It would seem that the True Wireless Stereo market is now incredibly oversaturated. The consumer can drown in a sea of offers for every taste and budget. But at the same time, new players do not cease to appear in this segment of personal audio. And it seems that there is a place for them in the market, which is surprisingly flexible and continues to expand. I don’t know where the line is, beyond which growth will stop, because so far I have not seen this trend and new products continue to come to me for testing. Take, for example, TOZO Golden X1, a hybrid three-driver Hi-Res headset with support for the LDAC lossless codec and active noise cancellation. We will find out whether it is worth the attention of music lovers in this review.
What kind of manufacturer is TOZO? Perhaps another Chinese headphone of an unknown brand, in which a lot of drivers were stuffed? Agree, now you are most likely thinking so. I had approximately the same opinion before testing Golden X1, so I can’t blame you. The TOZO brand is really little known, so it looks suspicious. But is the product worthy of attention? At this stage, I’d just like to take a look at the main features of the headset.
For example, I respect all these figures and data. How about this?
I don’t want to study the history of the TOZO brand, but I have a quick look at the range of products in the official online store. In addition, the brand’s products can be purchased on AliExpress. It turned out that, in addition to TWS headsets, the company also produces several models of smartwatches, wireless chargers, and portable speakers. All products are frankly inexpensive. However, TOZO Golden X1 is an exception, as the headphones cost as much as $150. Agree, this is quite a high price, for this price you can buy not flagship, but mid-budget models of headsets from well-known brands. In this case, Golden X1 must be significantly superior to similar competitors in all respects, right? This is the main question that I will try to answer in detail throughout my story.
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TOZO Golden X1 headphones come in a double package. The main colour accents are black and gold. The outside has a thin cardboard cover illustrated with images and product features.
A thick cardboard box is removed from the cover, which has an ascetic design – only the model name and a little text. The box opens like a casket – three sides of the box create an improvised lid with a magnetic lock. Inside the lid, you can see a lot of information about the headset’s design features, technologies used, and test data in the form of an frequency response graph.
In the main part of the box, there is an instruction manual in a separate cardboard package on top, and under it there are holders with 2 headphones and a charging case. There are also 2 small cardboard boxes with accessories – they are located on the side and one above the other. The first one contains 5 additional pairs of silicone ear cushions, and the second one contains a cable for charging the case.
In general, the packaging is reliable, informative and has a stylish premium look, but some moments make you smile, for example, the inscription on the packaging with the instruction “Designed by TOZO in California” reveals the Chinese origin of the product. A trifle, but characteristic. Those who know will understand.
TOZO Golden X1 has a typical classic TWS design – a medium-sized capsule case with a lid that opens upwards, and inside in niches there are 2 earbuds on magnetic holders – with the silicone tips down.
The material used is simple and the same for the case and headphones – ordinary black matte plastic. A lot of Chinese headphones for $10-20-30 and many other inexpensive electronic devices are made of this plastic. But on the other hand, it’s a practical solution because the plastic surface is scratch-resistant and doesn’t collect fingerprints or dirt.
The headphones are also made with a bit of gold-plated metal. But it is difficult to notice it. Because the fittings on which the silicone ear cushion tips are attached are made of this material.
In general, the headset looks simple, perhaps even too simple. To be honest, TOZO Golden X1 does not look like a $150 product. And even the golden inscriptions on the case and headphones do not save the product in this regard. But if you are a fan of minimalist design, practicality and functionality, then you should like the headset.
I have no complaints about the build quality of the headset. It is a modest but neatly made device. Although, as a drawback, I can note the fact that the case lid has a noticeable backlash in the closed position. And in the open position, it is not fixed in the extreme position and can accidentally close from a slight push or if you tilt the case slightly towards you.
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First, let’s look at the closed case. The top of the lid has the brand logo in gold letters. On the front, under the lid, there is an elongated LED indicator that pulses white during charging and lights up when you open the lid. On the back is a USB-C charging port. Below is a flat platform with markings, under which there is a Qi wireless charging unit.
When closed, the case lid is fixed with a magnetic lock. When you open the case, you see 2 niches with headphones, which are also fixed magnetically. Between the earbuds there is an LED device status display unit that shows the charge level of the case in numbers and the charge level for each earphone using scales with 4 levels.
