A year ago, RHA came out with some excellent true wireless earbuds in the TrueConnect. Since then, industry standards have changed almost across the board, leaving a one-time leader behind. RHA, however, didn’t blink. Instead, it adapted.
RHA has announced its second-generation TrueConnect wireless buds, which feature 44 hours of total battery life and improved environmental resistance. The company managed to keep the price the same, at $170.
Here’s a look at what the second-gen TrueConnect earbuds have in store.
Big-time battery boost
The original TrueConnect featured 5 hours of battery life at a time, with 20 extra hours of battery life in the included case. That was solid a year ago, but when products like the Sony WF-SP800N or the Samsung Galaxy Buds+ each offer more than 10 hours of battery at a time, it was time for RHA to bump things up.
The new buds boast 9.5 hours per charge, nearly doubling the life of the company’s first-generation model. It sounds impressive, though we’ll have to verify that claim before we can attest to it. There are 34.5 hours of battery in that charging case, raising the buds’ total playback time to nearly 45 hours. That’s 20 more total hours of playback time than the original, a significant improvement.
RHA added that the TrueConnect 2 will gain over an hour of playback time after just 10 minutes inside the case.
Weatherproof improvements
The first generation of the TrueConnect buds had an IPX5 weatherproof rating, which honestly is nothing to scoff at. It meant the TrueConnect was protected from water jets from any direction, which should theoretically cover most people in most situations.
The second generation has upgraded to an IP55 waterproof rating. The protection against water jets is still there, with the addition of dust protection. It’s not fully tight against dust, but will still guard against an amount that would hamper regular activity with the TrueConnect2.
Better functionality
RHA says the TrueConnect 2 will have touch controls to aid in commanding the buds themselves, and will once again be fully compatible with smart assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, and Bixby.
Hopefully, this addresses one of our main points of contention with the originals: Those controls relied on a multi-push system and weren’t intuitive enough to be effective.
Of course, it’s all too easy to do touch controls poorly. We’ll have to wait until we can test out the new controls on the TrueConnect 2 ourselves, but we’re optimistic that this is a step in the right direction.
Other odds and ends
We liked the sound of the original TrueConnect, and RHA says it has “refined the sound signature” of the new version. That doesn’t mean much without being able to hear the new buds, but again, it’s a cause for optimism.
Just like the previous buds, the TrueConnect 2 will have Bluetooth 5 support. It will support the SBC audio codec, which is a little disappointing considering we had hoped for aptX support in the first edition.
If it wasn’t already apparent, these new buds will once again have passive noise cancellation. That’s somewhat standard in this price range, joining the ranks of other passive products like the Google Pixel Buds 2. But with more and more budget true wireless earbuds adding active noise cancellation (the Edifier TWS NB or the Panasonic RZ-S500W come to mind), ANC would have been a stellar addition to the TrueConnect 2.
On paper, it looks like the TrueConnect 2 has received some refreshing updates, but we’ll reserve our complete judgment until we get a pair to try out.
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