Review: Panasonic WINGS Wireless Bluetooth Sport Clips with Mic + Controller RP-BTS30-Y

• May 17, 2016
• James Skemp
• review

The following is a review of the Panasonic WINGS Wireless Bluetooth Sport Clips with Mic + Controller RP-BTS30-Y, provided to me as part of the Amazon Vine program.

I just can’t get used to the WINGS

A number of years ago I had some fantastic earbuds by SONY. They were very simple, but they fit right in my ear, and featured volume controls on the wired connection. Since then I’ve hesitant to try other earbuds as less and less feature adjustable volume controls, and I’ve never really been interested in Bluetooth ones. However, when the opportunity arose to try out the Panasonic WINGS Wireless Bluetooth Sport Clips with Mic + Controller RP-BTS30 I figured it was time to try the future.

The one thing that I really like about these is that it features easy controls on the band between the two earpieces. They seemed to work fairly well at both controlling the volume and skipping around songs. The battery life of these also seemed pretty good.

Otherwise, I just couldn’t get used to them, no matter how hard I try. Ultimately I blame the WINGS design, as no matter how I put them on they just didn’t feel right, and no matter whether they’re going to stay put or not, it doesn’t matter if they don’t feel comfortable when I’m wearing them.

I also experienced issues with the Bluetooth connectivity. While it doesn’t appear that I ever lost the connection between them and my phone (a Samsung Galaxy S4), I did experience odd drops in sound. I have a standalone Bluetooth speaker and I’ve yet to experience anything like this with it. Amazon does say these work best with iPhone, but Bluetooth is Bluetooth, and there shouldn’t be any issues with using these with an Android device.

Ultimately, due to how they felt on my ears, and the odd drops in music, I just couldn’t stand to use these for an extended period of time. The feeling on my ears may just be a personal choice, and might be something that I could get used to if I just ignored how they felt and continued to use them, but … I can’t do it when my music cuts out.

For these reasons I give it a middle of the road 3 out of 5 stars. I don’t dislike them, per se, but I also don’t like them, and probably won’t be using them again. Too, I’ve never had any issues with normal earbuds falling out of my ears when running, so even for that I probably won’t bother pulling the Panasonic WINGS Wireless Bluetooth Sport Clips with Mic + Controller RP-BTS30 out.

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