These indicators show an animation during the charging process and the headphone marks L and R light up below them. Overall, it’s a very informative solution that clearly demonstrates the charging status of the headphones and the case at any time. Above is a multifunctional button that calls up the information display with a short press and resets the headphones and puts them in pairing mode by pressing and holding the button for 3 seconds.
A small feature that adds to the case’s presentability is the double lid. That is, in the middle we have another layer of plastic with niches moulded to hold the earbuds closed. Most manufacturers of inexpensive TWS do not pay attention to such trifles, but in vain. For greater solidity, there are also logos of knowles, LDAC, Hi-Res Audio in gold colour. As for me, this is unnecessary, because the oversaturation of inscriptions reveals the Chinese origin of the product, but someone in the TOZO design team or managers is very fond of gold. Let it be.
Let’s move on to the earbuds. They are of medium size and consist of two housings – the first ergonomic capsule with a silicone tip put on a metal golden fitting is inserted into the ear, and the second outer housing with a short leg is placed outside during use.
There are charging contacts on the inside of the earbuds. On the jumper between the two cases, you can see 2 microphone holes – the first one for feedback (noise reduction and improved voice clarity during conversations), the second one above – for the noise reduction and sound transparency system. The hole for the third microphone for conversations is located on the bottom leg.
The outer part of each earbud is decorated with a gold TOZO logo and acts as a touch sensor to control the functions of the earbuds and headset by touching and holding.
There are also small status LEDs at the base of each leg that glow or flash white, blue and red depending on the situation – when the headphones are in the case or during the pairing procedure. But when the headphones are already in your ears, connected to a signal source and performing basic functions, the diodes do not light up at all, so they do not disturb you and people around you in the dark – I really like this approach.
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I don’t have any major complaints about the comfort of using the headphones. But I can say something about it. Yes, the case is not very compact and its shape does not allow you to carry the headphones comfortably in a pocket of tight-fitting clothes. Therefore, it is better to put the case in a bag or backpack.
Further, as I said, the case has one drawback – the lack of fixation of the lid in the open position, which is why it closes even from a slight tilt. Therefore, when you take out the earbuds or put them in a case, it is better to hold the open case by the lid, not by the bottom base.
As for the earbuds, they fit quite comfortably in my ears, I can use the headphones for hours and not feel any discomfort.
The main thing is that the bundled silicone ear cushions are of high quality and quite soft. They fit well in the ear canals.
A recess between the two housings allows you to conveniently insert the earbuds into your ears, remove them or adjust the position of the headphones without touching the control sensors.
TOZO Golden X1 has touch control thanks to two touch panels on the outer parts of the earbuds. They support single, double, triple taps, as well as long-press taps. Therefore, all actions with the headphones during use have their own control gesture, and there are no compromises in this regard.
You can read more about the purpose of various sensor actions in the user manual or in the mobile application, where you can also change the purpose of various gestures to your liking if you are not satisfied with the default control scheme. So let’s talk about the app.
To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the TOZO Sound mobile application. In general, I recommend everyone to install this app on your smartphone right after buying the headphones and start using it immediately after connecting the headphones. Because the settings in the app directly affect the sound quality and your experience with the product. You will understand why in a moment.
The app is available for Android and iOS:
For some reason, the rating of this app in the store is very low for Apple devices, and in the reviews, users complain that the app does not work properly. Perhaps this is the case on iOS, I haven’t checked, but on Android everything is very good. I’ve run TOZO Sound on Huawei P40 Pro, realme GT2 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, and I’ve had no problems with any of the devices.
The main screen of the application has three tabs. The first one is very interesting and probably the main one at the beginning of the headphones operation, I advise you to do all the actions on this screen at once. So, this tab is called Earprint. At first, I thought that here you can simply check how tightly the silicone tips fit in the ear canal. But it turned out that everything is much more complicated. During the test, the app plays sound signals of different tones and you answer whether you can hear them or not.
This way, the app checks your hearing and creates a personalised sound profile with tonal compensation for you. When you activate this profile, the EQ settings reset to the standard straight line. Personally, I still prefer my own manually adjusted EQ profiles. But you can try to create a profile with the help of the application and make your own conscious choice.
The second tab is responsible for adjusting the noise reduction and transparency mode. You can choose from ready-made presets or set up a custom profile with your own ANC effect level.
The third tab gives you access to the equaliser I mentioned earlier:
By pressing the gear on the top, you can go to the control gesture settings and update the headphone firmware.
The tabs at the bottom are responsible for marketing functions – searching, selecting and purchasing TOZO products, contacting technical support, so we don’t need them in terms of using the headset, but you can explore them if you want.
