Beyerdynamic is practically royalty in the headphone world, but the Free Byrds are the company's first true wireless earbuds. A latecomer to the premium earbud category, Beyerdynamic needed to start strong with highly competent, premium noise-canceling earbuds if it wanted to live up to its own reputation, especially with a $250 price tag

While the Free Byrds aren’t a lock for the best premium noise-canceling true wireless buds, they’re impressively close for a first attempt. While I'd gladly daily them, they aren’t the earbuds for anyone who wants the absolute best in noise-canceling. They have a battery life of up to 11 hours, excellent audio quality thanks to Beyerdynamic’s expert tuning, and aptX Adaptive to support higher res tracks than what Spotify or YouTube Music are limited to.

If you’re shopping for buds based on sound and build quality, the Free Byrds are a very compelling option.

The Free Byrds are the first wireless earbuds from Beyerdynamic, but they sound competent enough that you'd never have guessed. They have battery life that's hard for the competition to match, with the same sound tuning that makes Beyerdynamic's over-ear headphones so popular. While the ANC isn't as good as some other buds in the same price range, it's still decent.

Specifications
  • Battery Life: 11 on one charge, up to 30 with the case
  • Supported codecs: aptX adaptive, aptX HD, AAC, SBC
  • Bluetooth: 5.2
  • IP Rating: IPX4
  • Solo bud mode?: Yes
  • Driver Size: 10mm
  • Charging type: Yes
  • Weight: 7g each bud, 60g case
  • Dimensions and weight (case): 43 x 68 x 30 mm
  • Charging Port: USB-C
Pros
  • Great build quality
  • The same excellent sound Beyerdynamic is famous for
  • 8 pairs of included ear tips
  • In-ear detection
  • Fast Pair
  • 2-year warranty
  • Low latency gaming mode
Cons
  • Autopause takes a while to activate
  • Occasional phantom touch inputs
  • Buds are a little hard to get out of the case
  • Controls in solo bud mode are a little wonky
  • Unclear if replacement foam tips will become available
Buy This Product
Beyerdynamic Free Byrd
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Beyerdynamic Free Byrds: Design, hardware, what's in the box

Like many of Beyerdynamic's wired headphones, the Free Byrds include a stylistic bar that serves as the touch target for your controls. Although the Free Byrds are a little chunky by modern standards, this size makes it easy to hit the touch target.

The controls are about as easy to remember as the touch target is to hit. Single tapping either bud is play/pause, and one long-press summons your assistant (or Alexa if you enable it in Beyerdynamic's MIY app). Two taps of either bud will cycle you between ANC and transparency modes (you have to use the app if you want to turn off both options, though), and a single tap followed by a long-press will decrease or increase the volume if done on the left or right bud, respectively. Three taps on the left bud goes back a track, while three taps on the right bud skips forward.

Call settings are just as easy. Tap either bud to answer or long-press to reject. If you're in solo-bud mode, the controls don't change, so you'll have to use assistant commands to pick up the slack while your other bud is charging.

How do they fit?

Despite the chunkiness of the buds, they fit comfortably in the ear without rubbing and aren't heavy enough to cause any discomfort in the ear canal, even after ten-plus hours of listening. The ear tips have some decent length and give plenty of distance from the speaker grille to the tip of the bit, which helps prevent wax from getting into the buds.

Speaking of wax, the Free Byrds and the charging case have very few tight spaces, making them easy to clean. It also makes it easier for wax to get in, but that's bound to happen no matter how diligent you are with a Q-tip.

It's pretty standard for earbuds to come with a selection of bud bits to accommodate different diameter ear canals and fitment preferences, but Beyerdynamic has taken this to the extreme. The Free Byrds come with five silicone bud bits sizes, plus small, medium, and large foam tips. As someone who regularly forks money over to Comply for its third-party memory foam earbud tips, this inclusion is much appreciated.

Foam tips usually wear out and need to be replaced regularly, though, and Beyerdynamic doesn't carry any replacement bud bits, unfortunately. Unless that changes, you might have to go back to the (still good) silicone bud bits or give Comply a few dollars occasionally to support your luxurious lifestyle of foam listening.

