Kiwi Ears Spark are a set of open earphones that have bluetooth support. Open earphones or ear buds are a relatively recent development in earphones that sit on the outside of the ear, rather than being pushed into the ear canal.
I haven't tried open earphones before so I was interested in seeing what they were like.
In this article we will look at the Kiwi Ears Spark Bluetooth Earphones, their functionality, how they sound, and what sort of environments they would be most useful for.
Disclaimer: Kiwi Ears sent me the earphones for review, but they did not read the review before hand nor do they have a say in the opinions of the review. All the pictures in this post have been taken by myself, all opinions and observations are from my own use of the earphones over the last few weeks.
Package Contents
First, let's look at what you get with these earphones.
The earphones come in a sturdy, decent sized box that lists some of the features on the front.
Inside you will find a tiny charging cable, an instruction manual, a little fabric bag for the earphones, and the earphones themselves.
The fabric bag is good quality. I have been using these earphones for a few weeks and it has not frayed or discoloured at all. I often pop the earphones in a trouser pocket or the side pocket of my bag so it has been heavily used.
The Earphones
The Kiwi Ears Spark come in a sturdy metal case with a rubberised bottom. It feels very solid, which is helped by the full metal construction.
Whilst it might look from the image above that the case has a transparent window on top, it is just a gap in the case design. The case lid consists of a single piece of metal that is cut out to form a disk inside an outer ring.
There is a small LED light on the bottom front of the case that shows some information about the charge levels. In the image above the blue LED means that the case has between 75% and 100% battery.
Opening up the case reveals the earphones themselves, nestled in a rubber seat.
The earphones clip magnetically into the correct position inside the case and will only fit one way into the sockets, so it's quite easy to get them in and out.
The two metal plates on the back of the earphones are capacitive buttons that give you access to a few different controls.
Features
The earphones have the following features and specifications.
Dimensions:
- Charging Case Dimensions: 82.58 × 65.49 × 26.3 mm
- Earbud Dimensions: 46.05 × 38.63 × 17.29 mm
Sound:
- Bluetooth: 5.2
- Audio Codecs: SBC, AAC
Battery:
- Case Battery Capacity: 1000mAh
- Earphone Battery Capacity: 60mAh
- Number Of Earphone Charges: 2-3
- Playback Time: 7 hours at 70% volume
- Earphone Standby Time: 240 hours
- Case Charging Time: <1.5 hours
- Earphone Charging Time: <1.5 hours
Speakers:
- Drivers: 17x12mm Dynamic
- Impedance: 16Ω
- Sensitivity: 113±3dB/1mW
- Frequency response: 20Hz - 20KHz
Connectivity:
The earphones are rated for IP45, meaning that they prevent the ingress of particles greater than 1mm in size and low pressure water. They will certainly withstand sweat or rain and being submersed in water up to three meters deep.
Each earphone has a touch sensitive capacitive button on the side that controls the volume, track selection and one or two other functions.
How Do They Sound?
Perhaps the most important part of any headphones (or earphones in this case) is how they sound, so let's dig into their sound reproduction abilities.
Looking at the sound profile from earphonesarchive.squig.link shows that the earphones do not fit the ideal curve at all.
The best headphones will match the left and right sides quite closely, which is the case here across the entire sound profile.
Due to the open design these earphones do lack low and high end response. This frequency response graph shows very poor low and high end sound reproduction, and that is exactly my experience these earphones.
The sound profile is understandable though. Since the earphones only have tiny little speakers to reproduce music and they have to transmit that music into your ear from a distance you can clearly hear that in the sound they make. They do a good job of playing music, but it is just made up of the mid range frequency.
There is a perfect peak in the sound profile for listening to voices. This means that podcasts or audio books are the ideal thing to listen to whilst wearing these earphones.
One issue that I had with these earphones is that they are very loud. This might seem counter-intuitive, but even at the very lowest volume setting the earphones are quite loud. Not uncomfortably loud, but they aren't really suitable for low volume activities like sleeping in since it isn't possible to reduce the volume any lower. I was able to under-run the volume control by using an app on my phone to get the volume lower, but when I did this the earphones just assumed there was nothing being transmitted and turned off.
