing the right earphone’s button. Kinda annoying really, not a deal breaker though. Easy enough to put a red nail polish dot on the right earphone and the problem goes away. Unless you married a goth and the only nail polish in your house is black, then you’re fucked. Or, you can simply remember that their sides in the charging case are (thankfully) the same as the side in your ears. And just like that, now you’re unfucked, you’re welcome. As long as you don’t have Alzheimer’s, you’ll probably manage. And if you do have Alzheimer’s, your hearing’s probably gone too and what you need is a hearing aid, not earphones.
My other gripe is more of a problem, for me at least: the edges. The way the earphones are designed, their edges are pressed against the skin every time I put them in my ears. It is not a pleasant sensation, especially that I have to push them in really hard to get a decent seal. I get that everyone makes rounded earphones, and that edges/angles make the Valcos stand out visually and maybe appeal to some buyers as more “manly” – but other manufacturers avoid edges for a reason. Worse than that, the only position I can get bass out of them is when the edge of the “handle” presses against my tragus (for those less familiar with ear anatomy and too lazy to google it, the tragus is the “small pointed eminence of the external ear, situated in front of the concha, and projecting backward over the meatus”; bonus trivia: tragi help bats with echolocation but not all echolocating bats have tragi – there, now you know), which means that some discomfort remains throughout the time of using them. Minor, but still.
To be fair: I generally dislike earphones and find most of them, if not all, uncomfortable to use for extended periods of time, so take my comments on comfort with a grain of salt. My wife, who also tried the Valcos, did not mention any discomfort while using them.
Other than that, using the Valcos is a breeze, in both good sense and bad. They pair and connect easily, stay connected, the range is at least as good as with other bluetooth earphones I used. I did get some intermittent sound when walking outside, so they are somewhat sensitive to interference, but it only happened a few times and I have yet to find bluetooth earphones (or headphones) that do not have that problem. So, connectivity is basically as good as it gets. Mechanical buttons work well, too, they seem sturdy and are much more convenient and easier to use than touch panels (for me at least). Having just two buttons limits the number of functions (no volume control, for example), but it makes things much easier, because you don’t have to wonder if you’re actually pressing the button you want to press. Good call, that. All functions work well, too… except ANC.
Don’t get me wrong, ANC does work, as in you can turn it on and off and there is some difference, it’s just not as good as I’d like it to be. ANC makes enough difference to quiet down street traffic (a small bit) and bus engine sound (a more audible bit) when commuting, but it’s nowhere near as effective as the ANC in VMK25/VMK20 headphones. It almost completely ineffective against airplane engine, again, unlike the ANC in Valco over-ear headphones that does remove a big chunk of airplane noise. Not sure what the problem is, maybe the miniaturized ANC chip is not that good, maybe it’s the mics, or maybe I simply don’t get a good enough seal, but the ANC in VMK25 works much better so that’s what I will be taking on air trips, not the NL25.
I tested the transparency mode for the sake of completeness. That is a bust, too, unfortunately. When walking, I heard no difference between ANC OFF and transparency mode – other than a minor tone balance change and some background white noise. The level of sounds from the outside was the same with transparency mode on and off. And then I tried cycling with transparency mode on. Oh, the wind! Let me tell you this, while the mode does pretty much nothing to amplify the outside sounds you might want to hear better (private conversations of fellow commuters, birds singing, cars about to hit you), it works wonders when it comes to amplifying the gusts of wind. I couldn’t turn it off fast enough. So, a breeze, just not the one you’d want.
Battery life is fine. I haven’t stress-tested them like I did the over-ear headphones, but I did use them for a few hours at a time and they never ran out of juice, which means that the battery is probably as advertised (6 hours with ANC off, 4.5 hour with ANC on), and certainly fine for normal, everyday use.
Call quality is good, too, both ways. I heard them, they heard me. No complaints there.
