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this video is sponsored by lg but guys i still gotta call a spade a spade here

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this is lg's tone free

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hbs fn6 or as i'm gonna be calling it

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the airpods competitor i've actually got both

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variants of them in white and black and

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the most exciting thing about them is the feature that doesn't immediately

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disqualify them for everyday use from me

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the size of the charging case yes my

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friends the most important thing to me when it comes to wireless earphones is

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whether it passes the does it fit in this pocket test and

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not only does it fit really nicely in that totally otherwise useless pocket

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but because of the glossy finish it actually slides in and out really really

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nicely in fact compared to an airpods pro case

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it's a little bit on the thicker side but it's actually smaller in the x

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dimension and not much different in the y dimension

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not bad not bad at all especially considering that one of the big features

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according to the front of the box anyway is their uv

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nano which is a disinfecting light that

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is included in the case you see yeah actually you can you can see it in there

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to kill apparently 99.9 of the bacteria that are going to end up

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on the ear tips of your earbuds when you put them in your case to charge they

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were very specific about this i am to inform you that the tone free fn 6 is

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the only one that has been approved by official organizations such as tuv

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actually kind of a big deal it charges via usb type c they rate it for six

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hours of music playback from the earbuds themselves and then the case is rated

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for another 12. so while the case only

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has two extra charges for the earphones in it the earbuds themselves actually

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run for quite a long time and part of the reason they're able to squeeze better battery life out of these is that

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while they are noise isolating they do not have active noise cancellation which

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is a feature that can suck up quite a lot of battery life huh they really want

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to sit at quite an aggressive forward-facing

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angle honestly the form factor of them reminds me more of the airpods pros and

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less of the regular airpods due to the short stem

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why am i even putting in the white ones i was so excited about those uh bat pods

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airpods clones a little while ago just because i wanted black airpods pros so

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why don't i just open up the ones that have got the little nice little short

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circuit thing on it and everything here oh would you look at that they wrote me

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a handwritten note i actually know people over at lg who are big enough

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nerds to write a message like that oh wow

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i'm impressed i was gonna say i bet they send the same note to everyone but it's

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totally not this one's to me and this one's to Colton dear Colton hope you are

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smiling reading our little surprise to show our gratitude little do they know

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that he's not allowed to keep their samples oh Colton's never getting it you got

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more ear tips although i actually found the medium ones out of the box

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sufficient for me i often switch to small but i don't think i'll be doing

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this with these usb cable no wall wart

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and just like a little warranty manual thing now as with a lot of their audio

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products one of the big headline features for lg is their collaboration

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with meridian audio oh wow look at that

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just got a notification everything in spite of the fact that this is

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not an lg phone i got the same automagical pairing process that you

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would expect out of something like airpods or pixel buds and they're

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connected i didn't have to press a pairing button or do anything although

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it does have a manual pairing button if you do end up needing that down the line

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if i understood the product packaging correctly it also features wireless

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charging how do i tell if it's working

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oh yeah look at that awesome the meridian audio collaboration

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is a funny one for me because it's at the point now where i honestly can't

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tell who's paying who because on the one hand lg wants meridian's expertise so

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they created some eq profiles that are supposed to kind of simulate the natural

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crosstalk between the right and left to give it the more open sound stage like

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if you were listening to actual stereo speakers and that kind of tuning

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obviously has a value but on the other hand lg spends

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so much of their product page basically talking about meridian's expertise when

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it comes to building speakers and digital sound processors and all this

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kind of stuff like look at this it's ridiculous i don't know who's getting the most out of that relationship there

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the tone free app is surprisingly well rated for like a bluetooth speaker

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included app 4.2 stars device is currently using the latest

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software nice so controls are handled with tapping i don't have a music app

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open so i guess that's not going to do anything apparently you can long press as well where's the button oh i think i

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activated it there

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okay while they don't have active noise

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cancellation they are quite noise isolating i'm not hearing any of the

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regular you know ac hum or anything here in the office but they still include an

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ambient sound mode so it'll pass through some of the external audio oh there we

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go it's working now first time i think it wasn't actually on i wouldn't

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describe it as as natural sounding as the airpods pros for sure but if the

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idea is just like hey i'm crossing the street right now i need to make sure that nothing hits me you can definitely