How Are They To Use?
I spent a few weeks with the Kiwi Ears Spark, using them every time I wanted to listen to music. When I was at my desk, doing jobs around the house, or out and about they were always present.
Wearing the earphones for the first time is an interesting experience. There are no instructions in the manual on how to put them on so I had to experiment with them a little to try and get them into a position that sounds good and feels secure. Whilst trying to move them into position they will beep continuously as the capacitive buttons are pressed accidentally whilst moving them into the right position.
They are lightweight and a mostly comfortable to wear and stay in place most of the time, even when doing exercise. During intense exercise, however, they tend to move around as they get slippery when wet.
Once I got the earphones into what felt like the right place, they don't move too much. Remember that they are open earphones and so do not fit into the ear canal. This means that they sort of hang off of your ear and sit over the top of your ear canal.
It's clear that the sound profile suffers from the open design, but they do allow outside noises to be heard by the wearer, which is important in city environments. On the other side of this coin they are not really suitable for the gym since the one I go to has music playing all the time, and it would be impossible to compete with that using these earphones.
Active noise cancelling isn't a feature of these earphones, which makes sense since you need a separation of "outside" and "inside" for the noise cancelling functionality to work correctly (or at all). These earphones are meant to be worn in an environment where you either need or don't mind outside noise being heard.
The fact that I can wear them and hear sounds from the world around me is good as I can just pause my music when I want to hear something more clearly. This is in contrast to my other earphones where I either need to take them off or turn on a transparency mode to hear anything.
The case is very solid feeling and well made, but has a bit of an odd design. I was a bit confused as to what the purpose of the cut out section in the lid was for. I did attempt to slot it into a belt to see if they would stay in there but this didn't work as the case would just quickly slide off.
The earphones have a capacitive button on the outside of surface, which is used to control things like the volume, skipping tracks, or answering phone calls. The buttons are easy to press and are responsive, with the left and right sides of the headphones having different functionality. For example, tapping once on the right side will increase the volume, tapping on the left will decrease the volume.
Whilst the difference between the left and right sides is good, you need to remember a series of taps and holds to get the earphones to work correctly. There is no ability to re-map these controls as well so you need to remember them.
The battery life of the Kiwi Ears Spark is great. I have had the earphones in my ears for a few hours without needing to charge them, and the case will supply power for a few charges meaning that you will probably get a few days of listening out of them before needing to plug them in.
One majorly frustrating thing with these earphones is their bluetooth connectivity. Not long after I first got them we passed them around the family so that we could all have a go, which meant that they were connected to different phones. The last person who paired the earphones forgot to unpair them and it was then totally impossible to do anything with them after that. As the range of the earphones is about 12 meters the earphones just stayed connected to some other phone in the house. It was only after asking that person to unpair them that I was able to pair them with my own phone and use them again.
I guess if that ever happens to you then a good solution is to step out of range for 5 minutes and then factory reset them. It wouldn't be a problem if you could factory reset them whilst they are connected.
Whilst I didn't use it much, the earphones also have a built in microphone that can be used to make phone calls. This feature worked pretty well and calls made through the earphones were quite easy to use and communicate through.
Conclusion
The Kiwi Ears Spark are an interesting product; they are both good but also frustrating in places.
I have owned and used different types of earphones over the years and these feel quite like a set of Apple Beats Pro sports earphones. The audio quality of the Beats Pro is superior, but I have always had problems getting the Beats back into their case properly, feeling more like a puzzle box than a headphone case. That's not the case with the Spark as strong magnets will pull them into the correct position easily.
Overall, these earphones are slightly flawed, but there are just a few rough edges in an otherwise solid product. Their music reproduction isn't perfect, and I sort of expected that from the open design, but they are brilliant for catching up on podcasts or audio books whilst exercising in the park. Cycling and walking are ideal activities for these headphones as you need to listen out for other traffic in those situations.
If you are interested in picking up a pair of these earphones for yourself then you can visit the Kiwi Ears Spark page on their website.
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