Review: Audio-Technica ATH-CKS50TW2 Wireless Earbuds

As with all pocketable items, it's hard to keep track of the charging case for my earbuds—not to mention the buds themselves. I pop them in my ears and walk off. At some point I take them out and set them down without thinking about it. Then, when I need them next, I’m surprised to find the case empty. And when I do locate them, they’re often dead. Worst of all, sometimes the buds migrate away from each other between listens, so I’m left with just a left or a right.

That’s why I love the snap-together, magnetic connection that comes with the new ATH-CKS50TW2 earbuds. Between trips to the case, you can turn the buds off by just clicking the left and right buds together. You’ll never lose one or the other (or battery life between charges) again. That’s really helpful for this pair specifically, because they have more than 15 hours of battery life with noise canceling on. You might actually not want to take the case with you to recharge them for a day or two.

If you’re looking for a pair of noise-canceling buds in the AirPods price range, I think these are a compelling choice, especially if you’re as forgetful as I am.

Snap On

At first glance, these new buds look a lot like pairs that came out in the earlier days of wireless earbuds, when it was hard to pack all the modern conveniences into tiny packages. The bulky outer shell of the ATH-CKS50TW2 fully covers your ear canal on the outside when you put the buds in your ears, but the folks at Audio Technica have hidden a surprisingly comfortable bud beneath that bulk.

A long elephant trunk extends into your ear canal, with a soft silicone tip that seals it very comfortably from the outside world. Passive noise isolation is pretty solid, good enough for me to operate my myriad of Ryobi power equipment outside without turning ANC on.

The large exterior of these buds carries with it one awesome benefit: huge batteries. As I said earlier, you’ll get 15 hours of playback in the buds with ANC on (a whopping 25 hours with it off), and the included wireless charging case offers an additional 40 hours. That means up to 65 hours of playback in a pair of wireless earbuds, which is well over double what you can expect from the vast majority of competitors.

The included charging case has a see-through top that lets you see the two magnetically attached buds inside, which makes it easy for folks who might take out the buds and leave them outside the case between charges. This is especially important because with battery life this long, you might actually want to just click the earbuds together and set them down on occasion, rather than needing to hunt for the charging case between listens because of shorter battery life.

For this reason, I’m not super upset that the case itself is a bit larger than I’d like for daily pocketability. It’s about twice the size of an Airpods Pro case, which means you’ll likely want to leave it at home, or in the car, or in your gym bag, when you take the buds out with you. Still, the rounded edges are nice, and it fits just fine in jacket pockets and book bags, with enough heft that you can feel around and actually find it in the depths of your storage compartments.

IP55 waterproofing and multipoint pairing mean these are ideal work/life companions, where you can pair them to your computer for work and to your phone or watch for instant connections, without having to constantly mess with swapping between devices manually.

Another thing I’m happy about is the physical buttons included on the top of each bud when they’re in your ears. You can play/pause and adjust ANC settings via these buttons, and they’re way less easy to bump than the touch controls employed by so many earbud makers these days.

Sounding Off

A pair of 9-mm dynamic drivers were designed explicitly for these earbuds, and they are generally pretty well suited to most kinds of music.

Sound quality is warm and fuzzy, with a lower midrange warmth that makes them less tiring to listen to than many other buds. Songs like Son Volt’s “Mystifies Me” have a blanket of organic tape sound over them, with a bit of bloom in the lower end of the acoustic guitar that I don’t hear on all pairs.

It works better on some productions than others. I liked it on much acoustic music, but a recent version of “Seventeen” by Sharon Van Etten with Norah Jones gets a bit too forward in the kick drum and bass, leaving out a bit of the vocal detail that sits just above it on higher-end pairs.

Adjusting the EQ inside the associated Audio Technica Connect App to the Clear Vocal setting (you can also pick between Bass Boost, V-Shaped, and Treble Enhance, among others) worked well to solve this problem. The app also has controls for noise canceling and hear-through modes, and you can tailor an individual five-band EQ to your liking if you don’t like the presets.

The app is also where you’ll get software and firmware updates for the headphones, which easily install in a few minutes as long as the headphones are paired via Bluetooth.

Dual microphones on the earbuds mean that you’ll sound fine on calls, and the noise canceling quality is actually very solid, especially for buds in this price range. It’s nearly impossible to hear the clicks of my very bright-sounding mechanical keyboard with even low-level music playing, thanks to the excellent seal of the earbuds. HVAC noises all but disappear as well. You’ll get better reduction from the best of Apple, Bose, and Sony, but these hold their own with the vast majority of competitors this side of $250.

The weirdest part of these buds is a “Soundscape” function in the app, in which Audio Technica included “relaxing sounds of nature, a masking noise to help you concentrate, or sounds for meditation.” I’m not sure why I needed that in an app to control wireless earbuds, but sure.

As far as a pair of earbuds that sound decent, work awesome, and can take all that life throws at them (including the occasional misplacing of their charging case), there is very little to dislike about these. They work well, fit great, and have the longest battery life I’ve ever seen from a pair of wireless buds. For $150, that’s a solid deal.