Tronsmart Apollo Bold Review

Features & Stability

The Apollo Bold features Qualcomm’s QCC5124 Bluetooth 5.0 chip. It is one of the premium chipsets and it supports Qualcomm’s TrueWireless Stereo Plus (TWS+) feature. The TWS+ is a great technology that helps increase battery efficiency for both of the earbuds. Normally, BT earphones and adapters work in a master-slave configuration. The master side handles the connection and the slave stays connected to the master. This means higher battery usage for the master one. TS+ means that both of the chips left and right stay connected to the source and use less power to transmit & receive. TS+ optimizes the master-slave system to equalize the battery usage between sides. The Apollo Bold has an integrated LDS antenna inside the faceplate and it is there to provide a larger transmission area and a broader signal range. During my tests, it fared better than similarly priced TWS and I was able to get a stable signal through three concrete walls. That is impressive. I have never experienced an audio drop-out or signal instability of any sort. The connection was perfect. 

Latency-wise it performed above my expectations, even during my gaming tests. Android’s YouTube & Netflix apps were perfectly in sync and there was only a minimal delay when it comes to games. This is quite good because I’ve tested many TWS earphones that just failed the gaming test because of huge latency issues during gaming. The Apollo Bold had a very minor delay while playing games and it had no problems with the video apps.

The Apollo Bold supports OTA (Over-The-Air) firmware updates. You can update the firmware version of your earbuds via the Tronsmart app that is available both on the Google Play & Apple App Store. I checked this app out but unfortunately, there is not much you can do there. Surprisingly, the app provides 4 EQ presets for you to choose from. However, you can’t really create your own custom EQ here. Still though, it is nice to have the option of updating via this app.

There are two modes available on the earbuds. The Ambient Sound mode lets you hear surrounding sounds through the Apollo Bold while you are wearing them. Ambient sounds are picked up by the microphones and transmitted to the speakers. The other mode is the ANC mode. It stands for Active Noise Canceling and Tronsmart claims that this mode blocks up to 35dB of noise. During my testing, it successfully blocked the noise of passing cars and the running engine of my own car. That is good for a TWS ANC in my opinion. I also found out that the included tips do not do it justice and if you switch to foam tips instead of the silicones, you get a whole lot better isolation and therefore better ANC performance. I suggest you do some tip-rolling for best performance. Tronsmart says that there are 6 microphones in total and the Apollo Bold combines feedback ANC and feedforward ANC to provide a better noise cancellation performance. They call this method hybrid ANC and I can say that it works well. Now that we are talking about the microphone layout, I can also say that the earbuds do a good job of transmitting my voice to the recipient. The call performance is good and microphones do a good job of filtering outside noise chatter.

Let’s move on to another feature of the Apollo Bold. I already mentioned that the earbuds seem and feel durable. Tronsmart has designed the headphones as waterproof and dustproof so that they can be used during sports and have a longer lifespan. They have an IP45 certification which means that they are resistant enough to endure bad conditions. 

The integrated touch sensors on faceplates can be used to control the earbuds. You can actually control quite a bit via these sensors unlike some of the TWS earbuds on the market. You can toggle between modes, play and pause tracks, skip to the next or previous track, adjust volume, answer or reject phone calls and lastly, activate your voice assistant. 

Lastly, I want to talk about battery life. The required time for a full charge is around 2.5 hours and I think that is a bit much. However, the overall battery life is quite good when you add the ANC to the equation and the numbers that Tronsmart claims are true according to my real-life tests.

The review continues on Page Three, after the click HERE or by using the jump below.

Page 1: Intro, Apollo Bold, Company, Packaging, Accessories, Design, Fit

Page 3: Sound