To be honest, for some time I couldn’t accurately formulate my attitude to the sound of TOZO Golden X1. I mostly listen to heavy rock. So, by default, some songs sounded just amazing, and in some I felt some kind of sound mix. As if all the frequencies were present, but they somehow overlapped and mixed, creating an inharmonious mess and distorting the detail of the music. This is because the default sound profile of the headphones is not adjusted in any way. Later, I realised that this was done on purpose, out of the box you get something like an audio raw RAW, to use the language of photographers.
If you simply take the headphones out of the box, connect them to a sound source and start listening to music, you get the impression that you have been served a rich table with a variety of dishes, albeit the most exquisite ones, with first, second and third courses, plus dessert, but you have to eat all this food at the same time, so the ingredients mix and the taste of each individual dish is simply lost. As a result, you don’t realise what you’re chewing on. The three Golden X1 drivers in each headphone are so powerful and high-quality that they cover the entire possible frequency range that can be heard by the human ear, partially overlapping one another, which makes the overall picture not sound harmonious. Drivers just give out everything they can, and it turns out that there are so many sound details that the brain cannot digest them. The low frequencies are so powerful that the sound of bass instruments turns into a continuous hum, and there are so many high frequencies that at some points they merge into a semblance of high-frequency noise.
What to do. You need to manually adjust the sound of the headphones, and the best way to do this is through the mobile app. And there are several options here – returning to the creation of a personal profile in the first tab, or the classic manual adjustment of the equaliser.
You can use ready-made equaliser presets, but I didn’t find a suitable option that would satisfy me, so I created my own, and here it is:
You can also choose a preset that best suits your music genre and taste, then tweak it slightly and save it under a unique name. Of course, if you listen to music of fundamentally different genres, you can create several sets of EQ settings and switch between them.
As a result, after all these settings, TOZO Golden X1 reveals itself to the fullest and in terms of sound, it is probably one of the best in-ear wireless TWS headsets in my practice. If not the best. For your understanding, I have a very rich experience with similar headsets from Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, Huawei, Realme, Xiaomi, Oppo and other lesser-known brands, and even now I have Huawei FreeBuds Pro and Xiaomi Buds 4 Pro in my personal use – both models with quite decent sound, especially the second one. But the Golden X1 is definitely superior to them, and it costs much less. You just need to understand that these headphones have no limits in terms of sound, you will definitely get all the possible frequencies that the human ear can hear. But you need to adjust the sound profile to your needs to hear the music in the best possible way.
Another interesting point. Even when I adjusted the sound of the headphones with the equaliser and turned on the Dolby Atmos effects while listening to music, it seemed to me that the sound did not improve at all, but rather even slightly deteriorated. That’s why I refused this option. By the way, this refusal should also slightly improve the energy saving performance of the smartphone, because using Dolby Atmos additionally loads the CPU. This is purely my experience, but I advise you to try it, maybe it will be useful to you too.
Important! Everything I have described above applies to listening to music in headphones with ANC mode enabled. The fact is that I consider this mode to be the main one, because in it we get the highest quality and rich sound. With the noise cancellation turned off, the bass is noticeably cut off. On the other hand, the battery life of the headphones increases significantly when ANC is not used. So, if you prefer this option, I think you will find a suitable equaliser setting for it or you can create your own preset. Personally, I have set up this option:
Suddenly, it turned out that the headset’s microphones and voice transmission were very good. To be honest, I didn’t even expect such a result, because in the case of Chinese headsets, I always expect at least average performance. But TOZO Golden X1 really has high-quality microphones and algorithms for voice communication and noise reduction during conversations. That is, you will not only be heard, but the timbre of your voice will sound pleasant to the interlocutor.
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Active noise cancellation also works without complaint. Perhaps this is not surprising, since the function is directly related to the microphones. I can’t directly measure the level, but the quality of ANC is no worse than that of headsets from more famous brands. In general, it seems to me that noise cancellation algorithms are now so well developed at the level of headphone chipsets, which in turn are used by all manufacturers, that there is no exclusive magic here – the result is about the same for everyone and it becomes just a standard feature.
