TOZO T10 review

TOZO has been putting out cheap, but reliable true wireless fare for a little while now. The TOZO T10 is another budget-friendly entry in the company’s stable, this time sporting a low profile design and a waterproof build. Is that enough to make it a worthy workout buddy?

Editor’s note: this is the first version of the article. Updates will follow as the market changes.

If you’ve used a pair of true wireless earbuds before, the TOZO T10 ought to be pretty familiar to use. This is a very simple product made of black plastic. There’s no active noise cancelling and no app—no extra features to speak of, really. A touch sensitive panel adorns the side of each earbud, but otherwise what you see is what you get.

The TOZO T10 has a fairly straightforward construction, with a typical stemless look and smooth plastic build. The earbuds are comfortable, though they lack any sort of physical feature to keep them securely in your ear like a hook or a fin, which means finding the right size ear tip is imperative. TOZO includes five additional pairs of ear tips of different sizes and shapes (six in total—XL to XXS), but if you’ve always had problems with earbuds staying in your ears, this probably isn’t a product for you.

The earbuds are IPX8 rated, which is sufficient waterproofing to allow for submersion in a meter of water for up to 30 minutes. Moisture protection like this is more than enough for a sweaty gym session, though again, if you’re prone to earbuds falling out, exercise involving vigorous head movement is probably a no-go—I certainly find myself regularly reaching up to readjust them as I run.

The TOZO T10 features an array of on-ear controls—there’s no app associated with the earbuds, so there’s no way to change them. The tap controls are pretty straightforward, but the touch sensitive panels are definitely a little unresponsive—I usually need multiple tries to skip forward or back a song, and it’s even worse if I’m at the gym and my hands are sweaty.

The TOZO T10 features the same basic connection options as most recent true wireless earbuds. The earbuds connect using Bluetooth 5.3, with support for the SBC and AAC audio codecs, both of which are required for a device to qualify as Bluetooth 5 or higher. That’s pretty much all there is to it—there’s no fast pair, multipoint, or low latency modes here here.

Depending on where you look, TOZO claims the T10 can last up to 6, 8, or 10 hours, but in our testing we found it lands on the very low end of that. When subjected to constant real music playback peaking at 75dB (SPL), the earbuds lasted 6 hours, 32 minutes on a single charge, which is pretty good for a true wireless product but certainly a big difference from some of the quoted numbers. The case apparently houses enough charge for 35 additional hours of listening, and nothing in the review period has given us cause to doubt that.

Battery performance like this is fine, but it’s not going light the world on fire—at least not metaphorically. True wireless earbuds all have a pretty staggering environmental cost, and the TOZO T10 is no exception. The constant charge-recharge cycle of these earbuds means these probably won’t last much longer than a year or two.

The TOZO T10 blocks out some noise, but its isolation performance is hardly spectacular. Even with a decent seal, don’t expect to miss much if what’s going on in the world around you with these in your ears. There’s no active noise cancelling (ANC), so getting even this good a result depends entirely on making sure you have the correct size of ear tip—it’s fortunate that TOZO included so many.

The TOZO T10 sounds a lot like many budget earbuds—our testing indicates the frequency response features notable extra emphasis in bass and high-end regions. This doesn’t necessarily sound bad, but if you’re not looking for loads of bass, it could be pretty distracting. It certainly deviates from a lot from our in-house target curve both below 200Hz and from 4Khz-12KHz.

Bass, mids, and highs

Bass in particular is going to sound very loud coming out of the TOZO T10. That may be desirable, depending on your taste and the genres you listen to, but it can sound pretty overwhelming sometimes. Listening to Casa De Mel by Brad Goodall, the kick drum comes through with a really nice oomph, but as soon as the bass guitar starts playing, a lot of the detail in the synth keys and drums gets lost in a sort of indistinct low end rumble—not an issue coming out of headphones or speakers with less exaggerated bass output.

You can use the TOZO T10 for phone calls, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Every time I spoke to someone on the phone while reviewing these earbuds, I drew immediate remarks about how bad I sounded. The T10 microphone sounds muffled and quiet, with quite audible processing artifacts on the speech. It functions, but you’ll probably find you need to repeat yourself to be understood, so best to keep things short and sweet.

TOZO T10 microphone demo (Ideal conditions):

If you’re on the hunt for cheap audio, the TOZO T10 is a compelling, if a little basic option. It doesn’t have any bells and whistles to speak of, and its battery performance falls well short of its own claims, but it sounds fine and and it works reliably. This is a decent enough starter pair of true wireless earbuds and it’s a mostly decent workout companion.

However, there’s another consideration to make when thinking about the TOZO T10, and that’s whether you be can sure you’re getting what you think. At time of writing, there’s a lot of inconsistent information on the TOZO T10 available on the internet. The store pages for the product on Amazon and TOZO’s own web store make it seem like what’s available through Amazon is out of date (Amazon advertises an Bluetooth 5.0 product, and TOZO advertises a Bluetooth 5.3 one).

Additionally, the battery claims vary wildly—on the manufacturer’s site, the product images claim 6 hours of battery, but the text on the side of the page claims 10 hours, meanwhile the user manual that came with the model we used for review claims 8 hours (our model says “UPGRADED 2022” on the back of the box, but it was purchased through Amazon, where the store page is most outdated). Because of this, I can’t recommend the TOZO T10—nobody should have to roll the dice to see what they get, even if they’re hunting for a bargain.

If you’re on the hunt for cheap earbuds, there are lots of good options that won’t leave you in suspense. The Anker Soundcore Life A1 features a similarly bassy sound profile, and less IPX7 rating, but its good battery life and more stable fit makes it a superior workout option to the TOZO T10—it’s also the same price and routinely goes on sale.

If the ANC is something you really want, TOZO’s own NC9 offers a decent performance for a very low price. Also, people who want a little less bass in their earbuds should check out the JLAB GO Air POP, which offers a more neutral-leaning frequency response for under $20 USD.