In the swelling tide of open earbuds, it can be easy to overlook an underdog. When Acefast’s Acefit Air first came to my attention, they seemed like any other pair of budget ear hooks, the baseline design for buds that let you listen to tunes while keeping your ears open to the world.
I was delightfully surprised once I got them out of the box, starting with their spyware-thin charging case harboring stylishly slim buds with a touch of metallic flair. The Acefit Air’s daily performance is similarly satisfying, marked by responsive controls and crisp yet warm sound for solid musicality across genres.
These aren’t the most feature-packed open earbuds, and the fit can be finicky, especially when you first stretch the pliable hooks across the back of your ears. At $80, those drawbacks are easy to overlook, and I had a blast using these buds across my outdoor activities for multiple weeks.
Slim and Stylin’
Photograph: Ryan Waniata
There’s something utterly satisfying about the Acefit Air’s case. When peeking through the bulky box’s plastic bubble, it looks like any number of oversized clamshells. That made it all the more impressive to find it’s perhaps the thinnest case of any buds I’ve tested, slipping easily into jeans or shorts pockets. The flat-matte finish adds to the vibe, though it tends to collect oil from your skin inside and out over time.
The buds are similarly sleek. Though they weigh around 7.5 grams (the AirPods Pro 2 are just over 5), they’re lighter and less obtrusive than most earhook buds I’ve tested. Acefast says that’s due in part to an “ultra-fine titanium wire” within the hooks tested for 10,000 bends. The fit is so loose and comfy you’d think they’d fall off, but they’re well balanced and I have yet to lose one while walking, hiking, biking, or otherwise tramping around.
It can be tough to get the speakers and accompanying vents properly aligned with my ears, particularly the right one, due to the way the buds are designed to dangle outside your canals. I’ve gotten used to it, but I usually need to make some adjustments to the right bud, finding that pulling it forward usually locks in the stereo image.
While putting the buds in, I often hear the telltale beep of their metallic touch sensors, yet Acefast has seemingly made them unresponsive for the first few seconds, so I rarely make mistakes. Most importantly, unlike a lot of open earbuds I test, the touch pads are responsive, letting me easily single-tap for volume, double-tap for play/pause, and triple-tap for song skip even in compromising situations like an ebike ride. Simply working reliably puts these buds ahead of the game.
Speaking of ebikes, the buds aren’t the best at overcoming wind resistance, but they do a decent job, letting me listen to tunes or podcasts at moderate speeds without the need to blast my ears. That’s a huge benefit of open earbuds over traditional buds that rely on microphones that easily get overwhelmed by wind shear and resistance.
Triple Punch
Photograph: Ryan Waniata
Within each bud’s rubbery frame is a “three-magnet ultra linear speaker” that accounts for the Acefit Air’s impressive sound quality. Acefast says the speakers reduce distortion, and they’re plenty loud to the point that I rarely pushed them above a third of max volume. That’s a good thing, since turning on the EQ in Acefast’s app oddly lowers said volume, but I didn’t find the need to use EQ anyway.