Tribit MoveBuds H1

The Tribit MoveBuds H1, which retails for just under 90 euros, seems predestined for sports use. With their curved, ribbed diamond-flex style earpiece, the 10-gram earpieces fit securely behind the ear. Thanks to silicone earplugs with antibacterial additives in six different sizes, they fit into any ear canal. The plastic casing enhances the textured keypad, which operates a number of functions for streaming music and making phone calls.

In addition to said ear tips, the package includes a charging case with USB-C charging cable and a user manual.

Reasonably large, yet comfortable

The fact that the Tribit MoveBuds H1 are placed upside down in the case may be irritating at first. Fortunately, these in-ears are labelled, and Tribit explicitly points this out in the enclosed note. It takes a little practice to “thread” the MoveBuds H1 into the ear. But once you’ve got the hang of it, it’s quite easy, and the earpieces fit, staying put even with the most vigorous head movements.

The imposing 13-millimetre drivers demand space, resulting in a large housing. As a result, the headphones protrude slightly from the outer ear, but this does not cause any noticeable air turbulence. In addition, the driver body presses on the outer ear canal, which can be felt somewhat, but does not affect the wearing comfort particularly. The 10 grams per earpiece are not particularly noticeable, as part of this is at the expense of the bracket, which is cushioned by the fit around the ear.

With IPX8 certification, the MoveBuds are not only protected against sweat and rain but are completely waterproof. The earpieces can withstand swimming and even submersion. The control panels react very sensitively, even to a gentle touch, which means you don’t hear any annoying tapping noise, as you might recognise from conventional touch keys.

Marathon battery life and enormous range

After the MoveBuds H1 batteries have been resting in the case for 1.5 hours, the headphones will last up to 15 hours, depending on the volume. However, at three-quarters of the maximum volume, they only lasted about 10.5 hours in my endurance test. If the battery of one earpiece should give up sooner, you can continue to use only one earpiece while the other takes a short power nap in the charging case, which can last up to 50 hours. The case requires two hours on the mains for its full battery capacity.

Tribit relies on Bluetooth 5.2, which means that the connection between a smartphone and the MoveBuds H1 is only broken after about 115 metres in a car park, although the manufacturer itself states a range of only 10 metres.

App support for more settings

When the MoveBuds H1 are removed from the case, the earbuds signal their readiness for pairing via the device list in a smartphone using an LED and voice announcement. Alternatively, the earbuds can be connected via the downloaded app.

This first informs you about the current battery status in per cent. Further settings concern the transparency mode in two stages as well as four control modes with different function assignments of the tap buttons for pausing and skipping music, volume control, voice assistant activation and making phone calls. The Equalizer tab offers 25 sound pre-sets depending on your preferred music style or application and a Customised Mode with an EQ that can be raised or lowered by six decibels in the frequencies 31 Hz, 62 Hz, 125 Hz, 250 Hz, 500 Hz, 1kHz, 2 kHz, 4kHz, 8 kHz and 16 kHz.

Speech quality more suitable for short conversations

The four microphones built into the Tribit MoveBuds H1 use CVC 8.0 technology, which means that spoken words sound somewhat noisy and slightly muffled in quiet surroundings but are still quite intelligible. Disturbing noises are audibly filtered out by the technology. However, it darkens the voice even more, and the stability of the signal quality also suffers somewhat.

One of these headphones’ plus points is their transparency mode, which plays ambient noise through the microphone as if in two stages, so as not to make you feel cut off from the environment and also enable you to have face-to-face conversations without taking the earpieces out of your ear. In silence, however, you have to put up with an audible background noise, especially in Enhanced Transparency mode.

Sound according to need and preference

The app suggests 25 pre-sets, which can be defined by music styles such as “Jazz”, “Heavy Metal”, “Dance”, “Electronic”, “Rock” and “Blues”, but also by podcast or sound preferences (“Soft”, “Soft Bass”, “Soft Treble”, “Strong Bass”). “Default EQ Sound”, as the standard setting, audibly concentrates on the bass but neglects mids and treble, which costs the sound image points for details and brilliance. This is a problem when using the MoveBuds H1 with a laptop, as the app only works with a smart device, and the pre-sets cannot be selected via the control panels. When streaming via smartphone or tablet, however, the individual EQ setting options above 1 kHz should be exhausted in order to do justice to the higher-resolution reproduction thanks to aptX and AAC audio codec. This makes the songs sound much more homogeneous and transparent. Nevertheless, I missed the almost bitingly tinkling triangle in my often-played favourite test track, “Westchester Lady” by Bob James. The vocals of Röyksopp’s “Sordid Affair” also lacked the final polish that makes the song shine brightly in my ears. But if you don’t want highly brilliant highs but prefer a well-measured and cleanly reproduced bass in a well-arranged mix with mids and highs, you won’t find anything to complain about.

In terms of volume, the MoveBuds H1 are in the lower leagues. Despite full volume, I found the level to be quite audible but also sufficient. Fortunately, the drivers play along with this output without distorting the transients.