Status' Pro X Earbuds Impress with Great Sound, Comfort, and a Luxe Feel
- Antal Bokor
- Oct 31
- 4 min read
I’m not usually an earbuds guy, especially when it comes to active noise cancellation. Sometimes, it barely works, and with others, earbud noise cancellation can be so aggressive and tinny. And why would you want something in your ears when you can have pillowy soft over-ear headphone cups?
The Pro X ear buds by Status have actually changed my view on earbuds in a few drastic ways. In fact, I’ve been using the Pro X earbuds as my main audio device over the last few weeks, and I don’t see that changing.
To start with, the Pro X earbuds have a premium look and feel, and the case really sets the tone. The Status Pro X’s case feels premium quality–just as you’d expect. It has a bright LED status light strip that you can see when the case is opened and closed. The case can charge wirelessly or wired, and while it's not perfect on my fast charger, it’s not as compact as other earbud cases.
My only other gripe with the case comes with stowing the earbuds. Inserting the earbuds into the case to charge can be a bit annoying, as they have to fit in a particular way. Even after I’ve become familiar with them, I sometimes still momentarily struggle to get them into the case.
The earbuds themselves look and feel very premium. They can be a bit boxy looking, which isn’t my favorite–and that boxiness is what makes them persnickety to put into their case. Wearing them in your ear, though, the charge points face forward and it almost looks like they should be sporting little LED lights. I’m only mentioning this because it’s quite prominent when the earbuds are worn a certain way. But they are extremely comfortable, and I can wear them in my ears for hours without thinking about them being there.
That's because, these are some comfortable earbuds. Included with the Pro X kit are three different size ear cups. My ear canal is towards the smaller size, and as others with that problem may know, it’s hard to find an earbud I can wear for any extended amount of time. The smallest size on the Status Pro X does the trick, and I can wear them for hours without any physical discomfort. That’s something very few ear buds can boast.
And the sound quality–which is the most important part–is fantastic.
Let’s look at the advertised features:
(These are coming straight from the manufacturer)
Hybrid Triple Driver Acoustic System
12mm Dynamic Driver
Dual Knowles Balanced Armature Drivers
Hybrid Active Noise Cancellation
Adjustable Transparency (“ambient-aware”) Mode
AI-Powered Voiceloom Speech Enhancement for Clear Phone Calls
Bluetooth 5.3 with Bluetooth LE Audio and Auracast Support
SBC, AAC, LDAC, and LC3 codec support
High Res Wireless Audio Certified by the Japan Audio Society
Google Fast Pair and Microsoft Swift Pair Support
Multipoint Connectivity
IP55 Water and Dust Resistance
8 hours of continuous playback + 24 additional hours with the charging case
The Pro X earbuds sound fantastic, overall, though I still have to caveat that by saying “for being earbuds.” I would love to hear a pair of earbuds that will replace my over ear headphones, but I don’t think the technology is here yet.
Still, Status' Pro X comes pretty damn close. They have a rich sound with great bass. The high end is clear and rich, and combined with the bass excels in that natural listening feel. I swear I can almost feel the bass in my chest. The midrange gets lost in all of this, however. It’s not great, it’s not bad, it’s… fine. With the right equalizer tweaks you can get some really great sounds out of these bad boys.
And even so, I found myself using the factory premade EQ settings. I usually just ignore the factory defaults after I do a little bit of testing and tweaking, but I actually ended up settling on one of the premade settings.
I didn’t just use the earbuds to listen to music: Their podcast EQ setting eliminated some annoying mouth sounds and breathing noises from my audiobooks. It’s meant to make listening to lower quality audio podcasts easier, but it surprisingly does a ton to spruce up even my Audible listening experience.
Taking and receiving calls on the earbuds is easy, with voice clarity never a concern on either side of the conversation.
I’ve been using the earbuds extensively, and with all the prolonged use I'm happy to say they live up to their advertised battery life.
I was never the biggest fan of active noise canceling in earbuds, but the Pro X earbuds are starting to change my mind. When I first got them, the noise cancellation was aggressive, but there was a software update that tweaked the ANC to the perfect range to drown out unwanted outside noise while not making it feel like I had white noise being shoved through my skull.
While the earbuds themselves are fantastic, the app experience is a bit of a mixed bag. The app can be frustratingly slow to update sometimes. When it works well, it’s great. But often my phone will know my earbuds are paired and the app will have trouble finding them. I’ve also had instances of active noise cancellation just turning off on its own. However, Status' app is easy to use, and the latest updates have made it somewhat faster–and it's definitely behaved better with my phone.
As for customization of your listening experience, there are also plenty of optionswith the Pro X earbuds. You can turn on and off touch controls, enable different forms of audio feedback when manipulating earbud settings, and more. You can use the app to customize how the touch controls, work, too, assigning actions like Volume Up and Volume Down to single tap, double taps, triple taps, and a tap and hold. There are also physical buttons on the earbuds that are mapped to commands like noise canceling on and off, enabling voice assistant, and manual power off. Sadly, you can’t customize the physical buttons.
Status an its products were not really on my radar before the Pro X earbuds, but I’ll definitely be checking out more of their products in the future. I went from feeling like earbuds were an occasional necessary inconvenience to an alternative that I eagerly use.