I've bought the Soundcore P20i three times. Lost one pair after a year, lost another after a year and seven months, and I knew I would buy a fourth if these walked off too. That is what "fine" looks like in the budget tier: gear that just works, no gimmicks, no drama, no regrets. It is also the bar every cheap pair has to clear before I say a good word about it. This comparison puts four budget wireless earbuds side by side, and instead of ranking them by the adjectives on the box, I ranked them by the five questions I ask of anything I am going to wear on a walk, in the gym, and on a phone call.
I want to be straight about the method before the table, because it matters. I have not lived with all four of these long enough to hand out a final verdict on fit and battery drain, and I do not recommend gear I have not put real hours on. What I can do here is read each listing against the criteria that actually predict whether a pair survives daily life, flag which claims are doing heavy lifting, and tell you which pair is worth your own two-week test. The spec sheet gets a pair onto the shortlist. Your ears decide the rest.
The HAOYUYAN sports pair is the one I would start with for most people, because the 80-hour claimed playtime and the IPX7 water rating answer the two things that kill cheap earbuds: a dead battery and a sweaty walk. The XIAOWTEK pair is the better pick if you want the newest Bluetooth version of the group, and the GOLREX pair is the one to look at when phone calls matter more than music.
HAOYUYAN Wireless Earbuds (Sports, 80Hrs, IPX7, Black)
Biggest claimed playtime in the group, the highest water rating here, and an LED display that tells you the case charge without guessing
Sports shells usually sit deeper in the canal, which is the first thing to hurt if your ears run small
Wireless Earbuds, Hi-Fi Deep Bass, 48H Playtime
Plainest feature list of the four, which means the fewest things to break, plus a bass-forward tuning claim at the low end of the bracket
Lowest claimed playtime here, and no water rating is stated anywhere in the listing
XIAOWTEK Wireless Earbuds (Bluetooth 5.4, 50H, IP7, White)
Newest Bluetooth version of the group, IP7 water resistance, LED display, and a stated 50-hour figure that sits in the middle
The "noise cancelling" wording refers to the microphone, not active noise cancellation for your ears, and a white shell shows every bit of gym grime
GOLREX Bluetooth Wireless Earbuds (Call-Focused)
Built around the one job most cheap earbuds fail at, which is being understood on a phone call, and positioned for podcasts and streaming too
The vaguest listing of the four: no playtime figure, no water rating, no Bluetooth version, and no display
Prices and availability were captured from Amazon Creators API and may change.
How I judge budget earbuds
Five questions, every time. How long does the battery actually last at normal listening volume? Does each earbud work independently, so I can run one while the other charges? How quiet is the quietest volume setting? Do they stay put through a walk and a workout without hurting my ear canals? And is there an obnoxious power-on announcement or magic-case marketing in the description? That is the test, and a spec sheet never answers all five.
That last point is not a joke. I have small, easily sore ear canals, and every pair hurts eventually, no matter the tip size or material. When I call a pair comfortable, it survived my ears, not a reviewer's. So the fit column in that table is where I expect the real differences to show up, and it is the one thing I refuse to guess at from a product photo.
Battery life: reading 80, 50, and 48 honestly
Battery is the first spec I check, because a pair that dies after two hours is useless no matter how good it sounds. Here the listings claim 80 hours for the HAOYUYAN pair, 50 for the XIAOWTEK pair, and 48 for the Hi-Fi Deep Bass pair. The GOLREX listing does not state a playtime figure at all, which is the kind of omission I notice immediately.
Here is the part the numbers hide. Those totals are almost always buds plus case recharges, which means the number you actually live with is the single-charge figure, and none of these listings spell that out in the headline. A 50-hour claim built on four or five case top-ups is a 8-to-10-hour bud that happens to come with a battery bank. That is still useful. It is just not the same thing as a 50-hour earbud, and the marketing counts on you not doing the division. My rule stands: I do not repeat a battery claim until I have run my own drain test at normal volume, and I do not treat a case as extra battery life. A case recharges. That is all it does, whatever the copy says.
For what it is worth, my baseline is a pair I have repurchased three times, and the reason is not the spec sheet. It is that the case held a charge for weeks in a bag and the buds did not surprise me. Cheap earbuds that hit their stated numbers are rarer than the numbers suggest.
Fit, ear canals, and the sports question
Fit beats frequency response, every time. If it hurts your ear canals or falls out mid-walk, nothing else about it matters. The HAOYUYAN pair is explicitly built for workout and running duty, which usually means a shell shaped to lock into the ear and a deeper insertion. For most people that is exactly what you want when you are moving. For small canals, deeper insertion is also the fastest route to soreness after forty minutes, so that is the single biggest question mark on the pair that otherwise leads this group.
The XIAOWTEK pair is described as an in-ear design with an LED display in the case, which reads like a more conventional shell. Conventional is not a knock. A boring shape that your ear tolerates for two hours beats an aggressive shape that survives a sprint and punishes you on a commute. I would test the HAOYUYAN pair on a short walk first and the XIAOWTEK pair on a long one, and let the ears vote.
