The "Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders" vs ROG5 Preview: Branded vs Original

Audio - MW08S ANC Earbuds in the Package 

The Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders comes with a pair of ANC TWS earbuds in the package. Due to their commercial value of $299 and the high price tag of $1499 for the whole package, the review wouldn’t really be complete without a more in-depth investigation into the audio department.

As a preface, Qualcomm has warned us that the samples we’ve received do not contain the newest “Snapdragon Sound” advantages such as higher bit-rate audio or higher quality voice. However as these are generally codec-related aspects of the earbuds, and we’re note really expecting changes to the fundamental sound signature and ANC performance of the units, we should still be able to review them as-is.

Originally manufactured by Master & Dynamic, the MW08S come in Snapdragon branded variants in the SSI package. The earbuds are characterised by their distinctive design and “D” shape. Though the branding is extremely visible and notable, it’s not so much different than the original MW08’s (besides the black variants).

The size of the earbuds is quite reasonable and they fit well in my ear – however the only real quirk with them I found is that the earbuds did not insert as deep as I’m accustomed, and I felt they were more loose than other designs. Although they kept into my ears, because of this always had a bit of paranoia of them falling out.

The pairs come in what I consider a quite large and heavy battery case. Although the buds themselves are still reasonable at 9g each (Airpods Pro: 5.4g, WF-1000XM4: 7.3g), the metal case is just massive at 81g (Airpods Pro: 45.6g, WF-1000XM4: 41g). The actual case with the earbuds inside weighs a whopping 98.5g, which is definitely noticeable in your pocket.

The earbuds can be controlled by M&D’s “Connect” app. It’s a pretty straightforward interface, and allows one to tune various ANC settings as well as the power off timer for the units. The units have settings between ANC turned off, “Max ANC”, “All Day ANC”, “Ambient Voice” and “Ambient Awareness”. The app lacked any further customisations options or equaliser settings.

Conveying subjective ANC performance (or any kind of subjective evaluation for that matter) is suboptimal, so for this piece I’m attempting to give out some objective measurements and actual recording off the actual earbuds, as measured by my ear measurement rig and microphone setup. This is not a professional setup, but gets us nearly there and should showcase the quality of the ANC.

Starting off with a baseline, I was playing back a frequency sweep out from my calibrated speakers. The output here is supposed to be quite flat and neutral, however we’re using a IEM compensation curve on the input, so it won’t be quite right, but that’s generally not what we’re looking for – we’re just interested in the delta difference in SPL.

The black curve is without earbuds, and the blue curve is with the passive isolation of just the earphones. As expected, the passive isolation is more dominant towards the higher frequencies, at 10-15dB, with very little isolation in the lower frequencies.

Turning on ANC, we’re looking at the graph of passive isolation versus the two ANC modes on the earbuds – “Max ANC” and “ANC All Day”.

Immediately, we’re seeing a massive difference in attenuation in the lower frequencies of almost 20dB, most effective between 100 and 300Hz. Higher frequencies above 1.5KHz are virtually unaffected by the ANC.

All Day ANC reduces the attenuation by quite a lot – essentially this mode is just a weaker ANC mode that while still limiting low frequency noise, isn’t nearly as aggressive in the very low frequencies.

The two pass-through modes are “ANC Ambient” and “ANC Voice”. In the former setting, essentially the earbuds record and replay all external audio, compensating the passive isolation. The voice mode still applies some ANC at frequencies below 300Hz, and is still quite strong at frequencies below 100Hz.

To demonstrate the ANC effectiveness in a subjective scenario, I’ve recorded the performance of the earbuds in two ambient noise scenarios, starting off with loud airplane ambient sound:

I recommend listening through headphones at higher volume to get the best effect. At the end of the video I remove the earbuds – calibrate your volume to be representative.

The ANC is extremely effective in massively attenuating the ambient low-frequency noise that’s typical of airplanes. The ANC Voice setting also allows one for conversations effectively.

I included also a restaurant scenario, though I wasn’t quite as happy with the recording. While the ANC drowns out most lower frequency noise, chatter is still evidently present.

Overall, the ANC performance of the MW08’s appeared to be quite adequate, and well performing for lower frequencies.