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hear the things around you better i can hear my own voice better it's the kind of thing i would normally leave off if

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i'm not using active noise cancelling headphones ooh i wonder if part of the

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problem is that i was in immersive mode hey brandon can you talk to me for a sec

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yeah it's definitely less natural sounding that's fine i don't need you to

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oh interesting you can actually you can tune it though so you can have a little

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bit of ambient sound and a lot find my earbuds this is cool so some vendors

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lock their find my earbuds feature depending on what kind of phone you're

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using but lg maybe because they are realistic about how much mobile phone

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market share they have uh seems to allow the feature to work

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with the app regardless of which phone you have so theoretically whoops

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hello what just happened

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oh so it's not for when they're in the case

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it's for actually finding the individual

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earbuds okay so left

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it's pretty quiet oh it gets a little louder actually

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yeah it keeps getting louder okay that's not bad that's usable

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like obviously you'd have to walk around your house to find the thing one thing

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lg points out is that these ear tips

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rather than actually feels a little stickier than the the regular silicone

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ones it's apparently made from a medical grade ear gel in terms of the fit

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i would describe them as very similar to the airpods pros which are

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my everyday carry so i i consider that to be pretty high praise um

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although i guess it's kind of easy to have a similar fit if you

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also have a very similar design

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time for some uh laszlo supernova the song i'm allowed to play definitely for

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sure you know i gotta say not every audio

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company partnership has ended up turning into products that legitimately sound

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better but lg is clearly benefiting from

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meridian's expertise there's clearly defined base but it's not overpowering

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it's tight i'm probably talking really loud right now because yeah sorry

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brandon between the fact that i'm actually listening to music although not

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at an unreasonable volume combined with how their noise isolating means that

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it's it's kind of hard to hear what i'm saying i kind of want to play around

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with the different profiles though so i automatically went to natural

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because that tends to be what i prefer but let's see what bass boost sounds

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like still reasonable

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fuller for sure but not overpowering and not muddy

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oh thank goodness brandon did you ever

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watch the video on the sennheiser momentum true wireless twos their eq

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control app was unusable thank you lg or meridian or whoever is

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responsible for this being the eq control this is exactly how eq control

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should work one thing that i wish they would improve actually is that it'd be

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nice if it gives you a live preview of what it's going to sound like as you're

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moving it around as it is right now you have to actually click save to hear your

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your amped up base as someone who actually likes the sound like that inside your

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skull sound of in-ears the immersive profile doesn't really do anything for

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me but the good news is that both natural and bass boost are actually

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really nice stock eqs and i think a lot of people aren't gonna end up playing

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around with the custom ones although it's really cool that they let you have two of them i probably end up with bass

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boost it's actually really clean sounding i definitely like the black one

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more i think it's too bad that they decided to go with a glossy finish on

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the white because this matte black

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looks and feels in the hand a lot better even though surprisingly the glossy

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white so far is less of a fingerprint magnet i think this one actually i'd

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expect to look kind of nicer on a day-to-day basis but when it's when it's

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clean this is like that's pretty sleek you

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know i'm surprised oh it automatically detects taking your earbuds out one

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thing that um i hope is not unavoidable is that it looks

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like it stopped playing when i took one out okay it looks like you can start

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playback again with just one in your ear because it is supposed to know if it's

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in your ear or not and automatically pause playback

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yeah and it paused it again so that's something you will have to restart if

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you just pop out one earbud at a time and see i don't know if there's a 100

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right answer for everyone when it comes to that that's another thing that might

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be kind of cool to add to the app is hey do you do you want that behavior or not

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oh one thing that i just noticed is that

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it doesn't disable the touchpad when you're holding the earbud in your hands

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so it doesn't seem to be clever enough to know if it's right up

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against an ear from the sensor here or if it's just like kind of casually

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rolling around in your hand that's another thing that's probably

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quite tunable in a software update and given what a nice base they're starting

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with here so solid battery life good features the wireless charging and all

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that good stuff good sound quality right out of the box and an easily tunable eq

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this is uh this is a great start it's sponsored by

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lg but i don't know if you guys are familiar with the ftc guidelines i'm not

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allowed to say anything that i don't actually think these are

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really solid just like the idea of subscribing to ShortCircuit make sure

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you do that so you don't miss any of our videos over here