Our Verdict
The Tribit Flybuds 3 offer outstanding value, with an excellent fit and decent sound quality. They are just as good as sports headphones that cost twice as much or more.
For
- Great value
- Long battery life in the case
- Secure, comfortable fit
Against
- Fiddly controls
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Hunting for a bargain in the sub-£50 truly wireless best workout headphones bracket can be a dispiriting affair. All too often a set that promises much on paper is terrible in practice, whether because of sound quality, fit, durability or all of the above.
It’s worth it, however, when you come across headphones like the Tribit FlyBuds 3. They cost £40 and hit similar standards to truly wireless buds that go for more than £150, even in sound quality, which normally only gets worse as the price goes down.
Like many of the best running headphones, the FlyBuds 3 have an in-ear design with a wingtip as well, to achieve a more secure fit when exercising. There are three sizes of each of the two styles of in-ear tip, one type being a kind of double bud that I found slightly more secure, as well as three sizes of wingtip.
Once you’ve picked the right set-up, the FlyBuds 3 will stay in your ears, even on runs or during workouts where you jump around a lot. I may have had to adjust them once or twice during a run but I never had any fears of them dropping out, largely due to the wingtips.
The five hours of battery life you get in each bud isn’t exceptional – there are truly wireless headphones going beyond seven hours now – but it’s solid, and the portable charger/case can charge them 19 times before it needs charging itself.
Those with a head for numbers will have spotted that that adds up to a neat 100 hours of total play time between charges, which is excellent. There’s no quick-charge feature though, and the headphones need 90 minutes in the case to hit 100% battery. The case itself takes two hours to charge and has a USB port so you can charge other devices from it in a pinch.
With an rating of IPX7 the Tribit FlyBuds 3 are waterproof and sweatproof, matching up to the best headphones out there on this front, so you can definitely stop worrying about ruining them if you run in the rain.
On the outside of each headphone is a touch-sensitive panel, which can control playback. This is really the only part where the FlyBuds disappointed me, because the controls are hard to use and not that responsive. You need to double tap to play/pause music and triple tap to skip a track (which only worked on the left bud for me). As often as not my taps would go unregistered, especially while running. There are also no volume controls, which would probably be my priority when it comes to on-bud controls.
I’ll forgive Tribit for this, though, because the sound quality is so good for a set of buds that cost £40. In fact, their sound quality would be good no matter what the buds cost. The bass is rich and punchy, the instruments and vocals are clear and easy to pick apart – there’s none of the mushing that often occurs with cheap headphones – and there was very little distortion at high volumes. I didn’t find the max volume to be quite as powerfully loud as I wanted when putting on a motivational playlist for a workout, but that probably says more about me than the FlyBuds.
There’s a whole lot to like about the FlyBuds and little to dislike, bar the iffy controls. If you’re looking for a bargain set of sports headphones, it’s a toss-up between these and the Groov-E SportBuds, which are also £40. The FlyBuds sound better, have a longer battery life and a higher waterproof rating, but the Groov-E buds are also good on those fronts and have an ear hook design for an extra-secure fit.
