Oppo Enco W51 - Fantastic Budget TWS Earbuds With ANC

Truly wireless earbuds are a rage nowadays, everyone wants one and every brand has one in their product portfolio. Smartphone manufacturers are ditching the 3.5mm jack like we ditch the face mask when we get home. But as a buyer, TWS earbuds are expensive and there are a bunch of features that can only be had at the higher side of the price spectrum. While higher-priced TWSs do offer some great features its brands like Oppo are giving the buyers a great value for money option with the W51 TWS earbuds. At a price of Rs.4,999 the W51 offers a great price to feature ratio, we have used the w51 extensively in a variety of scenarios and this is our report.

Smartphone manufacturers are keen on building an “Ecosystem” of their products, Oppo is working on the same with their range of TWS and the fabulous new Oppo Watch. The W51 is one such product, Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) is the main selling point here. But in our usage we found these Apple Airpods lookalikes to have much more substance than we earlier imagined.

Looks

The Charging Case

Well, In white color, it sure does look like an Apple Airpods Clone, the charging case though is different and opens up in a clamshell design. The W51’s we received came in a white color variant but it's available in blue as well. The Charging case is squircle-shaped and small enough to be carried all day long in your pocket. The Case is also very minimalistic in design with small Oppo branding and a USB Type-C port. This is not all though, the W51s Case comes with Qi Wireless charging, this is an awesome feature at this price point. Inside the case, there is one button for pairing, etc, while the ear buds are magnetic and click securely into place. The case also shuts quite securely and we never found the buds falling out of the case opening up unexpectedly.

The Buds

The Buds, look a lot like Apple AirPods, but that aside, we found the build quality to be on the better side of things. The buds are all white but with a slight dash of chrome on the backside along with a tiny LED light. Both the earbuds come with touch-sensitive buttons for ANC on/off and other functions. Meanwhile, inside the box, you get multiple ear tips for best fit along with a small USB A to C charging cable. The Buds are lightweight but that comes at the cost of battery life more on that later.

Fit

Unlike the Apple Airpods, the W51’s fit securely in the ears. Walking, running or cycling did not displace the W51 from the ears. W51’s are also IP54 Dust and Sweat-resistant combined with the secure fit, it makes for a good workout companion.

Features

Now Oppo has loaded the W51’s with a lot of features, A few of the key features that we liked are as follows.

ANC

Active Noise Cancellation is the main selling feature of the W51’s, and they perform pretty well for the price. The W51’s come with 6 microphones all around and cancel out the majority of the sounds. Now obviously you get better noise-canceling as you move above in the price range. But the ANC in the W51’s is very usable and effective, Cancelling out low frequencies easily, while some closeby sound do creep in but on the whole, it works well. We did miss the lack of an Ambient sound mode where the earbuds could let in external sounds using the microphone. Double-tap on the touch-sensitive left earbud activates the ANC and a double-tap again disables it with a voice alert.

Wireless Charging

As mentioned earlier the charging case of the W51’s come with Qi Wireless Charging and this is a boon considering a lot of smartphones today also come with reverse wireless charging.

In-ear Detection or Wear Detection

We have seen a lot of TWS’s without in-ear detection, this we feel is a must-have in any TWS earbuds, The W51’s do come with In-ear detection, the music pauses instantaneously the moment you take out one of the earbuds from your ears.

Sound Quality

Music

Being sitting on a bunch of high-end TWS’s for review, I was not expecting much from a budget TWS from a brand which not into Audio Products. The W51’s though left us pleasantly surprised. The sound quality right out of the box is very good, with no eq settings whatsoever applied. The W51’s comes with 7mm drivers with 103dB @1KHz sensitivity and Bluetooth 5.0, codecs supported are SBA and AAC while AptX and LDAC are not supported. However the sound quality is pleasant, some amount of bass is lacking at higher volumes, also we found the max volume to be a little lower. Overall the sound quality is very good and rich, Rock, Hip-hop, Techno, Swing all genres of music were reproduced very nicely and we were impressed.

Call quality

The W51’s use 3 microphones for calling purposes, and while using them over zoom, skype, teams platforms, and even for normal phone calls the sound quality has been excellent. The incoming voice quality has been clear, reliable, and loud, while the people receiving the calls complained of a louder ambient noise while voice quality being good.

Sound quality over Video Streaming

Bluetooth headphones tend to have latency issues with video, none faced here with the W51 over youtube and OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime. We did face latency issues when used for gaming on mobile phones and PC, but that’s common with non-gaming BT headphones.

Battery

The earbuds are slim and lightweight with 25 mAh battery capacity and lasted roughly between 3-3.5hours of listening time, the charging case comes with 480 mAh battery capacity and lasts a long time, plus the wireless charging feature which I use a lot meant that the case was always fully charged.

Verdict 

A couple of things like a small lightweight footprint, great sound quality, easy and quick pairing process, and lastly the ANC that works decently, made the W51’s our go-to TWS buds in our day-to-day usage. Be it daily zoom calls, WhatsApp calls, Techno Tuesdays, Retro Wednesdays, or Throwback Thursdays the Oppo Enco W51 was always up for it without any fuss. If you have an Oppo Smartphone like the F17 Pro, you do get some extra features as well. Meanwhile, the wireless charging feature means I never had to connect the USB C cable. Overall I never expected this much while unboxing the W51, but after using it for a while now I am thoroughly impressed and for Rs 4,999 the W51’s are highly recommended if you can ignore the inspired Airpod Design.