A year and a half ago, there were only a smattering of noise-cancelling true wireless earphones, but in 2021, it seems like every other pair we test combines a wire-free design with active noise cancellation (ANC). At $299.95, RHA’s TrueControl ANC earphones are priced to compete with the $250 Apple AirPods Pro and the $280 Bose QuietComfort Earbuds. To justify being more expensive than our top two picks, RHA needs to deliver better performance in either the audio or noise cancellation departments—ideally both. While the TrueControl ANC earphones are strong on both fronts, the price ultimately feels high.
Plenty of Fit Options
The TrueControl ANC’s bulky but lightweight black earpieces stay in place quite well. They ship with a generous array of eartips, an RHA tradition. There are seven total pairs of silicone eartips in various sizes, and an additional three pairs of coated foam eartips in small, medium, and large.
On-ear controls are divided between the touch-sensitive surfaces on each earpiece. A quick tap on either controls playback and answers calls, while a swipe forward or backward on the left earpiece skips forward or backward a track, and on the right earpiece, the same motion raises or lowers volume. Two taps on the left earpiece cycles through the various ANC modes, including on, off, and Ambient. There’s also Quick Ambient mode, in which pressing the left earpiece’s outer panel pauses your music and immediately goes into Ambient mode, while releasing your finger ends Ambient mode and resumes playback. RHA doesn’t leave anything out here, and the controls are relatively easy to operate.
Like the AirPods Pro and countless other recent entries in the true wireless realm, the TrueControl ANC earpieces have an IPX4 rating, meaning they can withstand light splashes, some rain and sweat exposure, and being wiped down with a damp cloth. Don’t submerge the earpieces, however, or clean them under the faucet.
The black charging case is pretty large and shaped a bit like an old-fashioned mailbox, but its lid swivels back to the side, revealing the charging stations for the two earpieces. It’s possible to dock the earpieces and not have the LEDs register that they’re docked, which is less common now than it was in the early days of true wireless tech, so make sure you see the status LED for both earpieces aglow, or you may not be charging them. There’s a USB-C port on the rear panel for the included USB-A-to-USB-C charging cable.
The RHA Connect App for Android and iOS offers customizable control settings, so you can assign various functions to be controlled by swipe gestures, for instance. It also has EQ presets, but they are unfortunately not adjustable (you can only select presets like Bright or Wam), which is a missed opportunity, especially in this sky-high price range. Beyond that, you can switch the ANC on and off in the app, and you can adjust the volume level of Ambient mode
The earphones are compatible with Bluetooth 5.0 and support AAC, AptX, and SBC codecs. Internally, 6mm drivers deliver a frequency range of 10Hz to 20khz.
RHA estimates battery life to be roughly five hours, with the charging case holding up to 15 hours, but your results will vary with your volume levels and your ANC usage. These numbers (for the earpieces) are more or less average in the realm of true wireless battery life, but the charging case is on the large end of the scale, so you’d hope for some extra battery capacity than it actually delivers. That said, the ability to charge it wirelessly on Qi pads is a plus.
Solid Audio and Noise Cancellation
The TrueControl ANC earphones deliver relatively strong noise cancellation, which feels like it comes as much from the large earpieces passively blocking sound as it does from the circuitry. They cut out a solid amount of low-frequency rumble, comparable with the Apple AirPods Pro, but not as powerful as the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds. Mids and highs tend to make their way through the TrueControl ANC’s circuitry a little bit more easily.
There’s a very slight, audible hiss, but you can only hear it in a quiet room when no music is playing, and it’s so faint it’s hardly worth mentioning. Ambient mode provides a solid way to hear your surroundings, and in the app, you can raise and lower the volume of the mics. Generally speaking, this is very good ANC, just not the best.
For audio performance, we tested the earphones in neutral EQ mode. On tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” they deliver powerful bass depth, and at top, unwise listening levels, they don’t distort. The lows aren’t over the top, however, and the highs are nicely balanced.
Bill Callahan’s “Drover,” a track with far less deep bass in the mix, gives us a better sense of the TrueControl ANC’s general sound signature. The drums on this track can sound overly thunderous on bass-forward in-ears, but here they sound powerful, round, and heavy without veering into unnaturally boosted territory. Callahan’s vocals get a solid helping of low-mid richness, and there’s plenty of high-mid crispness providing contour and detail to the vocals, acoustic strums, and higher-register percussive hits. If there’s a lean here, it’s toward the low-mids—things sound richer than they do bright, despite there being solid high-frequency definition.
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On Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “No Church in the Wild,” the kick drum loop receives enough high-mid presence for its attack to maintain its punchiness, but it’s the higher-frequency vinyl crackle and hiss that we notice stepping forward in the mix slightly. The loop also gets some extra low-mid thump, while the sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the beat are delivered with solid depth, but not the in-your-face subwoofer rumble you might get from some seriously bass-forward in-ears. The vocals on this track are delivered with solid clarity—there’s perhaps a smidge of added sibilance here and there, but generally speaking, the vocals hold up well against the slightly more powerful presence of the lows and low-mids in the mix.
On orchestral tracks, like the opening scene from John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary, the lower-register instrumentation takes a step forward in the mix—it doesn’t sound bad, but it does sound boosted in a way those looking for accuracy might not love. The higher-register brass, strings, and vocals retain their bright presence in the mix, but there’s an undeniable boost in the lows and low-mids that adds some depth to the recording. Overall, the balance between lows and highs is solid enough, but the low-mids sound a bit more dialed up than other aspects of the range. It’s a warm sound signature with solid high-frequency definition.
The mic offers solid intelligibility. Using the Voice Memos app on an iPhone, we could understand every word we recorded cleanly and clearly. There’s definitely a little Bluetooth distortion in the mix, as is usually the case with true wireless mics, but the signal is strong and callers should have no issues understanding you on a clear mobile connection.
Priced a Little Too High
RHA’s TrueConnect earphones deliver strong audio performance and noise cancellation, but at $300, they aren’t markedly better in either category than the Apple AirPods or the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds, both of which are a bit less expensive. Their companion app has (limited) EQ and some useful customizable controls, and the earphones ship with a wide array of eartips, but ultimately, you can get better ANC and similar audio performance for less money from Apple and Bose. And if all of these options are more than you’re looking to spend, the Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro earphones offer surprisingly good sound quality and noise cancellation for just $130.
