With 13 mm, the dynamic drivers of the Clarity Earbuds+ are comparatively large for true wireless headphones, which can provide better bass reproduction on the one hand, but also makes the drivers “slower” due to the higher mass. It is all the more surprising that especially low frequencies are somewhat lacking in the sound of Nokia’s TWS. Basses are not very present and sometimes barely audible. We definitely lack “pressure” here. Even with bass-heavy music titles, low frequencies are hardly noticeable.
The sound output is nevertheless clear, trebles and the mids are well differentiated. We also never exhausted the maximum volume and thus still had some room for improvement. Voices are emphasized too much for our taste, so vocals are not perfectly embedded in the instrumental music. However, since the RRP of the Clarity Earbuds+ is below the 100 Euros (~$105) mark and they offer ANC, the sound quality is okay.
Thanks to the noise-canceling technology, monotonous noise that is not too loud is shielded well. Especially lower frequencies, like the rolling noise of car tires, are effectively filtered out. With higher tones, like other TWS with ANC, the Clarity Earbuds+ also have problems. It should also not be too windy with Nokia’s in-ears, because wind noise is perceptible despite active noise suppression. The ANC-typical background noise is low in Nokia’s headphones.
The so-called Ambient Mode can be turned on or off with a long tap on the earpiece, similar to ANC – three confirmation tones are heard. Ambient noise is thus well transmitted to the user and allows good communication with the outside world, but is also accompanied by noise.
Besides playing music, we also used the True Wireless In-Ears for playing video content. The Clarity Earbuds+ do not exhibit a disturbing asynchrony of sound and picture. Nokia does not provide information about the latency, but there is a dedicated low latency mode for games. We used a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 for playing video content including the AAC codec.