The best noise cancellation headphones on the market, like the Sony WH-1000XM3 and Bose QuietComfort series, come at a high price. Thankfully, however, the tech has been coming down in price over the past few years — and you can now get a decent noise-cancelling headset for under $100. That’s where the Treblab E3 headphones come in.
The headphones are aimed at offering excellent value for money — and as such they come in at only around $80. But do they cut too many corners to hit that price? We put the Treblab E3 headphones to the test to find out.
Design
The Treblab E3 headphones offer a relatively subtle design, with an all black build and Treblab logos on each of the ear cups.
On the left ear cup, you’ll get a button to control noise cancellation, while the right ear cups is where you’ll get the rest of the ports and controls. Those include playback controls, and, thankfully, a USB-C port. There’s no aux port here, but there is a USB-C to 3.5mm cable in the box, which you can use to connect the headphones to a headphone jack.
The build quality of the headphones is a little questionable. While the frame of the headphones is metal, the rest of the build is plastic. The headphone seem like they can handle most day-to-day abuse, but anything more and that plastic may scratch, crack, or break.
Apart from the headphones themselves, in the box, you’ll get a USB-C charging cable, and a USB-C to 3.5mm cable. There’s also a nice hard case, which should help keep the headphones protected on your travels.
Comfort
The Trablab E3 headphones are pretty lightweight, and there’s a good amount of padding in both the ear cups and under the headband, and the result of that is a really comfortable listening experience.
The padding used in these headphones isn’t exactly the most premium padding, but ultimately it doesn’t really matter — you’ll be able to wear the headphones for hours on end without any real issues.
Sound
These are budget headphones, and because of that, you wouldn’t necessarily expect them to offer the same audio quality as more expensive options. These headphones sound fine — but they’re far from perfect, and ultimately don’t offer much detail.
The bass response, for starters, is pretty good. Kick drums nicely punch through a mix, and bass guitars sound strong and powerful.
The mid range is where things start to go downhill a little. The low mids offer a decently warm response, and while there is some mudiness in there at times, it’s not over the top. The high mids are pulled back a little, and the result is that vocals can sound a little tucked away.
Perhaps the worst thing about these headphones is the fact that the high response is seriously lacking. There’s little detail to speak of. Not only would we have liked more high response, but we would have really liked a lot more high-end extension.
The noise cancellation on offer here is pretty lackluster too. The headphones are able to cut out some outside noise, but anything you can hear with noise cancellation off will still be easily audible with noise cancellation on. What’s worse is that noise cancellation introduces a slight hiss to the audio.
Performance
The Treblab E3 headphones connect to your listening device through Bluetooth 5.0, and we found that they retained a pretty good connection throughout testing.
The battery life on offer is very good. You’ll get 48 hours of listening time with noise cancellation off, or 35 hours with it on. Safe to say, the headphones should last a few weeks of average listening before you have to recharge them.
Conclusions
The Treblab E3 noise cancelling headphones are a bit of a mixed bag. They’re comfortable, and have a stellar battery life, but they don’t sound all that great and don’t seem very durable.
The headphones are cheap, but there are still better options in the price range. Interestingly enough, Treblab’s own Z2 headphones are a much better option than these — and they’re not much more expensive.
Still, considering the low price tag and comfortable fit, we’re awarding these headphones the Headphone Review Bronze Medal.
| Store | Price |
|---|---|
 |
$54.59 (Renewed) |
| Treblab | $90 |
| Frequency response | 20Hz – 20kHz | Active noise cancellation | Yes |
| Driver size | 40mm | Noise attenuation | Unknown |
| Driver type | Dynamic | On-ear controls | Yes |
| Design | Closed | Microphone | Yes |
| Sensitivity | Unknown | Earpad material | Foam |
| Rated impedance | Unknown | Magnet material | Unknown |
| Total harmonic distortion | Unknown | Water resistance | No |
| Rated input power | Unkown | Battery life | 48 Hours (Without ANC), 35 Hours (With ANC) |
| Maximum input power | Unknown | Wireless distance | 10m (33ft) |
| Wireless connection | Bluetooth 5.0 | Cable length | 1.2m (4ft) |
| Wired connection | Yes | Case type | Hard case |
| Detachable cable | Yes | In-the-box |
|
| Weight | 270g (0.59lbs) | Colors | Black |