Most interesting earbuds EVER! 😲 LG Tone Free T90 Review
We’ve seen lots of interesting stuff come out in the past year from brands like Sony, Bose and Apple, but the LG Tone Free T90 Dolby Atmos noise cancelling earbuds is one of the most interesting products I have ever reviewed. This clearly was the result of some really innovative out-of-box thinking.
And I’m not talking about UV Nano, to me that is not the most interesting feature. Basically, when you put the earbuds in the case and charge it, it uses UV light to kill bacteria on the earbuds’ speaker mesh. That’s neat, but a better example of the type of out-of-box thinking that I’m talking about is something called “Whispering Mode”.
Typically, when you wear wireless earbuds, these things are so far away from your mouth that, in noisy places, it’s almost impossible to pick up your voice if you’re speaking softly. But “Whispering Mode” lets you use the right earbud as a close up microphone while the left earbud delivers the audio, so you can still be heard even if you’re speaking quietly in a noisy place. (Why hasn’t anyone thought of that?) But how much of a difference does this really make? And what about its sound, noise cancelling and transparency? Read on.
Features
What’s interesting is that its case also doubles as a wireless dongle so that you can get wireless audio through the earbuds from devices that may not even have Bluetooth to begin with, like your old TV or iPod. A 3.5mm to USB-C cable is provided to make it work, or you can plug your case into your computer through USB. This way you can also use them for gaming, but you’ll need to put them into low latency mode first. Otherwise, you will get a lot of lag when playing games.
On Bluetooth it supports multipoint pairing, so you can stay connected to two devices at once. The way I use it is to connect the buds to both my phone and the PC so when I’m working, I can also take calls from the earbuds, and even retain the ability to customize its sound and features using the Tone Free app. I need that because I could be listening to some lofi hip hop at first, then play some games after. This gives me the freedom to activate a different sound profile for games, like Dolby Atmos, as that also activates head tracking. Interestingly, the T90 seems to be the only one right now that has its own Dolby Atmos processing, so I could get Dolby Atmos upscaling from practically any audio source, even iPhones.
The T90 also supports Snapdragon Sound, so with compatible mobile devices you will get a higher quality signal chain that’s meant to deliver better sound quality over a more reliable connection. But in my opinion, for wireless earbuds, even if you were streaming actual 24-bit/96 khz audio from Snapdragon Sound hardware, it’s unlikely that you’re going to get any significant sound quality improvements compared to over codecs like aptX Adaptive, which this also supports. So the benefit of Snapdragon Sound for earbuds, at least to me, is really about reliability more than anything else.
But what is its sound quality really like?
Sound Quality
On flat settings, it has an overall laid back tonality. There wasn’t much kick in the bass, not much bite in the mids and highs. To be honest I thought it sounded a little too dead for my liking, because personally I prefer a more V-shaped tuning. But if you go into the Tone Free app and select any of the presets from Meridian, those really bring out the dynamic range, the detail, richness, the bass, and crispiness in the mids and highs, making them sound much more lively as you’re about to hear.
If you want to, you can also create your own sound profiles using the graphic EQ. It won’t make it sound as loud or as vibrant as the presets, but I was able to get these earbuds to sound more pleasing to my tastes. Listen to the sound samples of all the EQ presets here.
Call Quality
Speaking about its mic pickup in both quiet and noisy conditions with a fan blowing in my face, it is quite usable in quiet conditions, but in noisy conditions, it was terrible because the noise-gating s not able to cut much of that noise.
But whispering mode does work. Holding one earbud to my mouth, I was speaking softer but my voice came through pretty well, rejecting noise better than without Whispering mode. Hence, for making calls with the T90 in noisy places, you’ll need to use Whispering mode, period. Listen to the samples here.
Active Noise Cancelling
In terms of its active noise cancelling, I think it’s pretty decent. You will get that dumbing down of the low frequencies, but if we compare it to other earbuds like the AirPods Pro 2, Bose QC II Earbuds, it doesn’t cut as much noise. This is what it sounds like compared to the others using the same background noise as before. Samples can be heard here.
Transparency Mode
In terms of its transparency mode, I could tell that there was some passthrough going on, but not enough to give that sensation of transparency, and I did have some difficulty hearing the voices of people that I’m speaking to. To be honest, I was expecting much better transparency coming from a brand like LG.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if we were just talking about innovation, the T90’s are some of the most interesting earbuds I have ever come across, introducing some very unique features, and it also sings all the right tunes when it comes to specs. We’re talking about multipoint, aptX adaptive, on board Dolby Atmos with head tracking, Snapdragon Sound. Being able to use the T90s even with non-Bluetooth devices is also a huge plus.
So there’s no question that these are the most versatile earbuds I have ever come across. They’re also very customizable from the sound to the controls, using the LG Tone Free app. With a bit of tweaking, they even sound pretty decent. If that’s what you need, I have no problem recommending these. But everything else is just lacklustre. I wasn’t impressed with its noise cancelling, nor its transparency. Its call quality was below average, and so is its battery life, being rated for up to 5 hours in the buds and up to 16 hours with case, with the noise cancelling turned on. It would have been okay 3 or 4 years ago, but right now, compared to the others from other brands, it pales in comparison.
This could be to keep the case small considering that it’s also a wireless transmitter, but this is a trade off that you should be aware of before making your purchase. If those are factors that you care about, you’d be better off looking at something else. Like products from Sony, Apple, Samsung, to name a few.
If you’d like to check it out, I’ve included the Amazon link to it below.
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