The Raycon Everyday Earbuds (available at Raycon) feel like buds out of time. There was a point not long ago that true wireless earbuds could mask inadequate sound with a lineup of enticing features. But in a world where active noise cancellation and double-digit battery life is quickly becoming the standard for options under $100, you need a complete package. The Everyday Earbuds’ compact design and average-but-competitive features would have made them a hit in yesteryear. But sound matters more than ever, and these don’t sound like a contender.

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About the Raycon Everyday Earbuds

What we don’t like

We’ll give credit where it’s due, both for the Everyday Earbuds’ relatively snazzy packaging and their solid connection. After a week of testing, I didn’t experience so much as the slightest wireless hiccup. Simply put, general use is as seamless as it should be.

The earbuds come with solid accessories, as well, including five different ear tip sizes, a charging cable, and a pocketable wireless charging case.

The earbuds are sleek, light, and quite small in design.

The first aspect of the Everyday Earbuds that leaps out at you is just how strikingly small these buds are. Raycon isn’t the first brand to build space-saving earbuds, and it’s a growing trend for all types of buds these days. That said, the Everyday Earbuds barely register in your ears thanks to their diminutive size.

The buds’ weightlessness of just 4 grams makes them relatively comfortable by default, but the highlight here is how well they stay in place. I’ve tested small earbuds in the past that were easily shaken loose during more intense activities and workouts. But these mini marvels lodged themselves in my ears well enough to withstand a week’s worth of jogging without even the slightest jostling or adjustment along the way. For an active individual, that’s an invaluable quality.

Their tight fit means these earbuds do a great job keeping out exterior noise for buds without active noise canceling.

That tight, secure fit also reveals one of the Everyday Earbuds’ big benefits. They lack the ever-popular luxury of active noise cancellation (not a real surprise for $80), but they do come equipped with surprisingly good passive noise isolation. Crowded gyms with blaring music were no match for the seal that Raycon’s budget buds offered, and neither were busy morning roadways. Ears come in all shapes and sizes, of course, so your mileage may vary. But with four extra pairs of ear tips to choose from, a good fit and solid passive noise reduction shouldn’t be out of reach for most folks.

As we’ve come to expect in most earbuds these days, Raycon's buds also offers an Awareness Mode to offset their noise reduction prowess. However, I found it to be pretty average when it comes to the clarity of exterior sounds.

The earbuds offer comprehensive controls, a good thing since there's no way to customize them without an app.

I’ve been burned way too many times (by significantly more expensive buds) when it comes to earbud controls. It’s 2022. Choosing between being able to control volume or skipping a track should have gone the way of the dodo long ago. Accordingly, I will continue to commend any earbuds that feature these seemingly basic necessities in terms of controls.

You’ll need to study the manual to memorize the multitude of taps and long presses, but the Everyday Earbuds deliver comprehensive controls for all functions at once. You can turn volume up or down, control playback and song skipping, toggle between three sound profiles, turn on Awareness Mode, and answer or reject calls all without grabbing your phone.

This is especially important given the lack of any app, meaning there's no way to customize controls or access additional features. That's something we expect to see on virtually every pair of earbuds these days, so Raycon's utter lack of an option here is a head scratcher.

The Everyday Earbuds don't offer the sound quality we'd hoped for to compete with rivals in this tough market.

Can these buds adequately deliver a podcast? No problem. Are they capable of some light listening during your morning commute? Surely. Is call quality on par with the buds’ price? Without question. Raycon delivers in each of these areas, making good on its “everyday” namesake.

For anyone invested in quality sound, though, the Everyday Earbuds ain’t it. There is some potential buried in Raycon’s three sound profiles: Balanced, Bass, and Pure sound. But I couldn’t find the option that was just right. Both Balanced and Bass were completely oversaturated by, well, bass. The pure profile was more defined at times, but inexcusably muddied-up higher frequencies. I was Goldilocks for a while there, endlessly swapping scalding hot porridge for an alternative that was ice cold. Except in this fairy tale, notable budget brands like JLab and Anker already ate all the good porridge.

Indeed, for the price, options like the Soundcore Liberty 2, Epic Air Sport ANC, or even the Google Pixel Buds A-Series are more palatable picks for sound quality, with the former pairs doling out more features like active noise cancellation, to boot.

There are some solid features here, but the lack of an app or any major standouts puts the earbuds in a tough spot.

The Everyday Earbuds offer some solid features. Eight hours of battery life per charge is solid, and so too is an IPX6 water resistance rating and even a wireless charging case—something we rarely see at this price point.

But several selections from our best true wireless earbuds under $100 guide match or exceed the majority of those features while also winning the sound battle. JLab fits this description exceptionally well; the Epic Air Sport ANC boast 13-ish hours of battery life and an IP66 rating, while the Epic Air ANC sit at around 12 hours with an IP55 rating.

And, as mentioned above, the lack of an app for additional features and sound customization (EQ anyone?) is also a real miss here that puts the Raycon behind most rivals. If paired with decent sound, the Everyday Earbuds’ other features could have helped position them as a value. But in a market already overflowing with options that offer more, these features just don’t make the cut on their own.

While the buds are slim in design, the build quality feels at least as budget as the price.

To be clear, I don’t think the Everyday Earbuds are at risk of falling apart anytime soon. Based on the time I spent with them, they should hold up just fine for consistent usage. But the plastic housing on both the buds and the case screams “cheap.” If you told me you picked these up at an airport checkout stand with no other context, I’d believe you.

Raycon’s Everyday Earbuds have their share of good qualities. They’re absurdly small, absolving your ears of any semblance of heft while providing solid passive noise isolation and a secure fit. Plus, they pack all the controls a bonafide control freak could ask for.

The bottom line, though, is that they offer poor sound quality and don’t have mind-blowing features to make up for it. In this market, that's a tough sell. For the $80 you would spend on the Everyday Earbuds, you would likely be happier with Jabra's Elite 3 which offer similar features, a design that feels more premium, a solid app, and much better sound. JLab’s Epic Air ANC or even Skullcandy’s Grind Fuel are also good alternatives that offer more for your money.

Jumping up a few levels in price for Soundcore’s Liberty Air 2 Pro or Jabra’s Elite 4 Active easily elevates the quality on all fronts, while adding major features like active noise cancellation. Sure, you’ll pay $40-50 extra (less on sale), but the difference is substantial. And even premium older buds like Jabra’s excellent Elite Active 75t can often be found close to Raycon’s price point these days.

If Raycon slashes the price of the Everyday Earbuds, I’d consider picking up a pair to use as a backup. For less than retail, they’d be perfectly fine buds to enjoy a podcast while out on a walk or commuting to work. Currently, though, these buds aren’t the value they set out to be.

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Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time.

Nick Woodard is a tech journalist specializing in all things related to home theater and A/V. His background includes a solid foundation as a sports writer for multiple daily newspapers, and he enjoys hiking and mountain biking in his spare time.

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