Brand: Nura
Model: Nuratrue Pro
Release Date: Late 2022 / Early 2023
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Final review Score has been changed from 4.5 to 4.0 to better reflect the connectivity issue
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I've been around the world.
Japan, China, America, Europe, All in the search of the perfect TWS.
I seen some things.
Well I didn't think that I'd find what I was looking for in my own humble little country of Australia. Poker machines sure. Overpriced property, you got it. and weird little creatures with mucus pouches for their offspring; are all things I'd expect to find here. But cutting edge technology? I thought that stopped after penicillin. I thought we dusted our collective hands off and decided we'd done our bit.
That’s why we drink so much right?..........Right?
I've tried either a healthy or unhealthy selection of TWS (depending on who you ask), each one carefully selected after reading countless reviews, asking questions and every comparison chart out there. As I've gone up in price I've raised my expectations by the same percentage. This has left me poorer and dissatisfied, only being able to find incremental improvements at the cost of something else.
It’s nice to finally feel satisfaction. I know with the world the way it is we may have forgotten all about that word. But satisfied is what I am with these in my ears.
These are the true wireless earbuds I've been looking for.
Let’s get to it.
Case
Case has a nice matte feel to it and a hefty weight. The weight actually makes me feel like it is high quality with a nice hand feel (if this was a McDonald's product they would consider it a high-value "Mouth Feel". Buds get easier to pull out of the case once your nails grow a bit or as the finger grease you’ve left on the edge of the Nura starts to harden creating a sticky resin that allows easy gripping.
You can also push down on the inner side of the bud to lift up the edge of the outer side for easier access
ANC
I’m not sure if by the time I got these, an update had already done something with the ANC. All original reviews and comments mentioned dissatisfaction with the ANC of the Nuratrue Pro.
Now although I talk about it all the time I’m not an ANC fan.
I doth not protest too much about it
I couldn’t care less about it, the world is full of
MY noise and I like it that way! Unless you're listening to ambient music at 30% volume I don’t understand how passive isolation and the speakers inside of your ears aren’t good enough.
All that being said, these have excellent ANC. I'd be happy to recommend them as an "ANC Bud" (whatever the **** that means). It dramatically dulls baby screaming, white noise, voices, A grass cutter I almost didn’t realise I was walking past earlier, car’s, gym music and just about everything else. It’s actually quite impressive and doesn’t leave any noticeable 'Feeling'.
I hear people say that ANC changes the music for the worse. With TWS it’s hard to know for sure as you already are at a disadvantage. But on the Nuratrue Pro the ANC increases the volume of the music quite dramatically (To the point that you need to turn it down a few bars before activating) and gives it a fuller sound.
My only gripe is that for some reason you can swap between ANC and Social mode through bud taps, but if you want neither on you have to go into the app to disable the options altogether instead of toggle through...But what are we niggling for?
Design
Social mode
Is only really good if you listen to ambient music at 30% volume. It brings voices and sounds through clearly but if you have these you should be listening to some hard rock or electronic and you’re better off just pausing the music with social mode on to get a proper social effect. Luckily this is a touch option you can configure on the buds.
I say this as if you told me that you wanted to listen to ambient on a tws, I could recommend a better bud, these are weirdly extra fun for harder faster genres. Rather than smooth and soft music. They have a low end roar. Psychedelic Bass music however is a mix of ambient and bass and these are super nice for that able to frame the subbass around a track in any kind of what they want.
At home in the dark corners of the house where I listen to music I found that social mode give these more of an open back feel to them adding even more space to the already ridiculously expansive soundstage. But be sure to watch out for that volume increase when switching over to ANC again.
Immersion Mode
This is a bass and sub-bass controller that will give you more rumble for your tumble. You can take it to +3 which would be absolutely psychotic or you can take it to -3 which is equally psychotic but for different reasons. +1 is the sweet spot for this young reviewer who believes that moderation is the key to balance and a balanced life and that while the fringe frivolities of our existence that can be deemed as 'fun' should not be indulged in to the point of making it a sole focus and an end unto itself you need balance and an non-myopic awareness of everything that is going on so at to be able to take it all in for the full world that it is.
