Status Pro X Review: Comfortable Earbuds For People Who Hate Earbuds

I like Status' Pro X wireless earbuds, and have been using them fairly regularly even outside of what was necessary for putting this review together. That may sound like a pointless thing to bring up, but for context: I generally don't enjoy in-ear earbuds. They're usually very uncomfortable for me, with the added bonus of never staying in my ears for more than a few minutes at a time before tumbling out on their own.

These Pro X earbuds, though? Like I said, I've actually been continuing to use them by choice, which I think says a lot. They're not perfect by any means, or blowing the lid off the wireless earbuds market, but if someone like me finds them comfortable to use for extended periods — I feel like that says all that needs to be said. But of course there are other features that need be considered — like sound quality, and connectivity, and of course battery life. Status provided a pair of Status Pro X earbuds for this review and over the past couple of weeks I've put them through a collection of real-life tests. 

What you get when you open the Pro X box is pretty much exactly what anyone with a passing familiarity with wireless earbuds is likely to expect. The buds themselves are nestled inside their charging case, a very short USB-C charging cable is tucked underneath, and there are two additional tip sizes (Small and Large) you can make use of if the default silicone ear stuffers don't fit quite right.

Switching those tips out can be a little tricky due to their connection to the buds being so sturdy, but on the plus side that also means they're not coming off by accident. Sidenote: The default Medium tips were absolutely not a good fit for my ears, making the buds fairly uncomfortable and unstable at first, but swapping them out fixed both of those problems.

Setting up is also super simple, since all you have to do for your first pairing is to open the charging case and select the Pro X buds from your device's Bluetooth menu. Additional devices can also pair up with the buds in a similar fashion, but you need to press the small button inside the case three times to enter pairing mode first.

The app was also a pleasant surprise, actually. Unlike so many (too many) smart devices on the market today, you don't have to sign up for anything or make an account to get these earbuds running properly. You need only download the official app, start it up, the app finds the earbuds, and that's it. I'd love it if this became the standard, honestly.

Regarding the multipoint pairing functionality, though... I'm not exactly thrilled. Setting it up is super simple, to be sure, and it does what it's supposed to, but it's also kind of... finnicky, I guess?

In one instance I was watching a video on my laptop and paused it, then picked up my phone to respond to a text. The buds switched over and I could hear the digital clacking of the digital keyboard, but resuming video playback did not resume the earbud audio along with it. In fact, even though I'd stopped texting I still had to manually shut off the phone's screen (i.e. put it into standby or sleep mode, whatever you want to call it) before they would go back to the laptop audio.

The most obnoxious one, though, was when I attempted to connect the Pro X to my Android phone (they had been paired previously). My iPhone was locked/asleep and my laptop was closed, but the buds still didn't want to connect for several minutes. Then when they finally did, zero sound. Because somehow, even though my laptop was closed, the buds still prioritized it over the Android phone they had just connected to. I had to open the laptop (which immediately began playing a YouTube video in a browser tab that wasn't even selected at the time), go into Bluetooth settings, and manually disconnect the Pro X for them to finally start working with the Android phone. Not ideal.

What surprised me the most about the Pro X earbuds, as I mentioned at the start, is how comfortable they've been to wear. Or rather, how not uncomfortable they are.

As a reminder, I generally do not get along with in-ear earbuds for extended periods of time. My typical experience is something along the lines of everything being fine for the first 30 minutes to maybe an hour, then my ears start to ache. But somehow the shape and sizing of the Pro X buds hasn't had that kind of negative effect on me — once I switched to the appropriately sized silicone tips, anyway.

Even a six consecutive hour stretch while I was putting the earbuds through their paces was just fine for me. And the only reason I didn't leave them in longer than that was because I was eating dinner and they decidedly did not want to stay put while I was chewing. Thankfully they're pretty good about staying in (again, with the right sized tips) under most other circumstances, but it was annoying to have them each work their way out on their own when all I wanted to do was watch a video while eating.

Pro Buds X work with Active Noise Cancellation — a feature which they deliver at an acceptable level. I was kind of expecting something on par with Sony's WF-1000XM5 wireless earbuds (which incidentally carry the same price as the Pro X), but it's not really at the same level. 

Don't get me wrong, the Pro X buds do indeed block out a fair bit of ambient sound, but it's mostly things like the hum of a large appliance or the buzzing of a fan. Indoor volume voices in the same room are slightly muffled, but still intelligible. A cat screaming for food from across an apartment won't penetrate, but that same cat meowing for attention at your feet will. It's kind of inconsistent like that.

Arguably that's for the best as a way of making sure potentially dangerous things like traffic and alarms and whatnot aren't cancelled out along with the typical guff, I suppose. Though there is also a toggleable audio pass through mode that not only shuts off the ANC to let ambient noises through, but can also be adjusted to enhance ambient noise if you want it to.

When it comes to actually listening to the things you want to listen to via the Pro X earbuds, everything sounds good! Again, it's not something I think is going to take the earbud world by storm, but the overall sound quality is very nice. Plus you have several optional equalizer settings to check out in the app (I prefer their default "Status Signature" setting), and you can fiddle with things to create your own ideal balance.

On the other hand, this might be the first pair of wireless earbuds I've reviewed that doesn't have tinny sounding microphone audio? It's certainly the only one I can think of, anyway. Regardless, while the microphone audio isn't anything close to studio quality (not that anyone should expect that), I do consider it a marked improvement. It's perhaps a little muffled — which could be a byproduct of the buds reducing background noises for clearer phone calls and the like — but I'll gladly take that over sound like I'm speaking through an empty coffee can.

Similarly, phone calls come through just fine. In testing there was a little reverb for the person on the other end of the line, but it's still clear and intelligible on both ends. Provided there are no carrier connection problems, naturally, but that's not the fault of the earbuds.

Another bullet point on the back of the Pro X box is an eight hour battery life on a single charge — and up to 24 hours with the charging case. This seems pretty much on point with what I've experienced in testing, honestly.

After approximately one hour of use (some video games, some YouTube videos) both buds went from 100% down to about 80%. During a second, more prolonged test, they went from 100% to arguably 20% after approximately six hours of constant use. Though I say "arguably" because the power draw for the buds isn't entirely even. Sometimes the left bud would be 2% lower, other times the right bud would be 3% less than its counterpart. But they generally stayed within the same rough 3% to 4% variance between themselves.

Getting power back into the buds didn't take very long, either. The charging case got them both from about 20% back up to mid-60% in just under 20 minutes, and back to full after roughly an hour. It did take the case's charge down to 60%, however, while charging the case via Qi Wireless Charging took a bit over an hour to go from that 60% back to 100%.

Is it disappointing to come away from a $299 pair of wireless earbuds and think they're "just" fine? Maybe it is, but that's kind of where I'm at with Status Pro X. But at the same time, I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing? You can purchase Status Pro X earbuds from the Status store online for $299 right now.

Considering the price point you'll probably want to look elsewhere if you prioritize sound quality or uncompromising noise cancellation (and other common high end earbud features), but there's nothing wrong with being all-around good, either.

With all of that said, I'm way more partial to the Pro X earbuds than I am to just about every other in-ear variety I've tested due to the simple fact that they don't start to hurt my ears after less than an hour of nonstop use. For me, comfort is kind of a huge deal when it comes to earbuds — even more than sound quality, honestly — so I'm very happy with them. If it's that important to you, then I'd say they're worth thinking about at the very least.