Continuing the trend of bucking norms, Beyerdynamic doesn't pre-install bud bits. It's not hard to put the tips on, so it's not much of an inconvenience. Still, I can't think of any other earbuds on the market that don't have pre-installed tips, especially since the Free Byrds come with Fast Pair. The last thing Beyerdynamic tucked away in the relatively large box is a USB-C cable with a nifty 90-degree connection on the Type-C end. Not totally needed, given the wireless charging, but an appreciated inclusion.

All about the charging case

The charging case is a little thick compared to buds like Apple's AirPods Pro, but it's not unusually large. You'll definitely have a noticeable lump in your jeans pocket, but nothing bizarre. Around the back of the case are the Type-C charging port and the impressively sturdy metal hinge.

The hinge opens slightly over 90 degrees with virtually no lateral play and contributes to the excellent overall build quality. It's perfect for people like me with ham fists and sausage fingers since the buds have a fairly low profile while they're in the case. The case has cutouts next to the buds to help you get a finger under them for easier deployment, and I'm just a little too sausage-fingered to benefit from that, but most people should be fine.

While most manufacturers tuck a Qi charging coil away on the largest side of the case, that's where Beyerdynamic put the USB-C port. Even though it's the smallest flat face to be found here, you wirelessly charge the case through the bottom.

I had zero issues with this, so the size and location aren't a problem at all. With the super-extended battery life, the size of the buds themselves, and the wireless charging, it's not surprising that the case would feel so substantial, even though it's made of plastic.

Beyerdynamic Free Byrds: Sound quality, features, battery life

Compared to Sony, Sennheiser, and even Apple, Beyerdynamic falls slightly behind in active noise-canceling. The passive noise isolation does most of the heavy lifting, with the massive variety of bud bits making it easy to get a comfortable fit without letting in extra noise. Transparency mode is good at pumping people's voices in without much else in the background. The ANC does an excellent job of eliminating droning sounds like AC and fan noise, but it doesn't keep out sounds like barking dogs or car horns. Your neighbor's weed whacker is no match, though.

I spent the better part of an hour behind the handlebars of my two-stroke tiller and was perfectly content. The ANC isn't bad by any stretch — the competition is just very stiff. Additionally, Bose just set a new high bar for ANC in the premium true-wireless earbud space. The Free Byrds were already behind, and it looks like Beyerdynamic will have even more catching up to do with its next premium ANC earbuds. They're outstanding in every other category, but in this price bracket, anything shy of excellent is a potential deal-breaker.

Free Byrds' sound feels on par with the other players in the $250-ish premium earbud space. The bass is pleasantly thumpy without muddying the sound; vocals and instruments come through nice and clear, and the high end sounds nice and bright. Anyone familiar with Beyerdynamic's wired headphone tuning and signature sound profile probably has a pretty good idea of how they sound.

The Free Byrds' call quality is nice and clear. It isn't surprising to hear that incoming call quality, given how they fare with music. It's also worth mentioning that the mic quality is high enough that I never have to repeat myself, thanks partly to the Qualcomm cVc (clear voice capture) support. Similar to how ANC works, cVc uses algorithms to cut out background noise and echoes to make your voice come through as cleanly as possible.

Battery life and charging time

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It's easy to zone out and lose track of time with the Free Byrds in. Fortunately, since they're relatively fast at recharging, it's not a big deal when your uptime hits double digits, and the battery is low. If stereo listening is a must, taking a ten-minute break from your tunes will net you a smidgen over an extra hour of listening. If you opt to listen in solo-bud mode, it won't take long for you to build back several hours of battery life by swapping out buds periodically.

I doubt this will come up often, though. I was able to consistently hit within a few minutes of the stated 11-hour life with the ANC turned off and closer to the nine to nine and a half hour range with ANC or transparency on. Compared to Google's Pixel Buds Pro, this is a significantly smaller drop in battery life, netting about two extra hours of ANC on a single charge.

