UE Fits Hands-On Review: Comfort Above All

The first thing you notice when you open the box is the unusual shape of the UE Fits. They look like tiny plastic batons. If you can make your peace with that shape from an aesthetics point of view, there are several benefits to the design.

The sticklike shape makes them super easy to grab. This helps with getting them in and out of their charging case and, more importantly, in and out of your ears.

Having a stem that protrudes from the bottom places the microphones just a little closer to your mouth, which should, in theory, deliver better call quality. Finally, they offer a larger surface area for tap controls.

The charging case lacks a wireless charging option, but it has a smooth, rounded profile that’s just small enough to be pocketed. There’s no LED indicator on the outside, so you’ll need to open the case or check the UE Fits app to see whether it’s fully charged.

So how about their marquee feature, the customized fit? Let me start by saying that even before I went through the very short process that adapts the eartips, I knew these were going to be super-comfortable earbuds.

Unlike virtually every other set of true wireless earbuds you can buy, the UE Fits don’t rely on a round or oval flared silicone sleeve to seal your ear canal. Instead, their eartips aren’t “tips” at all. They cover the entire portion of the earbud that sits in your ear, effectively sealing your ear canal without exerting any pressure on the ear canal itself.

The UE Fits are pleasingly balanced and offer good bass response. Out of the box, the sound signature is a little on the flat side, but there are lots of EQ presets in the UE Fits app that let you tweak the sound considerably, including the ability to add your own custom EQ adjustments.

With a bit of fiddling, I was able to get a really satisfying and punchy mix that worked well with plenty of music genres, like pop, hip-hop, rap, and even some vocal-centric jazz.

The UE Fits don’t have active noise cancellation, but because of their excellent fit, I found the passive noise isolation was more than enough to keep loud external sounds from interfering with my music and podcasts.

Unfortunately, the Fits don’t have a transparency mode either, so it can be hard to have a conversation unless you pull out an earbud. Likewise, when on phone calls, it can be hard to hear your own voice.

UE claims eight hours per earbud and a total of 20 hours when you include the charging case. That total time might not be much to brag about, but eight hours between charges is very good — much better than the AirPods’ five hours. A 10-minute quick charge will give you an extra hour of playtime.

You get the option of a single- or double-tap for each earbud, and the UE Fits app lets you pick from several options for each of these gestures, including play/pause, track skip forward/back, and volume. You can trigger your phone’s voice assistant, but this is only accessible from the double-tap gesture. You can use each earbud independently if you want.

These tap gestures are my least favorite part of the UE Fits. The earbuds seem to really struggle to recognize the tap sequences consistently. Double-taps were better recognized than singles, which were hardly ever recognized. I reached out to Ultimate Ears to figure out why this was happening, but the company’s reps could only suggest that I should check for the latest firmware (which the Fits were already using).

Calling using the UE Fits was acceptable. They struggled to cancel out loud sounds, but that’s true of a lot of wireless earbuds. As I mentioned above, the lack of transparency or side-tone features was a bigger problem for me than the actual quality of the calls.