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Zolo Liberty+ Review
Hello,
Yes they contacted me and everything is sorted out.
Thank you and Merry Christmas.
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@nigelhealy, not an excuse. Version 1 Kickstarter shouldn’t mean no quality control.
Version 1 - you can have all the quality control and still have issues because… limits of human mind. You cannot test for all real world scenarios because customers have unique situations the designer never thought of. You also have a new production line which needs to debug, newly trained staff to test a new product.
There is also the limit of the buyer’s mind. For example, when I saw the Anker (not Zolo) Soundbuds Life, I thought it a clunky looking big product but I got gifted one for free and I found I liked it and use it most of any other prior audio product. I also got some Soundbuds Life+ and I love them so much my Bose QC35 don’t get used. I would not have predicted that.
Conclusion: designer and consumer both learning.
This product Liberty+ is version 2, the Liberty being version 1.
Version 3 is a good method - the designer has had multiple feedback, been surprised about customer feedback and adapted.
The Liberty+ I got gifted by Anker and I gifted to another and they really like them and I look at them and see room for improvement, making them smaller and/or better battery life.
My own personal prediction for these fully wireless buds is they shrink further and the feature of broadcasting inside the outside noise will be likely the “killer feature” where you keep the buds in your ears 24x7 and use them to augment reality. They will have AI and learn and will eventually act to protect you, they will alert you to threats via sensing sounds like approaching vehicles. Noisy rooms, noisy pubs, etc, all become enhanced vi filtering to what matters to you.
Hearing is handled in the human brain different to vision, it is a “lightweight” task and it is processed faster, so audio can be superior way to get response than vision.
The current habit of a pedestrian who has wired buds in and walks into a car or into a cyclist will then be gone.
The current habit of shouting in a noisy place, will be gone.
Hearing damage due to too-loud music to drown out ambient noise, will be gone.
We just need the tech to evolve.
4 Likes
Bluetooth 5 may have something to do with it. I am using with galaxy s8, Bluetooth 5. I have just successfully skipped through 25 songs using the right bud about 2 second press each time. pressing the left bud takes me back to the beginning of the current song and if I press it again quickly it takes me to the beginning of the previous song. seems to be working great with my device
@nigelhealy, then is even worse, because I have “version 2” as per your comment. One thing is to have a product that works and it would be improved. A totally different thing is to have a product to listening to music that is not working as expected and on top of that is not an isolated case. So, real quality control issues, IMHO missing basic quality control. This is not building a car with thousand moving parts, and I do not mean it is easy to design these things. BTW, I like your vision of the future. And, I keep been really DISAPPOINTED with the product.
1 Like
I have notice the same problem myself also after using for 1.5 month. Everything was great until now, my right ear piece volume is very low. Let’s say max volume is at 10, left ear piece is at 10 but right ear piece is only at 3.
I have email them but still no reply I am wondering what’s going on maybe they only have one man support team.
Any body else notice the same problem??
No problems with mine so far. I feel bad for you and other people with issues, I’m completely satisfied with my earbuds and have been showing it off to everyone.
I hope Anker can solve all your issues!
For me I would say buttons are affected as they do not respond as suggested…
Hi @Jacky_Yiu,
Thanks for your patient. Our customer representative will respond you today. Please don’t forget to check your email box and we will try the best to resolve the issue for you. 
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well they reply back with the normal troubleshooting but I am now requesting a replacement for my unit been waiting for a reply back since the 5th. Hopefully I will get a reply soon, I love your product and wont give up on you guys. But the wait for the CS is just amazing long.
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yes, mine have done exactly the same (right earpiece at minimum volume). not helpful as that’s the only one that takes voice calls.
i already have lodged a request for replacement as the left one has an annoying buzz in midrange.
so disappointed.
@tiagomota have you had any issues with yours since you got them? Mine started losing volume in the right earbud last week. I cleaned and reset with a battery drain, which initially did work but a day later it was almost a total volume loss.
I just emailed support and hope to get it resolved, but just wanted to see if you had any issues.I know a lot of others had issues and now having experienced it I see understand how frustrated they feel.
Funny you would say that, @elmo41683… I just did. Right unit lost volume, I’ve tried everything from draining the battery to deleting the device from my phone and reconnecting, but I still had some issues. The third time I did a battery drain I got some volume back, but still noticeably lower than the left unit. The funny thing is that everything else kept working - controls and even the mic during calls with no noticeable difference for the caller.
I believe there’s some issue regarding the right unit’s battery getting losing power faster than the left - maybe because it is the unit responsible for the connection? It wouldn’t explain why it didn’t happen from the start - I’ve used the Liberty+ without issue for more than two months, after all - but it’s the only reason I can think of.
I’ve contacted the Zolo support and they were quick to answer me. They offered me a replacement or a refund. I took the refund, but with a bitter taste because I loved the Liberty+ while it worked properly.
