With Xiaomi’s cheap AirPods rival, you get what you pay for
The AirDots cost just US$30, far less than Apple’s wireless earbuds, but there’s a reason they’re so cheap
With such a huge price difference, I was prepared to accept some trade-offs with the AirDots. I’m saving over a hundred bucks, surely I can deal with a few compromises?
Then I started to use the AirDots, and I suddenly understood that perhaps there’s a reason they’re so cheap.
The first issue came up before I even used the AirDots. According to Xiaomi’s instruction manual, I’m supposed to take both headphones out of the case, wait around three seconds for them to connect with each other, and then pair up the right-side earbud with my phone.
The problem was that the left and right AirDots seemed to ignore each other. When my phone connected with the right earbud, the left earbud would remain silent. When I paired the left one with my phone as well (because both show up separately as Bluetooth devices), the audio switches entirely to the left earbud, muting the right side. I tried restarting the headphones, but that didn’t fix the problem.