Wicked Audio Gnar true wireless headphones review

Wicked Audio has made a range of true wireless headphones over the past few years, and now it’s back with another pair. The new Wicked Audio Gnar true wireless headphones are aimed at offering a decent sound quality at a low price — and as such they come at only $59.99.

But does Wicked Audio cut a lot of corners to make the headphones so inexpensive? We put them to the test to find out.

Design

The first thing you’ll notice about the headphones is their design, and they don’t look bad — but the overall design of the headphones in the case doesn’t seem to be all that functional. That’s because of the fact that it doesn’t have a lid — the headphones are held in place through magnets, and that’s it. Now, while we didn’t run into a situation where the headphones fell out of place in a bag, we didn’t love the possibility of that happening.

Apart from that, the design is fine. The headphones are all black, as is the case, apart from white brand highlights. On the back of the charging case, there’s a MicroUSB port — which is a little frustrating to see in a world with USB-C.

On each earbud, you’ll get a single button, which can be used to control playback and volume. The placement of the button isn’t the best — pressing the button means pushing the buds into your ears, which can be a little painful.

In the box, apart from the charging case and earbuds themselves, you’ll get a MicroUSB charging cable and two extra pairs of ear tips. It’s a fine selection of accessories, but not groundbreaking by any means.

Comfort

The earbuds, thankfully, are relatively small — and as such, they’re not too uncomfortable. Of course, discomfort is introduced when you have to press any buttons, but during most usage they fit perfectly fine.

The headphones aren’t necessarily the best at staying in your ears, and as such we wouldn’t recommend buying these for sports use.

Sound

So how do the headphones sound? Well, not bad — but not all that great either.

The bass response on the headphones is fine, but we would have liked the bass to extend a little deeper than it currently does. That said, kick drums and bass guitars were generally able to make their way through a mix without issue.

The midrange on the headphones is pretty well-tuned, with a warm low mid response, and enough high mids to help vocals and guitars nicely cut through a mix.

The high end is similar to the bass — fine, but not amazing. Again, more high-end response would have been nice, especially when it comes to high-end extension. That said, in this price range, it’s a little hard to complain.

Performance

The Wicked Audio Gnar true wireless headphones connect to your listening device through Bluetooth 5.0, however we found that they did have some connectivity issues at times. Sometimes the headphones would skip while playing audio, while they often took a while to connect to each other. Another issue we found was that the headphones don’t automatically disconnect from your device when they’re placed in the charging case — you have to turn them off manually.

The battery life on the headphones comes in at four hours on a single charge, which is a little lackluster. The charging case will get you an additional three charges, bringing the total time to 16 hours.

Conclusions

The Wicked Audio Gnar true wireless headphones are a bit of a mixed bag. The headphones don’t sound bad, and the design is fine, but they’re let down by things like a lackluster battery life, connectivity issues, and so on.

Considering those issues, the headphones aren’t really the best you can get in their price range. If you’re looking for a great pair of true wireless headphones in the sub-$60 price range, we recommend checking out the JLab Audio JBuds series.