It’s worth noting that the sound of Golden X1 changes significantly when ANC is enabled: the bass is noticeably increased and the stereo base is expanded, the sound becomes more voluminous. And switching on the sound transparency mode amplifies external sounds, so the headset can be considered as an improvised hearing aid. In general, this mode is useful when you don’t want to take out the headphones, and in order to communicate with someone, you just pause the music and turn on the microphones to hear the interlocutor. So, for me, it’s just an auxiliary device, I can’t listen to music when there are external sounds mixed in.
What I don’t like about using TOZO Golden X1 is the fact that every time the headset starts up in the standard mode with noise cancellation turned off. And I need to touch the control sensors several times to activate ANC. The ability to remember the last mode would be very useful. Because the headphones remember the last equaliser settings and immediately activate the corresponding profile. But, as I said, for me, the main mode of listening to music is with active noise cancellation. This point is a bit annoying, maybe the manufacturer will think of adding such an option to the app?
Everything is standard here and that’s good. It’s just that I have another headset with Hi-Res and LDAC support (much more expensive and from a more famous manufacturer) and it behaves very strangely. Firstly, if you switch it on with the lossless codec active, there is simply no sound, only some kind of crackling. You need to switch to the standard AAC codec and back to LDAC, and then you’ll only hear the sound in the headphones. Also, the sound transmission using LDAC is very unstable, as if all the surrounding Wi-Fi networks affect the streaming. You can say that I have problems with my smartphone, but I tried it on 5 different devices and the result was the same.
What is the point of all this? TOZO Golden X1 has no problems at all! Whether indoors or outdoors, the connection is stable. The headset works perfectly at a distance of 10-15 metres from the sound source and even through several concrete walls in the apartment. And only after 3 walls interference starts and sound transmission falls off. This is just an impressive result. Perhaps this is the merit of Bluetooth 5.3, I don’t know.
As for the delays… They are simply not there – to my ears. That is, I don’t notice them when watching videos on YouTube or playing games.
The headset has one caveat: I couldn’t connect it to either of my two Windows 11 laptops. That is, the system simply doesn’t see Golden X1 when searching for it. Although the manual has a section on connecting headphones to multiple devices, it shows 2 smartphones. It turns out that most likely you can connect the headset only to an Android or iOS mobile device. Unfortunately, I have no way to check the connection to Mac OS.
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Battery life is not the strongest point of TOZO Golden X1. The manufacturer claims to be able to listen to up to 8 hours of music on a single full charge of the earbuds with noise cancellation turned off. But in practice, I managed only 5 hours and 30 minutes at 50% volume. And with ANC enabled, I got only 4 hours and 20 minutes. Agree, by modern standards, this is not a very impressive result. By the way, the right earbud discharges faster, so it switches off first when the left one still has about 9-10% of the charge. I repeated the tests several times, but I was unable to improve the results.
A full charge of discharged earbuds reduces the charge of the case by 30%. Thus, the total autonomy of the headphones, taking into account the case, is about 17-18 hours. So, I can’t confirm the data provided by the manufacturer – up to 32 hours of music playback. Perhaps they meant listening at a lower volume, I don’t know.
Let me remind you that the case can be charged both via USB-C and wirelessly using any charger that supports the Qi standard. The full charging time for an “empty” case with a cable or wireless method is approximately two hours, and the full charging of the inserts in the case takes 1.5 hours.
The TOZO Golden X1 headset came as an unexpected surprise to me. It turned out that these are really cool headphones for listening to music in high quality, which give even more than you expect. The main thing is to set up the sound profile correctly. Fortunately, the manufacturer offers a functional mobile application for this purpose. In addition, I can also praise the microphones – voice transmission during phone calls and in instant messengers really works very well.
There are some drawbacks, too. The disadvantages of Golden X1 include the lack of a proximity sensor and, as a result, automatic pause during music playback, as well as the inability to connect the headset to a Windows laptop. At least, I couldn’t do it, although I tried to do everything according to the instructions. The relatively low battery life of the headphones is also a bit disappointing. That is, the music sounds good, but I would like it to last longer.
Overall, TOZO Golden X1 are excellent universal headphones that work very reliably. Noise cancellation is excellent, there is sound transparency, which is useful for urban environments. The appearance of the device is simple but practical. The built-in display helps to accurately understand the battery status of the earbuds and the case. The price of the product as a whole seems justified considering all the features and functions. But I would like to reduce the price a bit, for example, to $120-$130. Then I could definitely recommend Golden X1 to absolutely all audiophiles who are looking for compact in-ear Bluetooth headphones with LDAC codec support. But even with the current price, I can advise you to take a closer look at this product, because it is worth it.
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