If you want to milk the battery for all it's worth, you will have to go through Beyerdynamic's app. It's not all bad having the app, though. It's got plenty of nice-to-have features and even stats like "Total Listening Time" for dorks like me, so I can show my friends that I listen to an average of an entire day of music per week.

How's the app?

One of the main reasons to get any earbud-specific app is to fiddle with the EQ for a more personalized listening experience. Plenty of earbud apps have a built-in EQ you can muck around with manually, but Beyerdynamic's MIY (Make It Yours) app combines Mimi and its MOSAYC software to give you a hearing test that will set a sound profile specific to your hearing.

After two minutes of listening for a beeping sound as it fades in and out under white noise, the app creates a sound profile to boost frequencies you're less sensitive to. This feature is separate from the EQ, which you can manually adjust to your taste afterward, and it's one of the most unique features I've seen in earbuds.

My test results were pretty solid; if your hearing changes down the road, or you think you can do better in a second test, it's easy enough to retake. If you're like me, and you've been to plenty of shows without hearing protection, you might be surprised just how much the hearing test will bump up certain frequencies.

Beyerdynamic Free Byrds: Should you buy them?

The Free Byrds are a great choice if you prioritize sound quality over noise-canceling. The active noise-canceling is decent but decent might not be enough for you when similarly priced buds have excellent ANC. The sound quality lives up to Beyerdynamic's typical standard that made the company so esteemed in the audiophile world. Plus, the little touches like the choice of eight pairs of bud bits make it incredibly easy to get a comfortable fit and impressive passive noise isolation.

If the best ANC possible is just a nice-to-have and not a must-have, Beyerdynamic's Free Byrds are hard to beat. With as much as 11 hours of life on a single charge, up to 30 hours total with the charging case, and Beyerdynamic's famous audio quality, you can get excellent music all day long with plenty of battery to spare.

Buy it if…

  • You want more battery life than you can shake a stick at
  • You're already a fan of Beyerdynamic's headphone tuning, or prioritize sound quality over noise cancelation

Don't buy it if…

  • You need top-tier ANC, sound quality be damned
  • You have trouble fitting larger earbuds in your ears

FAQ

Q: How do the Beyerdynamic Free Byrds compare to the Sennheiser Momentum TW 3?

Sennheiser and Beyerdynamic are both giants in the premium over-ear headphone space, but the extra few years experience with TWS buds Sennheiser has makes it very hard to call the Free Byrds universally better. It's impressive that Beyerdynamic trades blows with Sennheiser with its first attempt in the category, with the biggest win being more battery life with ANC on than the Momentum TW 3 have with it off.

With the case included, Sennheiser still falls a couple of hours behind in total battery life, but it seems like that extra couple years has given Sennheiser plenty of time to fine-tune its ANC, which goes well beyond what the Free Byrds can manage.

Sennheiser also has a hearing-based EQ tuning feature called Sound Check in its app, but unlike Beyerdynamic's, it doesn't automatically set it for you, and instead gives you suggestions to the EQ profile, while Beyerdynamic has a sound profile created for you that's separate from the EQ, making it easier to change the EQ for different listening scenarios without altering your adjusted listening profile.

Q: How do the Beyerdynamic Free Byrds compare to the Sony WF1000-XM4?

Sony has some of the best ANC available, so it isn't surprising that it beats the Free Byrds there. The WF1000-XM4 also has an extra hour of battery without ANC, but falls behind by about an hour once it's turned on. The XM4s have an MSRP $30 over the Free Byrds, but finding them on sale for about the same price isn't unheard of.

The Free Byrds also have a much larger 10mm driver compared to the 6mm driver found in the XM4s. Both come with foam ear tips and a case that charges wirelessly, but the LDAC codec the XM4s has support for higher bitrate audio than the aptX Adaptive codec the Free Byrds is capable of.

That difference is barely noticable, especially since aptX Adaptive is more than capable of Spotify's max bitrate, but lossless music subscribers may insist on the extra bitrate boost LDAC allows for.