Nocs NS1100 Air Assessment: Nice Wi-fi Sound, Sharp Design

I first encountered the Swedish audio firm Nocs Design round 10 years in the past, when it launched a few fashionable earbuds. I examined these—the titanium-bodied NS400 and the bass-forward NS600—and located each to be fairly nice, with excellent sound, sharp aesthetics, and a very good in-ear match. Nocs went on to make some good DJ headphones and a set of desktop audio system, then the model kind of disappeared.

Extra precisely, it mutated. The founder and lead designer, Daniel Alm, converted to designing some fancy watches that had been bought beneath the title Nocs Atelier. After some years within the drift, Alm and his staff are returning their consideration to audio. The primary Nocs audio product in years is a pair of wi-fi earbuds referred to as the NS1100 Air.

Quite a bit has modified in the course of the time Nocs has been absent from the moveable audio market. The wi-fi revolution has upended every thing. Now we’ve bought AirPods and Pixel Buds and Beats and Galaxy Buds. We’ve bought luxurious buds to match your Jaguar’s paint job, and sufficient low cost dross to fill the Hudson Bay. These Nocs had higher impress. Nicely, they do. The earbuds are snug to put on, straightforward to handle, and sound nice. Additionally they have a cool, elegant design and—perhaps better of all—price lower than $130.

Air Provide

The Nocs NS1100 Air are a wirefree design, with a pair of buds that nestle right into a charging case that matches into your palm. Inside every bud is a 9.2-mm driver, a pair of mics for taking calls and for feeding each the energetic noise-canceling (ANC) system that blocks exterior sounds and the transparency mode that pipes a bit of out of doors sound into your ears. They use Bluetooth 5.0, so their sign vary and stability are each exemplary. I by no means skilled a dropped connection in my months of testing them, even with my laptop computer within the subsequent room or with my telephone buried inside my backpack.

While you first open the field, you’ll discover six sizes of eartips. That is three greater than most corporations provide; consequently, it’s straightforward to discover a tip that gives a very good match and seals correctly inside your ear canal. A tip on the guidelines: Your ear canals may be completely different sizes. Mine are, and I are likely to overlook this till I get to check earbuds with eartips that truly match correctly. 

{Photograph}: Nocs Design

The buds are largely plastic (they’re solely out there in a matte black end) and whereas that makes them really feel form of flimsy, it provides them a lightness that makes them extra snug to put on. With the proper-size eartip, the light-weight and comely design permits the earbuds to kind of float in your ear. It makes them much less fatiguing to put on for lengthy stretches.

They’re managed by contact panels on every earpiece. Faucet the best ear to play and pause the music, or go to the subsequent observe. Faucet the left ear to modify between three states: ANC mode, transparency mode, or naturally remoted sound with each of these modes off.

There’s no audio indicator to let which mode you’re in, only a chime to announce you’ve switched modes. If you wish to know which mode you’re in, you possibly can obtain the Nocs app, the place the controls are labeled. In reality, I like to recommend downloading the app simply so you possibly can attempt the choice to personalize the sound of the headphones. This can be a function Nocs Design developed with the assistance of its expertise accomplice Audiodo. Launch the calibration function and also you’ll hear a sequence of tones within the headphones. Everytime you hear a tone, inform the app you possibly can hear it; this works similar to a listening to take a look at you’d take at an audiologist’s workplace. After a few minutes of enjoying aural hide-and-seek, the app generates a Private Sound profile. You may then activate or deactivate it within the app any time you need. (The app can retailer a number of profiles without delay.)