One of my favorite wireless earbuds series has finally got a new update in the form of the OPPO Enco X2.
Over the past few months, I’ve been using the series’ first-generation model, the OPPO Enco X (our review comparison here) as my primary earbuds on my PC and smartphone. The Enco X had the most stable connection and good sound quality among the ANC earbuds I’ve used so far.
But at the same time, the Enco X also had its set of drawbacks. For example, it didn’t support seamless dual connection for switching audio playback between my PC and phone, which means that every time when I wanted to switch audio between two devices, I had to go to the Bluetooth setting and manually connect to the other device. This can be really frustrating, especially when the rest of the features of the earbuds made it highly recommendable.
But with the introduction of its update, the OPPO Enco X2 has fixed this flaw, and it adds support for dual connection. And after using it for the past few days, I would even go ahead and say that this is most likely OPPO’s best product this year.
The brand seems to have listened to users’ complaints and suggestions after the first generation was a hit, and finally created this upgraded version that makes up for almost all of its shortcomings.
Let’s start first with its design. The Enco X2 continues the classic design of its predecessor with only minor changes. However, most of these changes are pretty important for improving its user experience. For example, the only button on the side of the charging case no longer protrudes and the metal ring around the case has also been removed, which naturally gives the case a better-integrated look. The charging port also gets upgraded with a delicate metal ring for decoration, which makes it look more premium.
And the charging indicator is moved to the bottom, beside the charging port. Some of you might think this is a bad design, however, if you’ve used the Enco X just like me, you would probably end up liking this change. On the first generation, the wireless charging was placed at the side with the Dynaudio logo, however, it’s intuitive to think that the side without the logo is the back that supports wireless charge, so I often mistakenly placed it wrong and couldn’t charge it properly. But on the Enco X2, the wireless charging is placed on the opposite side and finally making it more intuitive. And more importantly, the text of ‘co-created with Dynaudio’ has finally got centered and is inside the frame!
Once you open the case, you will notice that the earbuds placement inside the case has changed to a more common design. I no longer have to take the earbuds off and rotate them 180 degrees to put them back in the right position.
The ear tips have also got upgraded with an anti-germ design, which is certainly good news for users who care about the health of their ear canal.
Another important upgrade is the earbud’s sound performance. With the support of the latest LHDC4.0, the Enco X2’s audio transmission bitrate gets a significant boost from its predecessor’s 500kbps to 900kbps. Meanwhile, it supports up to 96kHz sampling rate for Hi-Res audio.
This level of performance has also helped the earbuds get its Hi-Res Audio Wireless certification.
In actual use, we could even use the customized functions such as Golden Sound and Enco Master EQ mode to tweak the output to my personal sound preference. The Golden sound feature will test your hearing with different frequencies and then optimize the personal listening experience for a sharper resolution. And you can also turn on one of the three Enco Master EQ modes based on your personal preference. These three modes can basically be seen as results of the different focus on different frequencies. The Dynaudio Real mode focuses more on the sharper vocals and trebles, while the Dynaudio Punchy mode reproduces a more powerful bass. And the Simple & clear mode is more like a compromise between them.
And here’s an interesting detail that we’d like to mention. When connecting the earbuds with a China-version phone, apart from the three EQ modes we mentioned, there’s another mode tuned by Joe Hisaishi, which, by the way, is my favorite among the four EQ modes. But when connected to an international model, it seems that this mode is hidden, with just three Dynaudio modes available. So if you’re going to use it with a Chinese version, then definitely try out this special mode because you might like it as much as I do. But don’t worry too much about your non-China OPPO phone lacking this mode, because the difference between the Hisaishi mode and the other three is not really significant. Moreover, the Enco X2’s excellent hardware can still bring you great balance and decent dynamic range without perceivable blurred sound stage.
To conclude, the Enco X2 is more like an excellent jack-of-all-trades, and is able to reproduce most music genres with subtle characteristics when applying different EQ modes.
As for its Active noise canceling, the Enco X2 redesigned its algorithm to get up to 45dB noise-canceling. In actual use, it did sound like one of the best ANC performances that we’ve experienced so far, although we have to note that the maximum value couldn’t represent its actual performance, especially when valuing earbuds’ noise-canceling performance at different frequencies.
It has the closest listening experience to the Apple AirPods Pro in terms of low-frequency noise reduction. Even when we turn off the active noise-canceling, its passive noise reduction is still impressive. Apart from four ANC modes, the Enco X2 also includes the option of personalized noise cancellation, which can bring deep noise-canceling effects while reducing ear pressure discomfort.
The Enco X2 also comes with improved anti-wind-noise performance. The updated performance can definitely put the earbuds in the top tier of wind-noise-resistant wireless earbuds.
As for sound latency, the Enco X2 maintains the series’ excellent performance for video playback and gaming. Especially for gaming, there’s almost no perceivable latency.
While bringing so many significant upgrades, it’s pretty surprising that the Enco X2 didn’t get worse in battery life. In my daily use with both LHDC decoding and ANC on, the earbuds were able to last up to 5 hours. Including the charging case, it could provide about 5 additional cycles of use, which is around 30-hour use time in total.
Finally, let me elaborate on my favorite upgrade, the dual-connection feature. Switches between devices are really smooth, and the response is also fast without much latency. And you don’t really need to worry about missing calls on the phone while using it for another device, because the Enco X2’s call connection seems to be always at the highest priority.
So, personally, I find the OPPO Enco X2 as one of the best earbuds on the market. And unsurprisingly, the earbuds are also likely the best OPPO product in 2022. Even when you compare it with any of the wireless earbuds on the market, it doesn’t seem to have any obvious disadvantages.
