The best true wireless earbuds come in many shapes and sizes, but until now, you’ve been left with silicone and foam tips to find your perfect fit. The UE Drops do something different. Using a specialized FitKit, these buds are handcrafted for your ears to deliver the perfect fit — literally. At $399, these buds are expensive and lack some features you might expect, but for a handcrafted fit, they’re hard to beat at this price.
Specifications
- Current Price: $399.99 (Ultimate Ears)
- Connection type: Wireless
- Wireless Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.2
- Battery Life: 8 hours stream time (6 hours in transparency mode) +14 hours cradle = 22 hours total - 4h HFP (voice call) time
- Quick Charge: 5 minutes of charge = 1 hour play time
- Supported Codec: SBC
- Max Sound Pressure: 110db at 500 Hz
- Wireless Charge: Wireless charging case - Qi standard
- Tips: Custom handcrafted tips made with FitKit specifications
- Cable: USB-C charging case
UE Drops - What Is It?
The UE Drops are the flagship true wireless earbuds from Ultimate Ears, a company that lives and breathes professional audio. Its custom earbuds are some of the most popular choices for stage performers today due to their excellent fit and accurate sound, but until now, the cost to get a pair of your own was out of reach for many and kept you tethered to your device with a physical wire.
The goal of the UE Drops is to combine those two worlds. They aim to deliver the same easy wireless freedom as other popular TWS earbuds, like the AirPods Pro, but with a custom fit experience reminiscent of high-end wired earbuds. Until now, custom fit true wireless buds were exceedingly rare. In fact, the UE Fits and Logitech G Fits (Logitech owns Ultimate Ears), were the only options for that kind of fit.
But while the UE Drops and UE Fits both use a custom molding process, the drops stand apart in one major way: the final product is handcrafted by the engineers at Ultimate Ears, just like wired custom monitors. There’s no need to visit an audiologist for custom ear molds, either. All of that is handled through a mail-in process and a specialized FitKit I’ll describe in the next section. If you don’t like the fit, you can return them, no questions asked, for up to 30 days.
Apart from offering a secure, entirely custom fit, the UE Drops offer most of what you would expect from a pair of true wireless monitors in 2023. They offer 8 hours of battery life with volume to spare, plus another 14 hours provided by the charging case, wireless Qi charging of the case, fast charging support where five minutes in the case returns an hour of playtime, transparency mode, clear microphones for taking calls, and dynamic drivers for a full-bodied sound.
At the same time, the buds lack other features you would expect at this price. Despite having a transparency mode, there’s no active noise cancellation. Presumably, this is because the custom-fit eartips naturally block out most ambient sound, but it’s not as effective as it could be with an ANC mode. They’re also missing high-res Bluetooth codecs like aptX and LDAC, and in fact, use an older Bluetooth 4.2 version. Given the buds’ high price, those omissions could be deal breakers.
UE Drops - The Fit Process
The usual process for getting custom in-ear monitors involves visiting an audiologist and having a mold of your ear made and then sending that data to the company creating your in-ear monitor. It can be a costly, time-consuming process even before purchasing the actual IEM.
Ultimate Ears solves that with its FitKit. After purchasing the Drops, the first thing you’ll receive is a package with two sets of molds and a bluetooth cable. You’re instructed to download the UE FitKit app, which guides you through the process and leaves little room for error. The molds look like large, soft earbuds. You can almost intuit what you’ll have to do through the process, but the app doesn’t let you skip ahead to ensure there are no mistakes.
After deciding which best fits your ear, the app instructs on how to insert them for a secure fit and then has you take a picture, which gets uploaded to Ultimate Ears. With both tips in place, the app has you confirm your choice and then begins the molding process. Over the course of a minute, the gel inside the tips heats up and hardens. When it’s done, you simply put everything back in the box and use the pre-paid shipping label to send it back to UE.
Then the waiting game begins. Getting your final earbuds can take 3-4 weeks as the engineers work through their queue and create tips that match your molds.
UE Drops - Sound Quality and Daily Use
The final product is worth it, but in my case, the first set I received back wasn’t perfect. My left ear was snug and secure, but I had chosen the incorrect mold for the right ear, which meant that the final bud was also incorrectly sized. Reaching out to the company, they were quick to offer a second FitKit and to remold the earbuds. It’s reassuring that the company was so quick to respond, especially since I had no idea I had made a mistake until I tried the final product. It’s possible that they may have been a bit quicker knowing that I was a critic, but their Perfect Fit guarantee implies that this was all standard procedure.
With the proper tip, the Drops quickly became the best fitting pair of earbuds I’ve ever used. Unlike other earbuds, they don’t use a silicone tip at all. Instead, a resin nozzle matching your ear mold extends from the base. It looks like it might be uncomfortable, but I didn’t find it to be so. Since it’s based on your unique anatomy, the hard exterior doesn’t press uncomfortably like a universal IEM mold might. And, true to its design, it blocks out more external noise than a normal pair of true wireless earbuds.
Once they’re in place, these buds stay locked. I ran and worked out with them and they didn’t budge. The custom molds also include small wings to secure in the folds of your outer ear. Those two security points really prevent the Drops from shifting — as long as you use the proper size molds.
The buds themselves are surprisingly large. Unlike low profile wired custom in-ear monitors, they don’t disappear in your ear and actually stick out more than competing buds, like the Jabra Elite 7s or AirPod Pros. The outer shell is beautiful (mine was a pearlescent blue but is also available in white and black) but I still would have appreciated their being a bit more sleek.
If you can get past how big they are, they sound great. The 9.2mm dynamic drivers do a good job of delivering a big, bass-rich sound profile. There are four preset equalizer profiles inside the UE app, including Balanced, Bass Boost, Podcast, and Loudness, but there’s currently no way to set your own custom EQ. I found the Balanced preset to be the best choice for variety listening, but for pop and hip-hop Bass Boost can be a lot of fun.
The app also gives you some options for customizing the controls on the earbuds. UE has managed to give you all of the basic controls by default, including track and call commands, volume up and down, and enabling or disabling transparency mode. You swap any of these around or remap a touch control to Battery Status to see how much juice you have remaining.
The lack of active noise cancellation is a major omission at this price, however, as is the lack of high-res Bluetooth codecs. These are expected features in the premium true wireless bracket and particularly here since the Drops are at least partially targeted at audiophiles. The case is also surprisingly large and dominates any pocket you’d care to carry it in. At $400, these are odd choices that make the Drops feel especially costly.
Final Thoughts
The UE Drops are undoubtedly very good earbuds. They offer a better fit than any other earbud I’ve tried — and as someone that owns more than 50 pairs of wired earbuds and nearly two dozen true wireless earbuds, that’s an impressive accomplishment. But at $400, they really need to be doing more than just offering a great fit. As it stands, the lack of ANC, high-res codecs, bulky size, and extra bulky case all work against what is otherwise a very neat pair of true wireless earbuds. As such, the Drops are best suited for people who really need custom molds. Everyone else is best suited looking elsewhere.
The product described in this article was provided by the manufacturer for evaluation purposes. Some articles may contain affiliate links and purchases made through this will result in a small commission for the site. Commissions are not directed to the author or related to compensation in any way.
