Adidas ZNE 01 ANC Earbuds Review: MediaTek Airoha

The Adidas ZNE 01 ANC True Wireless Earbuds. The Adidas ZNE 01 sporty Bluetooth buds are powered by MediaTek Airoha.

Design and Build

First of all, I really like the style of the Adidas ZNE 01 case. It’s nice, compact and smooth, like most true wireless earbud cases. The design stand out from the rest of the crowd earbuds. It looks almost stone-like, and it certainly feels nice and tough as well. You can easily flip open the case with just a single hand.

You’ll notice is that adidas ZNE 01 Earbuds are impressively light and nice and compact too. You do get buds small stems, kind of similar to Apple’s AirPods, but they’re fairly short, and these buds don’t jut out for miles from your ear holes.

The comfort levels for wearing ZNE 01 all afternoon are certainly helped along by the compact lightweight design. The fact that you’ve go silicone rubbery tips as well, and unique wing-style finish, which I haven’t seen on many other true wireless earbuds, helps them stay lodged in your ears.

So, even during frantic bouts of extremely sweaty exercise, they will stay firmly lodged inside your ears. We did a wash test, and these pods are also IPX5 water-resistant.

So, Adidas ZNE 01 buds absolutely fine if you’re sweating up at the gym, pounding those weights, doing bench presses, and all that stuff. They’re also absolutely fine, And the bud’s case is also IPX4 water-resistant.

Related: Nothing Ear 2 Earbuds Review

Connectivity and App

Now, the Adidas ZNE 01 buds are powered by MediaTek’s Airoha platform. This delivers strong and stable Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity, and the setup is nice and simple. All you have to do is lift that lid and give that Adidas logo a nice long tap, and the buds will enter pairing mode, with the LED flashing blue to indicate that all is well.

If you’re using an Android device, you should get a little message popping up saying that your ZNE 01 ANC would like to connect. It should immediately pair up, and then you’ll be prompted to download the Adidas Headphones app. The app is available for both Android and iOS devices. Downloading app is definitely recommended for a number of reasons. Firstly, you can keep the firmware updated. The app also provides real-time information, such as battery life you have remaining in both of your buds. Additionally, you can see what song is currently playing, and you even have some basic media controls available.

Touch controls and ANC

You’ll be able to dive into the touch controls and turn them on or off. While you can’t fully customize the touch controls, you can at least determine what happens when you long-press the left and right bud. By default, they toggle the ANC modes, but as you can see, they can also bring up a couple of apps like Adidas Running or Spotify. Additionally, you can call up your smartphone’s voice assistant.

The touch controls on Adidas ZNE 01 earbuds seem to work perfectly well. It’s nice, simple, and straightforward. A single tap pauses your music, another tap resumes it, a double tap skips forward a track, and a triple tap skips back a track. You’ll receive actual audio feedback when you tap, so you know that your taps are registered.

Furthermore, there’s a long-press action to cycle through the different ANC modes. You have ANC on, ANC off, and the awareness mode, which is basically the opposite of noise cancellation. ZNE 01 Buds uses the microphones to pick up everything that’s going on around you and delivers straight into your ears.

From my testing, the noise cancellation on these earbuds isn’t quite up there with the very best true wireless earbuds like Sony’s and Soundcore’s, which can really dampen down all the surrounding noise. However, they are pretty good at the general background clamor, which is good news if you’re strolling down a high street and trying to enjoy an audiobook or a podcast. You don’t need to low the volume all the way just to hear what people are saying to you.

Audio Quality

One of the undoubted highlights of the Adidas ZNE01 earbuds is the sound quality. It’s another area where the MediaTek Airoha platform delivers big time. The earbuds connected to my Android smartphone using the AAC codec, and I found that it delivered particularly impressive bass without sacrificing the rest of the range.

Certainly, genres like metal music and dance music sounded particularly big, with a real kick to them, which you don’t always get with ZNE 01 compact, lightweight true wireless earbuds. I also found that this was especially true if you dive into the Equalizer settings and choose the rock mode. There’s a small selection of different presets available to suit a few different genres, although it’s not a massive amount of options. It is a same that you don’t have a proper, full-on equalizer that you can manually adjust. if you are an audiophile who prefers having that level of manual control, you might want to look elsewhere.

However, for the average consumer, these Adidas Bluetooth buds pump out the kind of sound that you should enjoy.

Mic test

The Adidas ZNE 01 wireless earbuds have built-in microphones. I’m currently in a nice quiet studio, so it’s not exactly a particularly taxing test. But to really test out these Adidas buds, I’m now blaring really obnoxious city traffic sounds from a massive speaker positioned right by my head. And the buds are actually picking up my voice pretty clearly.

Once again, MediaTek Airoha have a powerful built-in AI processor that can filter out extraneous noises and focus solely on your voice. So, even in a really crowded and noisy place, you can have a clear conversation.

Battery life

In terms of battery life, the Adidas ZNE 01 true wireless earbuds will provide around four to five hours of full-on use with noise cancellation active throughout that time. If you disable noise cancellation, you can expect an extra hour or two of usage on top of that. It’s not a bad result at all for a pair of compact, lightweight earbuds like these, although it’s also not the absolute best battery performance you can find in modern true wireless earbuds.

When your ZNE buds are completely drained, simply place them back inside the case, and you’ll get around three full recharges from the drained buds before the case itself needs to be recharged. If the buds are completely drained, it will take approximately two and a half to three hours to fully charge them inside the case. The good news is that if you’re in a rush to leave the house and find your buds completely dead, you can simply put them in the case for about 15 minutes, and that will give you around an hour of playback time. This is great for your commute. If the case also needs to be charged, you can use wireless charging or the Type-C USB charging method.

Final Thought

The Adidas ZNE01 ANC true wireless earbuds, powered by MediaTek Airoha, have a light and compact design. adidas buds offer good audio quality and easy-to-use touch controls for music playback. The earbuds also provide decent battery life and convenient charging options.

88%

88%

Compact Design

The Adidas ZNE01 ANC true wireless earbuds, powered by MediaTek Airoha, have a light and compact design. adidas buds offer good audio quality and easy-to-use touch controls for music playback. The earbuds also provide decent battery life and convenient charging options.

• Design

  8.5
• Touch and Countrols

  8
• Audio Quality

  9
• Mic

  9
• Battery Life

  9.2
• App Support

  9