Speaking for myself, I love to give new companies a chance. Often times you can get more specialized products or interesting takes on existing features, allowing them to stand out in a multitude of ways. With the true wireless market becoming overwhelmingly popular, it’s exciting to see what unique concepts or ideas companies come up with. Among the various brands is Vie Style, with their Vie Fit 2 true wireless headphones. With a customized fit that conforms to your ear with soft materials that promise superior sound quality, are they a fantastic investment or an interesting idea that falls short?
Unsurprisingly, Vie Fit 2 isn’t the most impressive packaging around. The product came in a silver metallic bubble wrap envelop with a sticker indicating what it was. Inside I found a rather basic grey box that simply said Vie Fit on the top and listed a wide variety of features in an extremely vague way. For example, they’re water-resistant, but you have to go on the website to learn they’re IPX5 (meaning you can get them relatively wet without an issue). This holds true for a number of other features, such as the Qualcomm 8th generation cVc technology being summed up as highly efficient noise cancelation or 33 hours of battery life omitting the earbuds still a solid maximum of 6 hours of playback. Inside are the headphones held in place with a piece of cardboard and a folded piece of paper that explains controls and pairing.
As for the actual Vie Fit 2 headphones, they’re a very mixed product. At first glance, the case for the Vie Fit 2 is surprisingly compact. With a potential 33 hours of battery life, you’d expect a larger case, yet it’s decently small and easy to toss in my pocket. It also sports a minimalistic design that I appreciate. Outside of the LED lights and small Vie Style logo, it’s a matte black plastic container for the headphones. Unfortunately, similar things can’t be said for the actual headphones.
After opening the lid, which is held in place by a magnet, you have two fairly cheap-looking earbuds. The first part you and anyone looking at the product will see are these glossy black plastic shells. It’s very reminiscent of what you’d expect from a cheaper product, which is further held back by the rather substantial Vie Style branding. As for the part that goes in your ear, it’s squishy, yet still rather hard. Still, it’s hard to argue with the fact they achieve their goal of being comfortable and going deep in your ear.
Just using them as earplugs is surprisingly good. Both my mechanical keyboard and Dyson air multiplier are far quieter than I was expecting and with a bit of twisting they manage to go pretty deep without ever feeling loose. These are one pair of headphones I didn’t find myself even questioning if I would lose them, simply due to how secure they felt. But, regardless of noise cancelation and secure fit, they fall behind in the most important category, sound fidelity.
Before even touching on sound quality, the most common and biggest annoyance was actuality connectivity. Despite supposedly having Bluetooth 5, I constantly had audio drop regardless of what I was doing or where I was standing. Even having my phone a whole four feet away and sitting in my gaming chair was enough to have a sound drop for a moment every 30 to 60 seconds. The only pair of headphones I’ve had more issues with was my prototype Astro A38’s, which were so notoriously bad Astro gave up on them. What really stood out about connectivity was honestly how inconsistent it was.
Realistically, I could get the same range as my Helm True Wireless (TW) 5.0 headphones, which is essentially anywhere in my house out to my car, but where Helm maintained connection at all times, I might have sound drop five or six times a song. It takes away from the experience and became increasingly frustrating as things continued.
Sound proved to be equally inconsistent with the Vie Fit 2. At times I thought they could match my Helm TW 5.0 headphones but at other times they would sound worse than a random pair of Earpods I had laying around. For example, where Helm had, all things considered, decent bass, Vie Fit 2 was flat and underwhelming. It’s very similar to television speakers trying to mimic that sound. Yeah, there is an impact but it makes no impact in most songs.
The most consistent problem was sound staging. Helm often did a good job of giving sound depth and range, whereas Vie Fit 2 crushed everything together in hopes it sounded good. Details were often lost, everything was painfully flat and it was the first product, in a long time, I was really underwhelmed by. It’s just a very mid-heavy sound that only really excels during a small number of select songs, typically ones with limited range. Those looking for a bit more lows will still get some value but highs were almost laughably bad. So much so I thought I was using a lower-quality recording of the song over the headphones just failing to match that range.
Vie Fit 2 Verdict
Having extensively tested these headphones, it’s hard to say they’re anything besides underwhelming. Yes, a small case, good battery life and noise cancellation sound attractive, yet they’re one of very few headphones I was completely disappointed with. With a price equal to the Helm TW 5 headphones, I’d be hard-pressed to find any situation where the Vie Fit 2 would be a better choice outside of, maybe, 50 percent off. They might have a cool concept, but you’re really getting a product that you’d expect at a quarter of the asking price.
[Editor’s Note: Vie Fit 2 was provided to us for review purposes.]