Dang they still haven’t replied back to me, probably because I got it from the gift box they sent me and didn’t pay for it
Zolo support messaged me back, but because I got it from the gift box and not from zolo I have to wait for the marketing team to get back. Hopefully I can get them fixed or replaced as they worked really good and help me get through the night at work
They are tempting me…Good Review -Thanks. I await my Liberty+ very soon. I would have liked some comments on Bluetooth 5. I have a Galaxy note 8 and will soon have a Galaxy S9+. Both of these devices support BT5 (unlike the over rated and under performing I-phone) I wait with interest to see if this works as well as the specs state. Regards Keithk1
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I use with s8 Bluetooth 5. See my r view here.
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@keithkitchener I’m not sure which iPhone you’re referring to when you infer they do not support Bluetooth 5(.0); both the iPhone 8 and X are fully BT5.0 compliant, supporting BLE with either 2X speeds or ‘Long Range’ modes (almost doubling range but halving the speed), just like newer Android phones.
As for ‘under performing’, I have had my Liberty+ buds for about 2 months, receiving them from the Kickstarter event, and I own an iPhone 7 and an iPad Air 2 (as well as an older LG and latest Fire HD8 tablets). Both Apples are slightly older devices using BT4.2 with BLE support. My experience with these buds and either the iPhone (iOS 11.2.6) or iPad (still running iOS 10) has been on the better end of the spectrum of user reviews I’ve read, both here, on Amazon and on Kickstarter. Occasionally the left bud will drop for just a half second, and sync back up quickly. I have co-workers with Bose, Anker, Jaybird and Apple true wireless buds and all have similar issues–except the Apple Airpod users. Those things just do not drop connection, but they do not fit my ears worth a dang. I’ll get to Bluetooth frequency issues in a minute…
Sound quality is very good. Not a match for my RHA MA750i wired buds, but darned close. I find that, if I don’t use the Zolo app, and let the buds run without the app’s EQ injection, they sound best. The EQ settings (only 5 presets) are either very mid-heavy and muddy, or are exactly the opposite and tinny and missing mids (even when using the “balanced” setting). They sound so good by themselves that I’ve deleted the app from my iPad, and I only turn on the iPhone app occasionally to look for firmware updates (of which I’ve not seen a single one in two months).
It has not been documented by Anker/Zolo, but with my RHAs the manufacturer begs in the manual to give the buds at least a few days of use (I found that about 8-10 hours were needed) to break in the drivers, before making any permanent decision to return the buds. Zolo needs this added to their manual; I found that the driver really needed to be broken in for about 24 hours of play over the course of a week to break in the driver and make it “smoother”, especially on the bass end. I think this has to do with keeping them warm in the ear canals, which eventually loosens any shipping/manufacturing oils.
But yeah, I’ve not had any complaints about the older Bluetooth 4.2 connection in my iPhone 7 or iPad as far as performance. I normally use Spotify Premium, and I cache files on my iPhone in the highest quality setting because I have a ton of storage (128GB). I also have a few “albums” stored in the Apple Music app, in 384Kbit VBR AAC and Apple Lossless (basically ZIPped FLAC), as they aren’t available in Spotify. No matter what I play, beautiful sound with these buds. I often use the Liberty+ buds and my iPhone 7 when I run or work out on my elliptical, and I’m a sensor junkie. I always run with a Garmin vivosmart HR, a Wahoo TICKR heartrate strap, and a Milestone Pod–all Bluetooth devices. When I ride my bike, I add a Wahoo REFLKT computer and cadence sensors to the mix. All of these devices paired take up a decent amount of bandwidth; adding streaming stereo buds to this is crazy, but they all seem to work together very well, without any degradation of sound quality. And this is all on Bluetooth 4.2, which has a theoretical max of 1Mbit/sec of bandwidth.
Call quality stinks, though, IMHO. Sound levels are way too low, and the choice of right ear for calls is problematic for me, as my left ear is my dominant one for voice frequencies. I’m OK with one bud, but I wish these buds would allow for a choice of which one I can use.
One note on Bluetooth performance: it’s EXTREMELY environment-sensitive! The more congested your local 2.4GHz spectrum is (remember, Bluetooth tap-dances in the 11-channel WiFi range in the US), the more you’re going to notice drops. I note that my left bud will drop far more frequently when I’m at work in the city, than when I’m listening at home in the country where I only have two other radios within range of my house. I’m in IT; I do spectrum analysis and heat maps for clients who are buying our network solution packages (primarily Meraki, Ruckus and Ubiquiti AP installs), and I can definitely see a correlation between 2.4GHz spectrum activity and earbud drops. For a decent overview of how wifi and Bluetooth try to share limited channel availability, see https://www.ecnmag.com/article/2012/03/wi-fi-and-bluetooth-coexistence
So, please try not to troll iPhone users unless you can fill your statements with device-use experience, at the very least. Don’t just go off what your buddies or the latest “hip” Android website throw out there for you to ape. It gets old fast. Just let us know how the Liberty buds work with your devices; that’s all we really want to know here. 
4 Likes