I promise you that I don’t engage in pure unfettered foolishness just because I’m comfortable in life. And yet, here we are doing a product review of Raycon’s E55 True Wireless Earbuds. Raycon is, of course, an electronics brand by one William Raymond Norwood Jr. also known as The Artist Formerly Known as Hey Waitaminute Ain’t That Brandy’s Brother, but presently known as Ray J, one of the most interesting people in the world.
According to Raycon’s website, the brand currently sells earbuds, headphones and speakers. The Scoot-E-Bike’s are not currently available on the site, nor are the amazingly unbreakable breakable branded glasses that launched a thousand jokes and memes. Also, if you haven’t watched the video, it’s worth your time because Ray J does not disappoint.
So, how did we get here? Despite being an unapologetic fan of Ray J—I will never apologize for being a fan of entertainment. Ray J is entertainment personified—I did not buy these earbuds purely because of any fandom for Ray. Also, be very clear: I purchased the earbuds; this is not a sponsored review by any means, measure or melody. I’m an audiophile, but one with some fiscal limitations. I’m not about to spend $1,000 on a pair of headphones or earbuds to maximize my sound experience. I have purchased more than one pair of $300-plus headphones (Beats By Dre, Bose, Audio-Technica, etc.) largely because I do a lot of recording and I need proper headphones in order to make sure I deliver the output in the best way possible. I have also purchased several pairs of earbuds.
Well, my wife’s Apple AirPods are acting a plum fool for some odd reason. Her right Pod (is this what you call a singular one?) stopped working. I was going to gift her my current pair and cop a new pair of Apple AirPods, which I think are just fine soundwise but fall short in the fit and have a propensity to fall out of the ear if you do too much moving. At that point I was like, you know what, I’ve heard lots of good things about Ray J’s earbuds. So I went to the googles and pulled up several reviews of his E25 headphones (he has two earbuds, the E25 and the higher-end, more expensive E55) and every single review I saw had nothing but positive things to say about both the fit and, more importantly, the sound. Particularly, the low end was lauded.
Was I about to buy a pair of Ray J’s earbuds? Is this true? Of course, it is. Of course, I did. Here’s why (before we get into the actual review): the price point is insane for earbuds/headphones that are supposed to be good on the sound. The Apple AirPods start at $159 and the new AirPods Pro start at $249. Beats By Dre’s highest-end earphones (what they call earbuds) start at $249. The lowest end is $59.99 but the descriptions barely even mention sound; that pair is clearly for somebody who wants Beats but doesn’t care about sound at all. Bose also has a pair of $249 high-quality earbuds. That’s apparently a popular price point, specifically for noise-canceling joints.
Raycon’s E25 starts at $79.99 and the E55’s are $99.99, more than half off for the high-end. I purchased the E55’s on a Black Friday deal and got them for $79.99. I decided to take a shot; plus, love or hate him, Ray J is a black business owner and I try to bet on black whenever possible. I placed my order on Monday, Dec. 2, and on Saturday morning, Dec. 7, my Raycon E55 earbuds were sitting at my doorstep. On the website, you can order them in one of six colors (black, white, gold, blue, red or pink). I purchased mine in red, which according to the website, is now sold out. There will be a lot of sad Bloods running around this Christmas.
As a quick point of note, I will not be comparing the E55’s to all the earbuds on the market; I will tell you my thoughts on them in somewhat of a vacuum with very light comparisons to other brands I use.
The box says that the earbuds are “Easy to Pair” and they aren’t lying. They literally paired immediately to my iPhone (put a pin in this, it becomes a slight issue later). In today’s microwave quick world, pairing that takes time, which is not really an issue, is a minor annoyance. This alleviates that from jump.
What’s that I hear??? There goes Ray J’s voice singing in like 12 layers, “Raycon.” Yes, if you always wanted to hear Ray J’s voice, it shows up immediately singing to you the name of the brand. I cannot stress to you how hard I laughed at this when I first heard it. My literal first words were, “This nigga.”
But here’s the important stuff: How does the sound stack up? Well, it’s fucking phenomenal. Especially considering they’re $100 (or less) earbuds. It’s good sound period, definitely better than the AirPods, which I think actually have good sound, and legions better than my Beats By Dre earbuds, which disappointed me so much I literally gave them away without concern for the money—the Beats By Dre headphones, however, are a different, wonderful monster.
I’m a hip-hop head, so I figured the best way to determine just how good the sound is was to pull a bunch of songs that I’ve always felt had a good representation and mix of sounds. My first go-t0 song was Kanye West’s “All Of The Lights” from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. If you know this song and are into mixing and sound, you get it. This song is amazeballs in how it’s mixed and how many voices and sounds it layers. And the E55s handled the shit out of this song. The low end is phenomenal, but it does a really good job of catching what sounds like a studio mix of the record. After that, I was more than a little impressed. I ran through several A Tribe Called Quest songs (“Check The Rhime,” “Lyrics To Go,” “We Can Get Down,”) Beyonce (“Flawless,” “7/11,” “Countdown”), Phyllis Hyman (“The Answer Is You,” “Be Careful”), Nicole Bus (“With You”), Future (“Trap Niggas”), Rihanna (“Work,” hell, all of ANTI) and others. I even checked them out on Ray J’s catalog since, well, if they sucked on his catalog I couldn’t endorse them no matter how good they sounded with other shit and “I Like to Trick” sounds better than ever. Good job, Ray J. Good job.
The sound was solid on all of them. My guess is that unless you are an absolute sound snob, the E55s are as good a choice as you can get, especially at the price point. They sound good, they never fall out, and they look pretty cool, fitting entirely in the ear and are not super noticeable.
Since I opened the package on Saturday morning, I’ve used them exclusively to take calls and to listen to music both inside the house and outside and I’ve been more than pleased with the sound and haven’t charged them once yet; they seem to have come fully charged. Definitely enough to highly recommend the E55s to anybody looking to cop a new pair of earbuds either for yourself or as a gift for the holiday season. Almost all of the E25 reviews are super glowing. They rate really well and I totally understand why.
My only issue, like I mentioned before, was that when I wanted to switch the pairing from my phone to my computer, it took a lot longer than I think it should have. They seem so hellbent on pairing to the last paired-device that you have to damn near fight with them to disconnect one device in order to pair to another. I almost had to, like, beat the headphones to click to the new device. A small, but nonetheless, annoying annoyance.
So yeah, I highly recommend the Raycon E55 headphones. For all of his shenanigans, it seems like Ray has done a good with the technology end of his branding. And no, since I know you’re going to ask, I did not try to break them—for the love of Ray J, everything breaks.
But regarding the E55s, thumbs up. Shawty got gifts.