Novero Rockaway review
11 days ago by Steve Gerrard
I did a lot of searching for reviews on this product, but since it’s pretty new it’s no surprise that not a lot came up. The reviews I found were largely positive save for a few comments on sound quality (very subjective) and a couple on the in-ear fit. So, I went ahead a bought a pair and I though I’d share my initital views and experience.
First impressions were pretty good. Packaging is nice (although not up to the bar set by Apple these days) and the Rockaway’s themselves feel good quality. The red cord itself is really quite nice in my opinion. Its a flat ribbon profile, and rubberised so feels good in the hand and comfortable and warm to the touch when draped around your neck. If fact, because of its feel you think you can stretch it like a rubber band (although of course you can’t) you hopefully you get the idea.
I charged them up as per instructions and managed to pair to my iphone 4s without any trouble, and so onto the first thing, music sound quality. OK, the thing to bear in mind about the sound quality is for what purpose you are using them for. If you are comparing them to mid/high end wired headphones, then your going to be disappointed, but then if you are doing that, you are missing the point in my view. Bluetooth headphones (especially these) are primarily for a convenience use case, in my example I use them when at work for a bit of music but mainly for work calls and in the car because I don’t like getting tangled up in wires and a like to hear phone call in both ears. So for this case my view is that the sound is perfectly good. I also have a pair of B&W P5’s and in comparison you can certainly tell a difference, but I would say they are no worse that the default supplied Apple headphones. I actually thought the voice calls were clearer. One other thing to note is that the volume is significantly less than the P5 for the same iphone volume setting; even when on max volume you definitely feel there’s room for more..
As I mentioned, I had seen a couple of reviews complaining about in-ear fit, specifically that they kept on falling out of ears. I would say the fit in the ear is not great probably mainly due to the weight of each earbud; because there is no other hardware than the earbuds themeselves including the Bluetooth HW, USB connector and internal battery etc. it all has to go in the earbud. Its impressive how they’ve packed it all in, but there no way of hiding the weight. It gives them a reassuring weighty quality feel, but your earholes have to hold them! How problematic this in is again down to your use case. For me its OK as I’m pretty stationary all the time I’m using them, but if you want to go jogging with, good luck! Also its fair to note I’ve never got on that well with in-ear fit from any headphone of this type so you might get on better than me. Either way, it wasn’t a show stopper for me.
When it comes to pairing it worth noting that the specification say you can pair up to 8 devices. This is true (well probably, I only tried it with a second device, my ipad) but it does not support 2 simultaneous devices. I personally don’t think this is an issue at all, but depending on your use case, it’s worth being aware of.
So, everthing was going well until….. they stopped working!! In its first day of full use there appears to be a problem. It appears dead, and when connected via USB charge the LED indicates fully charged (which it definitely is not), so something is up. I will try to see if Novero downloadable SW updater provides any update to this product, but otherwise its back to amazon. I’m really disappointed as I really like these so far. I will certainly get another pair and hope its a one off problem, so fingers crossed and I’ll update this post with what happens with my second pair! More to follow ..
——-> next day
It turns out that the Novero SW updater covers a host of their products but not these, so that avenue is closed. The next morning and I plugged in the usb charge, and we had a red light, not blue (indicating it’s charging) so it was a step in the right direction at least. 1 hour later I get the blue fully charged indicator, so I then turn them on and…. we have lift off! Plan is now to hammer them today to see if I get any further problems, otherwise it’s indeed back to the rain forest..







Tall, bald, and pround.