Sound quality… Well, that depends on what you like and how big your ears are. First, I had a bit of a problem with tips. The earphones come with a set of 6 pairs of tips (or fittings, as the Valco website calls them), both silicone and foam types, three sizes each. I think I might have gotten girl sizes because all silicone tips were too small for me. After doing my best to get a good seal and finally hearing some weak bass with the largest size, I finally gave up and fitted slightly larger tips borrowed from Sony earphones. Those were almost good, I could get a decent fit, seal (and bass), but it still required some patience to find a good position. Valco’s foam tips worked better, I could get a full sound with the largest ones. My wife, the proud owner of smaller ears, did not have this problem, Valco’s medium silicone tips worked well for her. Anyway, after you find a pair of tips that fit your ear, the sound quality is very good, clear, detailed and with a decent soundstage for earphones – but it’s definitely not neutral. The earphones have a fairly sharp, aggressive sound. It’s probably the tuning of the hybrid system of dynamic and armature drivers, where the armatures are more effective, resulting in more pronounced highs and upper mids. Lower mids are clear, present, detailed, but a bit more in the background. This makes the vocals sound slightly higher than they actually are. Bass is good once you get a good seal: detailed, textured, drops quite low when needed, present in decent amounts – but these earphones are definitely not for bassheads. If that is the sound you like, you will love them. My wife did. I prefer a more neutral, less aggressive sound, so while I appreciate the clarity and level of detail, for me they are good, but not great sound-wise.
The NL25 support APTX and APTX-adaptive codecs but no APTX Low Latency, so while they are more than fine for listening to music, not to mention your daily dose of true crime podcasts, they do have a minor delay you might notice when watching a movie, and they are no good for serious gaming. In theory, APTX-adaptive should be capable of similar latency (delay) as APTX LL, in real life it is not.
Finally I checked how the Valco NL25 compared with a functionally similar, more expensive product from the competition. I ran them against Master & Dynamic MW07 Plus earphones (30% more expensive when new). While I liked the sound of MD MW07 Plus a bit more (it was a bit less aggressive, so more to my taste), the difference wasn’t huge and more due to my personal preference than sound quality, which was comparable and very good in both cases. The Valcos were also a bit louder than MD MW07 Plus, an obvious advantage with quieter/more dynamic recording and in very noisy environments. MD MW07 Plus were a bit more comfortable (well, less uncomfortable, to be true) for me than the Valcos. They still did press against my ears, just in different, less annoying places. When it comes to the ease of use and functionality, ANC was pretty much equally effective (and on an airplane – ineffective) in both cases. Like the Valcos, MD MW07 Plus also have mechanical buttons, and more of them, so you do get volume control – but the buttons are very small and not sturdy at all, in fact one of them pretty much stopped working when I used them. Pairing the MD MW07 Plus was a nightmare. I had to reset them to factory setting to be able to pair them with my phone, and that trick only worked well once. On second attempt, they tried to pair as two separate devices, which apparently is a function, not a bug – but a function I could not switch off. All in all, neither earphone was perfect, and were I to chose between the two, despite liking the sound of Master & Dynamic MW07 Plus a bit more (and disliking the discomfort of their use a bit less), I would definitely go with the Valcos. The sound and comfort differences weren’t that big, the build quality and ease of use of Valcos was much better.
To sum up, while not perfect, the Valco NL25 are a very decent offering from Valco. They abandon gimmicks in favour of the ease and seamlessness of use, which is a huge plus in my book, as are mechanical buttons. Sound quality is very good, especially if you are not a basshead and prefer a more aggressive, in-your-face presentation of music. Finding the right tips and a good fit might be a challenge if you have large ear canals like I do, but should not be a problem with most ears. Do not expect ANC to work wonders, especially on an airplane; if you want good noise cancelling and a decent transparency mode, simply buy over-ear headphones (Valco’s own VMK25 are a very good choice). Other than that – these earphones are definitely worth a try.
Technical Specifications:
Frequency response: 20 Hz – 20 kHz
Bluetooth: 5.4
Bluetooth range: up to 20 meters (but at least over 10 meters)
Chipset: Qualcomm QCC30XX, Active Noise Cancellation, Transparency Mode
Supported Audio Codecs: SBC, AAC, APTX, APTX-adaptive
Drivers: 10 mm hybrid design (a dynamic driver for bass and an armature driver for higher frequencies)
Case diameter: 55 mm
Case thickness: 30 mm
Weight: earbuds approx. 5 g each, case with earbuds approx. 50 g
Battery: 35 mAh per earbud, case 300 mAh
The case supports wireless charging
Playback time per charge: over 6 hours without ANC, approx. 4.5 hours with ANC
Up to 17 hours of total playtime with just one full charge of the case
Handsfree microphones with voice enhancement
Protection: IPX4, splash-resistant
