Introduction
For some time now, both HMD Global and Rich Go have been producing Nokia branded earbuds.
My journey with the more recent Nokia earbuds started with Nokia BH-605 made by HMD Global,with its exceptional battery life. But there were some drawbacks, with the earbuds themselves being bulky and less comfortable for longer use.
Some time later, Rich Go started manufacturing Nokia branded earbuds which turned out to be one of the best earbuds I have had. The theme with Rich Go is simple, more for less. Each Rich Go made earbuds were simply outperforming HMD Global made earbuds at half the price.
The lackluster performance of BH-805, BH-205 and its likes, and the rising dominance of Rich Go earbuds made HMD Global to restructure their offerings.
This gave rise to the TWS series. And my experience with Nokia TWS-841, HMD Global’s flagship grade earbuds, have been simply blissful. The design is original, it looks futuristic, its made of comfortable material and you get to experience rich sound quality that can easily compete with any premium buds out there.
Nokia Clarity Earbuds 2 Pro
The Nokia P3600, made by Rich Go, is the benchmark reference earbud for comparison. And the Nokia Clarity Pro is the only bud that comes close, edge to edge in terms of clarity and quality.
So, when the Nokia Clarity Earbuds 2 Pro was announced, I was stoked to see what has been improved this time around, and if it offers something better.
The 2nd generation of the Clarity Pro series takes are more eco friendly approach. The package is made of 100% recycled paper and the the charging case is made of 70% recycled plastic.
It comes with Bluetooth 5.3, and improvement over the Bluetooth 5.2 from its predecessor. It also introduced Fast Pair, a cool new feature where a device is linked to your account for easy pairing with other devices that you have. A 13mm neodymium drivers replaces the 10mm of the previous one which should translate to louder audio output. It also features in ear detection, something that I am eager to test out.It has hybrid ANC and ENC which is supposed to be better and costs a lot more than the regular ANC. It also uses AI to enhance clarity of the conversation compared to Qualcomm cVc tech in the previous buds.
The rest of the features are fairly the same like IPX4 protection, wireless charging case and dual mic noise reduction.
However, there are some features that seems like a downgrade in general. For starters, the design. While the buds themselves are comfortable in ear, the departure from the original Clarity Pro design seems like a miss. The 2nd generation Clarity series looks similar to the Nokia E3500 that I have reviewed previously. The large blue ring light ,which could have been a signature design, now has been given the down sizing. Its there, but probably less intrusive. While I generally like the larger ring light, I have to admit, having a blue light breathing out of your ear canal in a dark room does looks weird. Despite having similar weight, the new earbuds have a smaller battery, 48mAh in each buds, compared to 60mAh in the previous one. So, this time around, the overall battery life is at 36h of usage which is 9h shorter than its predecessor.
You can catch my in-depth review here
The 2nd generation of the Clarity Pro buds are a step in the right direction for HMD Global. Being more eco friendly, having sustainable development as part of its core strategy, it is surprisingly good to see that the latest buds are now packing more tech than before! I do have a request from Nokia though. It is high time for them to have a dedicated app to fine tune their buds for personal likings, as they now have among the largest offerings of wireless earbuds in the market!
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