LG TONE Flex Wi-fi Bluetooth Stereo Neckband Earbuds HBS-XL7 – 32-Bit Hello-Fi DAC, Meridian Audio, Black

Wireless ear buds
LG is the brand, have used their product for over 8 years and they finally started failing, weird electronic noise when connecting to a call, static and echoing, loss of volume or dead air for seconds. That’s why I stuck with LG product, for its reliability and comfort. You forget you have them on. Old set didn’t have retractable ear buds, these do, very nice. No hanging cords getting in the way. They can be recharge with the inclosed charging cord and I can take fewer cords as can charge directly from my powerbank. Microphone is loud and very clear. Very happy with my selection.

Two-year Life Span
Purchased several pair over the years and I’m back again because my two year old set has begun to short out on the left channel–as has been the case with every other set I’ve purchased. When they are working (both sides/channels) they’re more than adequate for listening to music, particularly when your main goal is to block out other music and the ambient sounds you may be forced to deal with in life (Walmart?). On the other hand, when using for phone conversations in noisy environments, people can hear you just fine–unfortunately, YOU can’t hear YOU very well at all, which leaves you speaking louder than necessary (your ears are plugged after all–you voice sounds very muffled). Another issue is the inordinately LONG time the headset takes to Power UP and DOWN (it takes several seconds before you phone gets the message). People I normally converse with know to let my phone keep ringing knowing I’m trying to get the headset to power up and connect. So–why do I keep buying them? They beat trying to deal with individual airpod type devices (less fiddly and harder to drop/lose). Battery life is good, ability to block out close by ambient sound is good. Honestly they are due for a major upgrade and are way too expensive for what you get. I just need the few features they are good with.

Even Brand New It does not come in good condition
I’ve had an LG Tone Platinum in the past and I liked it for the most part but it broke pretty quickly particularly the back section. For such an expensive pair to see it break so easily is extremely disappointing. So it was nice to see this flex design solved that problem by simply having a better design.However what seems consistent is the retractable mechanism does not work well. In my platinum I’d say the left earbud mechanism lasted a little less than a year before the mechanism became extremely difficult to retract. On average it would take like 5 attempts before I could retract it because the window to trigger the retraction shrunk.Now onto this one… out of the box the left retract mechanism came out of the box with that small trigger window. And it isn’t simply how it is because compared to the right one, that one actually has a substantial window to retract making every attempt take basically only once while the left one again required much more finesse averaging maybe 5 attempts to retract every time.Disappointed with this I requested amazon for a replacement… well now this other one is worse where both the left AND right retract mechanisms don’t work well because of the small trigger window. I don’t know what’s going on but for whatever reason whatever LG has done on the manufacturing side related to this mechanism has a fairly large reject rate.Overall the sound quality I think is decent. The passive noise cancelling isn’t as good as the Platinum so I would suggest replacing the silicone earbud tips with something else (memory foam?). It should be the same because the design looks nearly identical but I def have found a difference. I do think the Platinum sounds better but for the cheaper price I am happy with this.Battery life is very sufficient for what I need. It may not last as long as some of its competitors but it’s long enough where I still average 1 charge a day and with the fast charge, needing a midday charge isn’t that big of a deal. For reference, I tried to have it on all day even if I wasn’t listening putting on Spotify or Audible. There were times it was inactive (~5%) but for the most part I was able to get it to last over 12 hours before it died. All in all I’m happy with the battery life.Connectivity is good. Bluetooth was easy and the range on this is better than the Platinum. I remember being very disappoint with the Platinum where if I left my phone downstairs in my house and walked upstairs the Platinum would not work. However this Flex can reach one end of the house to the other 1 floor apart no problem. It is even better than my router I got from Optimum Online which has trouble getting past this 1 wall for WiFi. So I am pleased I have this flexibility.I think the structure is solid. Comfort wise I think it is pretty good. I’ve always like neckbands for the functionality and comfort and this did not disappoint. The flex design is where I think is a huge upgrade letting it imo allow it to last much longer then the Platinum structurally. Neckbands face the problem when exercising to slip and bounce which this would as well. This is a heavier version compared to those where they are just a wire but personally I wanted this heavier design since I mostly use it outside of exercise. Moreover I can still use it doing yardwork very well without issues of falling or slipping. So again in this aspect I am happy with how this part is built.Honestly again if it wasn’t for the really poor retract mechanism I would actually give this a 5 star. But being disappointed so many times (even on multiple models from LG) this is starting to get infuriating. I specifically wanted a neckband that can retract because I personally hate the dangling earbuds even if they have some magnetic mechanism. When they dangle it is so easy to get caught on something which is extremely annoying. So having the retract mechanism failing so much is a huge disappointment where I might as well get a different brand that will provide a better wire for the earbud (and arguably better quality) rather than the thin one LG needs for the retract mechanism. With this in mind I might just go for the $30 neckbands that are rampant all over Amazon rather than these $100+ versions.In the end I might just ask for a full refund from Amazon.

I hope this helps someone. I wanted a bluetooth headset that could stay connected to two devices at once:1) windows PC (MS surface Pro) for remote working with MS Teams and WebEx meetings,2) cell phone for phone calls (Samsung S9+)It works perfectly for the above use without any switching needing to be done by me BUT getting it setup was not intuitive. If you are trying to do similar, here are the high level steps:1) turn on headset into pairing mode first time – pair to Windows2) turn off headset3) turn on headset into pairing mode (hold on button for 4 seconds) and pair with phone4) after pairing with phone, goto Windows PC and connect headset from blue tooth devices again.In my case, the above sequence was important. It would not work if I paired the phone first but your mileage may vary.Btw, the mike sounds amazing on this for meetings and phone calls. I do not use Google assistant so that is a wasted feature for me but apparently this model has better microphone than the one without google assistant so it is worth the extra dollars.The unit is very comfortable just hanging around my neck and i only use the ear buds for phone calls (use the pc speakers for audio output and the headset for microphone only)I am very happy with this product and feel that multipoint bluetooth should be push much more by headset manufactures than they are now. It is a great feature that i didn’t even know existed until this past month.Good luck

I dislike that they stopped making these headphones. I love the headphones though, for earbuds they have great sound quality, they’re super comfortable to wear- I always forget I have them on. I like that there’s more flex to these ones than the last- the last ones broke at the back because there wasn’t enough flex. I like that the earbuds are retractable so they don’t get tangled or in your way when you’re not using them or don’t need them out.