Sporting a cute clam style charging case and chic pastel colors, the new Edifier TWS NBQ revives the earbud market with a splash of color and style!


The TWS NBQ earbuds are equipped with 10mm dynamic drivers capable of loud volume (94dB sensitivity), clean vocals, clean treble and punchy bass sound. At medium volume (50%) and anc turned on, the TWS NBQ earbuds provide a battery life of 7 hours (and 9 hours with anc turned off). The charging case can store around 20 hours of power and provide between 2 to 3 extra charges for the earbuds. The TWS NBQ earbuds and charging case take 2 hours to fully re-charge. There is no quick charge support.

The TWS NBQ charging case is made of really smooth glossy plastic, which doesn't mark easily and, it's fairly grippy, although with sweaty fingers (IP54 rating) the charging case can be a bit slippery. The charging case lid has a slight protruding lip, which helps open the lid without issues. The TWS NBQ charging case lid uses a friction hinge and measurs 6cm long, 5cm wide and 2.5cm high. Both the lid and charging area are magnetic. The TWS NBQ charging case and earbuds have a similar weight to the TWS NB2 model - 42 grams the charging case and 6 grams per earbud.


The TWS NBQ earbuds have an oval-shaped long nozzle neck and the same grippy glossy plastic construction as a the charging case. Design wise, the TWS NBQ earbuds look a lot like the Edifier TWS NB2 earbuds with a thick v-shaped stem (3cm long). Because of the glossy finish, the TWS NBQearbuds can be slippery specially with sweaty fingers, these earbuds are difficult to pinch out of the charging case so, they have to be pushed out at an angle.


The TWS NBQ earbuds have three microphones per earbud - two active nosie cancellation (anc) microphones and one microphone for calls located at the tip of the stem, which perform adequately for casual calls. The mics have a fairly natural pickup and integrate noise cancellation, which cuts out ambient sounds but doesn't completely cutout background chatter, especially if it's very noisy. As far as anc performance, it is is on par with the TWS NB2, which is pretty good at cutting out various frequencies including voices of people talking, bass music and construction work.


The touch control panel is located on the front side of the stem, just below the mesh cutout,which houses the feedforward microphone. Aside from the call function, which is controlled via either earbud, the TWS NBQ touch control functions aren't mirrored on both earbuds, which means you have to remember, which earbud controls which function. For example, play/pause is activated via the right earbud only, while game mode is activated via the left earbud only. Each earbud controls a total of three functions, which are activated via a series of taps.


Touch control functions include calls (accept/end), listening mode (anc mode, ambient sound mode and game mode), play/pause and skip to next track. Volume and skip to previous track are not supported - just like on the NB2 Pro earbuds model. There is mobile app (Edifier Connect) support too even though there is no mention of app support on the user guide or packaging.


The Edifier Connect app is the same app that supports other Edifier earbuds including the TWS330, TWS NB2 and TWS NB.The Edifier Connect app is a very capable app with a nice user interface, showing battery level for each earbud. You can manually adjust the ambient sound sensitivity, enable/disable anc and ambient sound, adjust the touch control sensitivity, increase/decrease the volume level of the voice prompt and program sleep mode. Touch control remapping isn't supported on the TWS NBQ but, it's available on the TWS330 model. The Edifier Connect app doesn't have an equalizer built-in nor equalizer presets.


By default, the TWS NBQ touch controls are responsive but not overly sensitive, requiring a forceful tap on the earbud stem. Some earbuds (e.g. TWS1 Pro) have more sensitive touch controls, which only require a very light touch on the earbud, which is good if you don't like the tapping sensation of touch controls. One downside to overly touch controls though, it's that they can be activated accidentally. Fortunetly for the TWS NBQ, the touch sensitivity can be manually adjusted via the Edifier Connect app so, you can make it as sensitive as you want.


As far as bluetooth pairing, the TWS NBQ earbud pairing process is easy but, you have to manually intiate bluetooth pairing by pressing the R marking inside the charging dock area, which is actually a dual purpose physical button that also lets you check the battery level of the earbuds.The earbuds themselves don't have any leds. There is seamless transition from stereo to mono without the audio pausing and without any re-connection delay as the TWS NBQ re-connect instantanuously when taken out of the charging case.


The TWS NBQ bluetooth 5.0 chip only supports SBC codec. There is no multipoint connection support, no AAC or aptX support but, you can enjoy low latency video, thanks the TWS NBQ game mode feature, which reduces lag down to 80ms. When toggling between modes, you will hear voice prompts, indicating the mode mode. The volume also decreases, which allows you to hear the voice prompts clearly regardless of the volume level of the earbuds.


The TWSNBQ comes nicely presented inside a hard cardboard box that looks like a watch storage box. Silicone ear tips with oval shaped bore are included, as well as an unbranded USB-A to USB-C charging cable and a thin suedette drawstring pouch. You can buy the TWS NBQ from Edifier and Amazon. Check out the review of the Neobuds Pro dual driver.