Soundpeats CC3 Pro Review – Jack Of All Trades

Product Name: CC3 Pro

Brand: Soundpeats

Offer price: 69.99

Currency: USD

• Appearance - 7/10
  7/10
• Efficiency - 8.5/10
  8.5/10
• Features - 8.5/10
  8.5/10
• Materials - 7.5/10
  7.5/10
• Performance - 8/10
  8/10
• Portability - 7.5/10
  7.5/10
• User Experience (UX) - 8/10
  8/10
• Value - 8/10
  8/10

Summary

The Soundpeats CC3 Pro offers a great amount of features on top of a solid design that should be a good fit for most users.

Overall

7.9/10

7.9/10

Pros

• Comfortable to wear
• Delivers big bass
• Long battery life
• Detailed customization
• Wireless charging-capable case
• IPX6 water resistance

Cons

• App requires account sign-in
• Physical buttons feel a bit mushy

• Shopee

Unboxing

Meet the new Soundpeats CC3 Pro, the brand’s new open-ear earbuds adopting the C-shape bridge design; as you’d imagine, its primary users are those who do workouts, as well as those who wants to remain aware of the environment while still capable of listening audio at the same time.

The box does include a charging cable, though do note that if you own a wireless charger or a smartphone that comes with one, you can charge the case sans cables. Besides the essentials, you’re also given a sticker pack featuring what we believe is the brand’s panda mascot.

Walkaround

The Soundpeats CC3 Pro is available exclusive in Black color option, though in reality both the case and the earbuds (the glossy surfaces, that is) have a slight blue hue, making it more akin to deep blue. The rubber bits (with a 0.5mm memory steel within) are definitely black, which is the part that makes contact with your ears for comfort’s sake. Down at the bottom you’ll find the USB-C port for charging, as well as a Bluetooth pairing button; a single LED indicator at the front tells you its charging status, just like most earbuds do.

Looking at the earbuds up close, we can see physical buttons for controls, which would be facing rearward once worn. They’re arguably on the smaller side and feels a tad mushy to press onto – still, it is handy in cases where touch inputs can be finicky for some, or doesn’t respond well with wet or sweaty hands.

Specifications

Soundpeats CC3 Pro

User Experience

Starting off, one thing that the Soundpeats CC3 Pro does well is the wear comfort. Like over-ear headphones, clamping force is potentially a deal-breaker for some if it’s too tight, causing discomfort; same can be said on the C-shape bridge form factor as well. I’m pleased to report that the CC3 Pro has no such issues, and it easily blends into the background once you wear it and adjusted it into position – which can take a while if you’re particularly sensitive to left-right audio imbalances.

Audio tuning out-of-the-box is decent if you like bass-tuned earbuds – usually open-ear earbuds lack in bass due to their open-ear nature, but the CC3 Pro comes with plenty of bass that you really don’t need to boost it at all. In fact, I’d suggest lower it a tad if you’re in quieter places, but for outdoor use, it’s right about where it should be. Mids and Highs can do with some fine tuning, which you can do through the SOUNDPEATS app available in App Store and Google Play.

Speaking of which, the app has all the settings you’ll want from the earbuds, though the UI/UX certainly can do with some polishing (note the broken translations). It requires account logins to use, which honestly isn’t necessary; and before that step, you’ll first be greeted with the brand’s marketing records for some inexplicable reason. What’s the point of advertising to a user who already bought your products?

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Either way, the customization goes deep: there’s your usual button controls and EQ – for which there are several presets, a custom mode, a Dynamic EQ mode which is effectively “automatic”, or a guided setup to help you set your own – along with LDAC codec mode, Bluetooth Multipoint controls, water drainage function (which buzzes the speaker at a specific frequency to eject liquids), and a Privacy Mode. There’s also Game Mode which is self-explanatory. In short – whatever you can ask of an earbuds, this pair has pretty much got them all software-wise.

Here are the microphone tests – the quiet scenario test shows no issues which isn’t surprising in modern earbuds these days, though it does struggle a bit under noisier conditions. The CC3 Pro only has a pair of microphones (one per side) to work with, and for what it’s worth, it’s punching above its weight; that being said, perhaps an extra pair of microphones can help in this regard.

The Good

There are many things to praise the Soundpeats CC3 Pro for. For an open-ear earbuds, it’s got the user comfort side of things well sorted, keeping the clamping force just high enough to keep it in place during movements, and low enough to not cause discomfort to the user. Perfect balance, in other words. It’s also capable of IPX6 water resistance, so sweat is not an issue whatsoever, though be aware it is not designed for submersion (even though the earbuds do offer a feature to eject liquids out during such cases).

The combination of dual drivers gives it a very punchy signature in terms of the bass, while still keeping mids and highs reasonably balanced, for which a small EQ tuning can get it dialed in easily. I usually go deep into lowering the mids in most audio hardware, and here only small adjustments is needed; granted, your EQ preference may ultimately differ from what this pair of earbuds comes with out of the box, but any disagreement in this regard can be pretty much resolved by using the app to tune the sound profile to your liking.

As a class of earbuds that usually does not feature ANC of any kind, whatever battery capacity they come with are exclusively for music playback and not much else. That translates to excellent battery life in the Soundpeats CC3 Pro, and you can pretty much get away charging the case once, or at most twice, per week even if you’re a heavy user. To that end, wires not mandatory either – if you own a smartphone that comes with reverse wireless charging, that’ll do the job without you bringing anything extra in your bag.

The Bad

We believe there is no hard deal-breakers when it comes to the Soundpeats CC3 Pro, though there are some minor quirks to be aware of. For one, the SOUNDPEATS app requires mandatory account sign-ups, which we didn’t like – Sony, for example, doesn’t require such for its Sound Connect app. It would be a big plus if the app can be redesigned to remove this requirement, along with fixing some of the localization inaccuracies (which unfortunately has been pretty common in Chinese-based apps).

Hardware-wise, we found the physical buttons to be a bit mushy as a result of it being part of the soft rubber bit of the earbuds, so it requires a relatively large pressing force for the buttons to register. That does introduce a minor side effect: since open-ear earbuds need to be delicately balanced between two sides to keep audio balanced to your ears, pushing a physical button on either side will often push them slightly out of place, meaning the user most likely need to spend time to readjust the positions of the earbuds again.

Verdict

At US$69.99 (RM269.10 as far as Shopee listing is concerned, though we have not seen first-party local pricing just yet), the Soundpeats CC3 Pro offers plenty for a reasonable mid-range pricing, punching above its weight class. All in all, we believe this pair of earbuds is a good all-rounder, a solid choice for those looking for earbuds of this class without sacrificing the audio qualities of traditional in-ear types.

Special thanks to Soundpeats for providing the CC3 Pro earbuds for this review. You can purchase the earbuds via Amazon by clicking here and use code PRCC3PRO for 10% off.