The rest of the app is quite impressive. I won't go into any more details because who really buys tws for the app? It’s nice cream on top, but I ain’t here to review cream.
So far this doesn’t sound to positive does it? Let’s change all that
Connectivity
The ONLY inconsistency of these is connectivity and I wish it wasn’t there because it’s a big one. At home I don't experience any cut or dropouts but while out in the world they can get pretty bad. This is in public open spaces with the worst of the dropouts in the middle of an open park with hardly anyone around. At first I thought it might be related to big cable towers I was around or maybe it could have been the 5G, who knows?
I want to be fair here, I blame chip makers for bluetooth cutouts. Manufacturers buy
their product to put in their own device. I know things can block signal and their could be some kind of software interference, but that is still Qualcomms responsibility. I've had cutouts on every single tws I've owned, the common denominator here is the chip maker.
Let's be more fair.
The app support for issues is really good and actually quite pleasant to use. It remembers your position if you leave the page and is actually a pretty impressive troubleshooting guide.
However all the steps and a factory reset didn’t resolve the issue. It’s hard to know what it is, is it the three thousand different functions of the chip? the bluetooth 5.3 not working with older phones or the server connection that seems to be needed to use the app? I don’t know, but whatever it is I would give it up to resolve the issue to use these purely as a pair of exercise buds.
The connectivity issues aren’t consistently there, it feels mostly brought on by a phone in a pocket that swings while you run. They occurred twice on a short walk the other day but didn’t occur in the gym. And another time on a run it was pretty bad causing me to cut the run short to go home. But still, cutouts should have been bluetooth 1.0 stuff not a 5.3 issue.
All the above is cope, sorry to put you through it, bottom line is they get pretty bad during activity on this specific pair. but so far, I still forgive it for the good times we do have.
Soundstage
These are the first buds I’ve found myself fully appreciating the out-of-head soundstage in a while, another time was listening to the Nuarl brand employing the HDSS technology.
Nura uses a similar thing called Dirac Virtuo™. I’ve gone through their white papers and it looks like a lot of the Nura features might be a result of their collaboration with Dirac. They claim spatial audio, wider soundfield, better imaging, thicker mids, turning my generational-rancher of a father into a man who can feel, understand, and love. You get it.
This is a good collaboration and confirms a thought; If you are releasing a TWS you should be implementing some version of Dirac Virtua or HDSS or whatever the hell else is out there into your buds as a big soundstage is almost always a big win. It’s essential.
The soundstage on these is ridiculous. Mids can sit so far back but still with forward prominence that it feels like it’s being played from across the street, loudly.
Metallic sounds have me searching around for the falling pylons around me and bass, well I’ll go into bass next, but the soundstage as a whole is completely impressive and satisfyingly massive.
In quite environments the social mode gives them a full on open back feel.
!Bass!
Welcome to the bass section!
This section could go on forever. Bass is the biggest selling point of these babies. I’ve heard big bold bass cannons that don’t have the soundstage width and I’ve listened to buds with retained bass and kick drums in order to make room for the sound of other elements. I've heard all kinds of kick drums okay?
The bass digs deeper, heavier and better positioned than any other tws I've heard. I put the caveat of 'tws' because of the one single iem that I have. So this makes it the second best low end I've heard across the board, including overhears that I have. This is mostly due to where the kickdrums and basslines sit in the mix. They don’t sit below the music but behind it, coming at you the same way a pair of speakers at a festival pump out towards you.
You wouldn’t know that these are driven by a single driver, they have the feel of a dual dynamic low end and it makes you wonder how no one other brands have managed to texture their bass like this.
It's radical
These are definitely bass-head tws,
but they also can not be, the immersion mode lets you choose for yourself and is pretty responsive.
The subbass has serious rumble to it and can leave your ear with a satisfying digging out of it on tracks that shouldn’t even have it
. And tracks that should have it? Well watch out, it’s coming for you
Another thing hinted at earlier is that the subbass doesn't just sit under a track, but can frame it as if the track is a painting and the subbass is a frame that sits around it. However, sometimes it's the top of the frame that vibrates, other times it's the left and top or the entire thing.
