Blaupunkt Floatz Bluetooth Earphones Review

Bluetooth headphones are a convenient way to listen to your music without having to deal with tangled wires, and with the 3.5mm headphone jacks disappearing from smartphones, Bluetooth headphones are becoming more popular. Blaupunkt has launched a new pair of budget Bluetooth earphones called the Floatz, which is priced at Rs. 2,499. We have reviewed quite a few pairs of Bluetooth earphones in the budget segment but is the Blaupunkt Floatz better than everything else in the market? We put it through the test to find out.

Blaupunkt Floatz design and specifications

It looks like Blaupunkt aimed to design a compact set of earphones and has made every effort to keep the weight down. The earpiece casings of the Floatz are made out of plastic and are quite small. Magnets on the backs of this casings ensure that they stick together around your neck when you aren't using them and don't get tangled. There is a three-button in-line remote that also houses the battery of the Floatz.

The Blaupunkt Floatz is extremely light and weighs just 10.5g, most of which is concentrated in the in-line remote module. Blaupunkt generously supplies six pairs of eartips, three of which have wingtips to help the Floatz stay attached to your ears while the other three pairs are regular ones.

Blaupunkt has managed to keep the weight of the Floatz down to 10 grams

The in-line remote of the Floatz has three buttons, one of which is a multifunction button that can be used to power the device on/off, put it in pairing mode, and answer or disconnect calls. The other two buttons are for volume control and also let you skip to the next track or go back to the previous one.

There is a Micro-USB port to charge the battery, and it's covered by a rubber flap that helps the Blaupunkt Floatz earn its IPX7 certification. This means that the device is waterproof, so sweat shouldn't be a problem. You get a Micro-USB cable in the box.

Blaupunkt has opted for 6mm drivers for the Floatz, but does not mention the frequency range of the earphones. This headset uses Bluetooth 5 and supports the HFP, HSP, A2DP, and AVRCP profiles.

Blaupunkt Floatz performance

Since these earphones are light, you might forget that you are wearing them. It is only when running that you'll feel the weight of in-line remote. We used the medium-sized ear tips with wingtips for the entire duration of our review and found the fit to be quite good. They managed a good seal which helped keep ambient sound out. The rubber tips are easy to swap and you can swap to a different size that fits well for you.

We used a Google Pixel 3 for testing the Blaupunkt Floatz with, and streamed music from JioSaavn. These earphones used the AAC codec to stream music from the Pixel 3. There is no support for the high-quality aptX codec, unlike other similarly priced pairs of earphones such as the Mivi Thunderbeats. We also paired these headphones with a MacBook Air which was streaming audio using the SBC codec. We used the MacBook Air to play high-resolution FLAC audio files which sounded richer than the music we were streaming with JioSaavn at 320kbps.

The Floatz is quite comfortable to wear for longer durations

We chose to play music at 80-90 percent volume on the Blaupunkt Floatz since we found the full volume to be a little too high for our liking. These earphones have a classic V-shaped sonic signature which should suit most genres of music. Listening to Animals by Maroon 5, the Floatz could produce a decent amount of bass. It didn't have the thump we were hoping for but was smooth. We found the highs to be a little too shrill at the highest volume but not so much as to cause fatigue.

The Blaupunkt Floatz also offers good stereo separation, and while listening to Joker and the Thief by Wolfmother, we could hear the different instruments used clearly. These earphones have good soundstaging which was evident when we tested them by playing Hocus Pocus by Moving Waves.

Battery life is one area in which we think that the Blaupunkt Floatz could have done better. In our test we managed to get only around 6 hours of playback time, which is low. Blaupunkt promises playback time of 13 hours at the highest volume and our repeated tests showed that real-world performance was nowhere near that figure.

There is an auto-power-off function that turns the earphones off automatically to save power after a fixed period of inactivity. It took us around two hours to charge the Floatz using a laptop's USB port, and close to 1 hour, 15 minutes when using a 10W mains charger.

It has a MicroUSB port for charging

We used this headset to make a few calls and found it to be loud and clear even in noisy environments. Our callers did not realise that we were speaking to them using earphones, and liked the audio quality.

Verdict
The Blaupunkt Floatz offers good performance at an affordable price. These earphones are light and are comfortable enough to be worn for long durations. They can also be worn while working out. Call quality is good but battery life is where the Floatz could have performed better. If you are a heavy user, you will have to charge this headset often. Other than the battery life, we didn't have any complaints about the Blaupunkt Floatz, making it very easy to recommend at its price.

Price: Rs. 2,599

Pros

• Light and comfortable
• IPX7 water resistant
• Good mids

Cons

• Average battery life

Ratings (Out of 5)

• Design/ comfort: 4.5
• Audio quality: 3.5
• Battery life: 3
• Value for money: 4
• Overall: 3.5

Which are the best budget Bluetooth earphones and headphones in India? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.