A pair of budget wireless earphones, Wings Glide is a lucrative purchase for just Rs 1,199. The company has previously provided some quite efficient affordable audio solutions such as Wings Alpha, Wings PowerPods and others. Previously, we only tested the company’s genuine wireless earphones, and they were quite capable audio solutions for most budgets, so we were excited to test a wireless neckband-style earphones around this time. Let’s take a look at how Wings Glide Wireless Earphones worked in our review.

Construction and design

Wings Glide is a simple neckband-style design made primarily of plastic. While this makes the earphones look a bit plastic-key and cheap, the earphones are extremely light. Lack of weight is almost non-existent, so there are times when we actually forget that we are wearing wireless earphones. However, the earphones also feel a bit weak and we actually saw some reviews where the earphones suddenly stopped working. So, we advise you to handle these earphones carefully as they seem to be a bit more subtle. Inside the box, you’ll find a manual, two pairs of extra silicone tips, and a micro-USB charging cable.

The earphones have a matte-black finish and the earbuds themselves come with a smooth matte texture that feels good to the touch. The modules for wireless earphones are also lightweight and have three physical buttons on the left, an LED indicator and a charging port. The three buttons have a rubber texture and feel quite grippy. There is a nice touch click along with the buttons. The plus and minus buttons let you control the volume and search for tracks, while the middle multipurpose button helps to pause / play media, answer / reject phone calls, and call your voice assistant. Overall, the controls are simple and intuitive.

Coming to the wires that connect the neckband to the earbud, they are ordinary round wires, however, you can adjust their length with the plastic adjusters found in the neckband. Although we didn’t find this contraption very effective because the wires are already quite short, some users may find it useful with very short necks. Finally, earbuds are small, ergonomic and provide excellent fit between the ears (at least, according to our tests). We found that medium eartips fit us perfectly and provide a rather snag fit that enhances passive isolation. Earbuds are also equipped with magnets that attach two buds together while inactive around your chest, but their magnets are rather weak.

The fit of the earphones was so smooth that we often had to remove the earbud from the ear to listen to anyone around us which is really proof of the passive isolation capability. In addition, the comfortable fit allows you to wear these earbuds for hours on end. We also recommend these earphones for jimming and running because they can be worn a lot once you put them on, without any bad symptoms. The Wings Glide may not be the most aesthetically pleasing earphones you see, but it does provide great comfort and a great fit for a pair of budget wireless earphones.

Features

The wings have been shown solely to give a sense of proportion. It provides users with some basics, however, the cost means that users will not get privacy for the better features seen in other wireless earphones, although they are more expensive. The earphones are equipped with Bluetooth v4.2 instead of the latest version like v5.0 or v5.1. According to the company, it offers a wireless connectivity range of about 30 feet (without interruption). In our tests, the connection was decent, however, the connection was broken when we walked from a house to the front door (about 20 feet). Even so, owning one is still beyond the reach of the average person.

The Wings Glide is also equipped with an IPX4 rating which means it can easily shed any sweat while working out or running. It can also stop light rain, however, do not try to immerse these earphones in water. Earphones also support voice assistant integration. A long press on the middle button will call your phone’s voice assistant. Glide, unfortunately, does not support any additional Bluetooth codecs like AAC and aptX, only standard SBC codecs.

Regarding battery life, the company claims that the Wings Glide is capable of about 6 hours of play time. In our experiments, we get about 5 hours of play time with these earphones at 50 percent volume. The battery life of the Wings Glide is obviously weak these days, even real wireless earphones are equipped with more than 5-6 hours of juice and extra juice is provided in the charging case. Still, we won’t complain because these are budget wireless earphones. The earphones also get fully charged in about 2 hours, which is decent. However, they come up with a micro-USB charger instead of a Type-C, which is to be expected in the price, but having to carry multiple chargers for different devices is even worse.

Performance

Featuring a rather pleasant, warm sound profile, Wings Glide sounds good with multiple genres. It has a V-shaped sound profile that sounds pretty decent when listening to hip hop, pop and EDM music. The base is punchy and has a lot of drive, but some tracks like Another One Bites the Dust by Queen, the bass can be a bit overblown and can ruin the quality of the voice because there is quite a bit of audible masking, especially the lower middle fortunately, auditory masking is not very prominent. And untrained ears can go unnoticed. Also, the base doesn’t boom as much as we’ve seen on some other budget devices and overall sounds relatively pleasing.

The vocals, on their own, sound decent in these earphones. Mids are given a little less importance so voices can sometimes go behind other low and high-performing instruments, however, on tracks that focus on voices like Adele’s Hello, they are quite well represented. Earphones work much better with female vocals because that side of the frequency graph is not as isolated as the lower-mid (where male vocals are usually present).

The height is strictly decent. If you are someone who likes to turn on high volume, they can actually get a fairly tiny. Fortunately, it never screamed at volumes close to 100 percent. Nevertheless, sibilant sounds (S and T sounds) can sometimes sound harsh. The soundstage, as expected, is largely limited, however, the imaging is decent. While listening to Wings Glide you can guess the position of your head instruments quite accurately.

Coming to the media, earphones actually enhance the experience that can be gained through action movies, including the explosive ‘Booms and Thieves’. The latency is also very low and there is very little noticeable delay between audio and video. The quality of the call on the Wings Glide also pleasantly surprised us because the receiver could hear us quite clearly and unlike many budget wireless earphones the voice does not sound remote or cloudy.

The last row

Conservatively priced at Rs 1,199, the Wings Glide is actually a pretty tough budget purchase in the wireless earphone segment. If you are able to overcome the lack of features, Wings Glide features a decent build, comfortable fit and good sound quality. We especially liked the quality of the faucet and the ergonomic nature of the earbuds. So, if you are on a budget and prefer a warm sound profile, then Wings Glide may be the earphone you are looking for.