Water ratings: IPX7, IP7, and the two blanks
Two of these four state a water rating. The HAOYUYAN pair lists IPX7, and the XIAOWTEK pair lists IP7. Those are effectively the same story for a pair of earbuds: they should shrug off sweat, rain, and a rinse under the tap, and they are rated for temporary immersion rather than a swim. In practice, a sealed rating is the difference between a pair that survives August in Nashville and a pair that dies in a hoodie pocket full of sweat.
The Hi-Fi Deep Bass pair and the GOLREX pair state no water rating. That does not mean they will die in the rain. It means nobody at the factory was willing to put a number on it, and I would not wear either one for a workout I expect to sweat through. If your earbuds live on a desk and go in your ears at a laptop, this section does not apply to you.
Call quality, microphones, and the wording that trips people up
The GOLREX listing leads with reliable voice call performance, which is unusual and worth noticing, because most cheap pairs treat the microphone as an afterthought and you find out on your first work call. Podcasts and audio streaming are named in the same breath, so this reads like a pair aimed at people who talk and listen more than they blast music.
The XIAOWTEK listing says noise cancelling, and the fine print points at the microphone. That is environmental noise cancellation on the mic, not active noise cancellation in your ears. ENC makes you sound clearer to the person on the other end by filtering background noise from your voice. It does nothing about the bus you are hearing. I have seen this wording sell a lot of earbuds to people expecting quiet, and it is the most common misunderstanding in this bracket. The HAOYUYAN listing uses similar noise-canceling headset language, and I would read it the same way until proven otherwise.
None of these four claim active noise cancellation, and in this bracket I would not expect it. If your goal is a quieter commute, save the money and buy a pair of foam tips instead.
The volume floor and the power-on chime
Two things no listing mentions, and both decide whether I keep a pair. First, how quiet is the quietest setting? Cheap earbuds have a habit of a minimum volume that is still loud enough to blast my eardrums at 11 p.m., and that is a dealbreaker for night listening. Second, what does the pair say when it connects? A soft chime is fine. A dramatic voice announcement greeting me like an overenthusiastic receptionist is not. Neither of these appears on a product page, which is exactly why they belong on your checklist before you decide you love something.
Independent use and the Bluetooth version
The XIAOWTEK pair states Bluetooth 5.4, the newest version in this comparison. Newer Bluetooth generations generally mean better power efficiency and more stable pairing, and 5.4 is a genuine point in that pair's favor for laptop and tablet use, which the listing calls out directly. The other three listings do not state a version. That is not proof of old hardware, but it is a blank where a spec should be, and blanks are how you end up with dropouts on a crosswalk.
Independent earbud use is the feature I did not know I needed until I had it. Being able to run one bud while the other charges turns a 10-hour pair into an all-day pair. None of these listings explicitly promise it, so it is the first thing I would verify in the first ten minutes after unboxing, and the first thing to send a pair back over if it fails.
The magic case, and what the listings leave out
Charging cases marketed as extending playtime bother me, because they do not extend anything. They recharge. You get the same hours back in a loop, and the copy makes it sound like the case generates electricity. The LED displays on the HAOYUYAN and XIAOWTEK pairs are the honest version of that idea: they tell you how much charge is left so you can plan, instead of inventing capacity.
The other blanks worth naming: none of these four list a driver size, a codec, or a weight. That means no AAC or SBC confirmation, no way to check latency numbers, and no way to compare the physical size of the bud against your ear. For a purchase under the price of a takeout dinner, that is survivable. Just do not fill those blanks in yourself from a photo.
Which pair for which person
- For workouts and sweaty commutes: the HAOYUYAN sports pair, on the strength of the IPX7 rating and the largest claimed playtime here. Test the fit first if your canals are small.
- For the newest hardware and laptop or tablet use: the XIAOWTEK pair, with Bluetooth 5.4, IP7, and a 50-hour claim. Remember the noise cancelling is on the microphone.
- For a simple, bass-forward pair with nothing to configure: the Hi-Fi Deep Bass earbuds. Accept the 48-hour claim as the floor of this group and keep them out of the rain.
- For phone calls, podcasts, and voice-first listening: the GOLREX pair, which is the only listing here that leads with call performance. Ask it for a battery number before you commit.
The honest last word
If you are waiting for a single pair to win this outright, you will be waiting a while, because none of these four has been through my two-week fit test yet and the spreadsheet does not care about marketing copy. What I can tell you is which claims are load-bearing. The HAOYUYAN pair leads on battery and water resistance, the XIAOWTEK pair leads on Bluetooth version and display, the GOLREX pair is the only one selling call clarity, and the Hi-Fi Deep Bass pair is the most stripped-down listing of the group.
Buy the one whose strongest claim matches the thing that actually annoys you. If your last pair died mid-walk, that is battery. If your last pair slid out on a run, that is fit. If your last pair made you shout into a phone call, that is the microphone. Then give it a week, check the volume floor, listen for the power-on chime, and decide for yourself. "Fine" is a real compliment in this tier, and it is the only review that counts when it comes from your own ears.