I wont go on, but I’ll leave on this: The bass positioning, textering and strength of this TWS is one of the best I've heard. And I have very, limited experience.
Mids
The bass attack isn’t the only thing you’re going to enjoy here. I have heard some people describe the mids as a bit dry, I would suggest instead that they are crispy
The soundstage once again really is a manufacturers best friend and stops the mids from even touching the lows, getting stepped or squashed by the low end.
They sit slightly recessed in the mix and if there was one thing I would change with the tuning here it would be to get the mids to a point where they can scream at you. This is personal preference due to the music I listen to and not a reasonable request. Still, When a song reaches a crescendo I like to feel on the borderline of pain. It’s just nice to feel something.
The recession is hardly a recession, it feels more like the mids are slightly curved back into the mix but still completely sitting over the vertically placed lows.
Otherwise everything comes across well positioned with plenty of room for mids to dance around in the mix.
Darker tones and male vocals are where the Nura has a particular edge. In electronic music the darker notes of the track have a real danger and vibrate with energy. In Muddy Waters Feel Like Going Home, Mr Waters voice starts low and finishes high up as it projects into the ether. It reaches down and up with an impressive amount of depth and actually gives me that wince of near pain I was after, perhaps I'm just listening to the wrong era
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Treble
There isn’t as much to say about the treble. It comes across just about where I like it, which is something you will hear most people say with a product that is custom tuned to their exact hearing preference.
Subjectivity really might be Nura’s greatest weapon here. High hats and jingles all come across positioned well in the mix with cymbals having a resonance that rings out into the distance.
However the dynamic driver isn't getting that perfectly resolved high end. In no way is it a problem as the mids and bass take so much attention that to ask treble to do the same seems almost unreasonable. It does it’s job and doesn’t seem to miss much if anything at all. Todd Rundgren’s I Saw The Light is a pretty treble heavy track (Yes I read that on a whathifi article, what're ya going do? Call Crinacle on me?),
The Nura positions the cymbals appropriately moving around the sound spectrum, not just sitting at the top of the mix. Sometimes they are lower and during the little tap-tappity-tap cymbal solos that you can feel them move around in a circular fashion.
Now I've never met a treble-head, I haven't met all sorts of people but that doesn't mean that I don't believe they're out there. The impressiveness of the Nuratrue Pro lies in the other frequencies with treble playing an important supportive role. Everyone else will be absolutely fine and let's stop talking about treble already.
Dirac Virtua
Let's give these guys their own little section. And yes this seems suspiciously shill-like, and maybe I am the CEO, but that doesn't change the fact that this is a company who has some kind of integration that I don't fully understand but at the same time doesn't seem to complicated.
I told you, I'm the CEO.
If you look through thei*Uh I mean *"My" website, a lot of the strengths of Dirac Virtua are the strengths of the Nuratrue. I can't say how much of a difference it really makes, but I think Nura knows those are it's strengths and is promoting them.
I've heard HDSS as well as Dirac, another company doing a similar thing has made me believe this is a real thing. I'm glad that brands give them credit and emphasise their strengths. If anyone else is using them but not saying so, they are doing themselves a disservace. They both add such an expanse to the sound that to consider listening to anything narrow feels like a waste of time. This tech has been out for a while now and is currently worth whatever premium they have to charge for it.
FOR ME ATLEAST
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So what does it all mean? These are deepest, widest and most powerful tws I own. In short they are the best TWS I own. If I had connectivity dropouts on any other pair of tws I’d send them back in a heartbeat, collect my refund and go and buy something else. Not here, they are worth keeping and I’m hoping an update addresses dropouts in the future. It’s somehow not a deal breaker, I will do what
The Nura requires me to do.
And I love a Micro-Manager.
I usually base my satisfaction purely on sound and stability but it’s hard not to be impressed by all the technologies being employed here too. The Dirac Virtuo implementation should be a standard and I hope to see it more often
They play hard and fast music the way people want to hear hard and fast music which is rare to find in a tws tuning and a welcomed embrace into my ears.
4.0 out of 5
You pricks want a 5/5 then you fix the connection thing.
