TRUEFREE O2 Headphones Review: You Get What You Pay For

The TRUEFREE O2 Headphones aren’t as bad or as painful as the TRUEFREE F2 headphones were – but they’re still painfully average at best.

Pros	Cons
Inexpensive	Audio quality is mediocre at best
IPX5 resistance	Inconsistent battery life
Not as actively painful as the TRUEFREE F2 headphones	Headphones leak a LOT of audio. And then some more.

Score: 2/5

	Buy The TRUEFREE O2!	Buy On Amazon

In this review

TRUEFREE O2 Specifications
TRUEFREE O2 Design
TRUEFREE O2 Performance
TRUEFREE O2 Battery
TRUEFREE O2 Conclusion

I’m honestly a little bit surprised to be reviewing the TRUEFREE O2 at all. Not that I don’t review headphones, or that I don’t have an interest in reviewing wireless running headphones, because I’ve done both here at Alex Reviews Tech.

It’s just that my prior experience with TRUEFREE… well, it didn’t go well. The thumbnail alone for my YouTube review should tell you most of what you need to know:

If you’d prefer to read my review of the TRUEFREE F2 headphones, you can do so right here.

Now, I pride myself on giving direct and honest reviews, but the reality when you have a product that just isn’t very good is that a lot of brands… don’t take that feedback all that well.

I really didn’t expect to hear back from TRUEFREE… right up until they offered me the TRUEFREE O2 headphones to review.

So, yeah, I was intrigued. They couldn’t be as painful as the TRUEFREE F2 headphones… could they?

Design

Where the TRUEFREE F2 headphones were a cheaper copy of designs like the Shokz OpenMove, the TRUEFREE O2 headphones are more like the budget equivalent of sets like the Shokz OpenFit Air.

The TRUEFREE O2 headphones a pair of true wireless ear hook style running headphones that use an “open air” approach to their audio output – more on that shortly – and that can work quite well, as I’ve seen before with some similar pairs.

Conceptually, that’s not a bad idea, but I was extremely nervous facing up to testing out the TRUEFREE O2 headphones, simply because the TRUEFREE F2 were so damned painful to wear at all.

Here at least TRUEFREE seems to have learned its lesson, because each of the TRUEFREE O2 buds are wrapped in a soft rubber that (unlike the F2 headphones) doesn’t cause me serious pain in use. Which very much feels like it should be assumed for headphones, but here we are anyway.

The TRUEFREE O2 headphones come in a very large, very light battery case that you’re very unlikely to lose. Not just because of its size, but also because of the bright orange TRUEFREE logo that sits underneath a sparkly pattern that’s only broken up on the case by an orange ring. It’s certainly… unique… though it also doesn’t look all that premium.

If you look at the TRUEFREE O2’s Amazon page listing – as far as I can tell in Australia that’s the only way you’d be able to buy a pair – you would see that they’re IPX5 rated while also stating that they’re “waterproof”.

These two things are not the same, and by a pretty wide margin.

Look, I’ve got a whole guide to this kind of thing and what it really means right here:
Why your waterproof phone isn’t actually “waterproof” the way you think it is

IPX5 basically means that the TRUEFREE O2 should be essentially sweat resistant, which you very much do want in a pair of headphones that you’re meant to do exercise in, but it’s a long way from saying that they’re “waterproof”.

Don’t try swimming in them; for that kind of exercise you’d want something with much more stringent water resistance such as the Shokz OpenSwim Pro.

Performance

The TRUEFREE O2 headphones have open speakers rather than bone conduction speakers, but that almost feels like a misnomer.

They’re not just open, they’re MASSIVELY open, because you absolutely cannot and will not miss the fact that these headphones broadcast and leak a LOT of audio.

Open the case and you’ll hear them announce “POWER ON” quite loudly even when they’re in your hand, followed by “CONNECT” if they pair to your chosen Bluetooth device. Any audio that you’re listening to is likely to leak out quite badly, and that’s especially true if you do use them in public, because you're going to need to pump up the volume quite significantly in order to properly hear anything from them.

The TRUEFREE O2 headphones are compatible with TRUEFREE’s app (iOS/Android), which lets you set the touch control functions, activate a lower latency game mode or even try a hearing test, as well as set equaliser modes. Of these, the equaliser is the only one you’re likely to want, and even there just to put them into their Bass boost mode. Not because you might necessarily be a big drum and bass fanatic, but simply because every other mode shows off just how tinny the audio that the TRUEFREE O2 delivers actually is.

While it’s a problem across any air conduction headphone – because honestly, what this equates to is “speakers that sit just outside your ears” – it’s notably a problem for the TRUEFREE O2.

I won’t say that they don’t function as headphones, because they do. It’s just that I wouldn’t say that they’re particularly good headphones, though you could partially mitigate that against the fact that they are relatively inexpensive within this particular niche of fitness headphones.

The TRUEFREE O2’s inbuilt microphones function, but not at a particularly high or pleasant level. They’re at least functional enough that callers should be able to hear you, but not terribly well.

Battery

The TRUEFREE O2 claims a battery life of 6.5 hours per charge on the headphones, with the battery case adding additional charges up to 22 hours. It recharges via USB-C, which is at least a nice step up from micro USB in the budget headphone stakes.

Still, that 22 hour figure represents some pretty unusual unusual maths, because it’s not neatly divisible by 6.5, meaning that the last charge it will give out will only be a fraction of what the headphones can take… if they choose to take it.

The biggest battery issue that I’ve had with the TRUEFREE O2 headphones hasn’t been how long the charges last, but whether or not the left headphone actually wanted to take a charge at all.

After about a week’s testing, it just… stopped. It was unclear if it was actually just dead, and I was on the verge of contacting TRUEFREE about it when it just suddenly started working again, reporting a full charge and mostly lasting the distance.

Ever since then, I’ve had to check it each time I put the TRUEFREE O2 headphones on, playing an audio Russian Roulette as I go. This isn’t really what you want with headphones, now is it?

TRUEFREE O2: Alex’s Verdict

The TRUEFREE O2 headphones are a budget pair, and I do have to take that into consideration when assessing their overall value first and foremost.

The problem is that they feel budget, and their intermittent battery/charging issues, combined with some seriously noise-leaking internal speakers does very little to endear me to to them. They’re nowhere near as bad as some headphones I’ve inflicted upon my ears:

I am (sometimes) a sucker for punishment. This was one of those times.

But I can’t in all honesty say that they’re particularly good.

If you’re on a very tight budget and you want a simple pair of running headphones, they would work, but I wouldn’t want to say that they feel like they would work for a particularly long time. If you did have to replace them, it would feel as though you were falling rather solidly into Vimes Boots theory territory because they're not quite so cheap that replacing them wouldn't feel like a pretty hefty sting to most people.

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