Boult Klarity 1 Review: Good Audio At Under Rs 1,000
Boult Klarity 1 tried to impress with ENC, an 80-hour battery life, economical design, IPX5-rated protection and Bluetooth 5.4
The affordable audio wearables market or hearables market is a tough one to crack. At this price point, the features that consumers look for are precise and even a slight deviation can result in a change of choice. That being said, I recently receive a pair of TWS earbuds that fits this description. This review is about the Boult Klarity 1 and here is my experience with it.
The earbuds have an hourglass design that doesn’t seem practical at first. It’s only when you use it that you realise that this design somehow works in terms of ergonomics.
The exterior is mostly glossy and as expected there are tell-tail signs of budget earbuds. The glossy silver finish suits the hourglass design of the earbuds. The case has an all-plastic build and it feels just as you’d imagine an all-plastic case of sub-1k earbuds to feel like. The differentiating factor here, however, is the hinge. It is quite good and works well. You even get a crisp and clean sound when shut the case. If you know, you know. The bottom half has a matte finish which complements the black theme of the whole package.
The earbuds themselves are IPX5 rated which means no protection against dust particles but solid resistance against water splashes, light rain and sweat.
On the audio front, the Klarity 1 was better than what I had expected (this seems to be a trend with Boult products now). The earbuds comprise 13mm drivers that do all the heavy lifting. The earbuds offer Bluetooth v5.4 support which is the latest in the industry at the moment. Hence, connectivity is not an issue at all.
The overall sound signature of the Klarity 1 is not the best and one shouldn’t expect it to be either. The bass is strong and so is the treble. Despite vocals not sounding the best in the Klarity 1 earbuds, it is not a dealbreaker for those who want an affordable TWS solution.
Boult’s Klarity 1 earbuds also offer touch controls. This is something that fascinates me a lot especially given the Rs 999 price tag of the product. A decade ago no one would have believed me if I told them that one day we would have wireless earbuds with touch controls costing under a thousand bucks. Circling back to the topic at hand, the touch controls are pretty standard, i.e., play, pause, skip forward, replay track/go backward, accept calls and reject calls.
An impressive feature of the Klarity 1 is that it supports multipoint connectivity too. Users can connect two devices simultaneously. As expected, this feature did not work as seamlessly as I wanted. There were many moments when the earbuds simply disregarded the calls on my phone while they were connected to the laptop.
Do not forget the quad mics which are supposed to do a great job at cancelling noise (Environmental Noise Cancellation) but do they actually? Not really. The ENC is decent at best if you are in a moderately crowded space. In a heavily crowded area, the ENC doesn’t work that well.
I did not specifically perform a battery drain test but upon opening the package, I charged it fully and used it continuously until the day it ran out of juice. The Klarity 1 can easily run for a period of a week and a half if you are an average office-goer.
Given the recent data from IDC that puts Boult as the third most selling hearables brand, it is clear that the brand is doing what it can to cater to the lion’s share of the Indian consumer tech market. The Klarity 1 TWS is a great example of this endeavour.
Noise cancellation, sweat resistance, Bluetooth v5.4 and up to 80 hours of runtime all come together and present a product that just fits in the market. The Klarity 1 offers an extremely affordable option for people who are just looking for good audio quality without shelling out loads of cash. At just Rs 999, this product checks all the necessary boxes and offers a concoction of features that proves to be a win-win for the user as well as the manufacturer.
