RHA TrueConnect Truly Wireless  Headphones Review

The RHA TrueConnect are small truly wireless earbuds that have a circular design with short stalks, like the Anker SoundCore Liberty Air, but with a more premium feel. They come in a matte all-black design that isn’t flashy and doesn’t protrude much out of your ears, which makes them even more low-profile.

These in-ears are fairly comfortable and come with a wide variety of silicone (3 sizes) and foam (3 sizes) tips to help you find the perfect fit. The buds are lightweight, and you barely feel them once they are inside your ears. However, they enter the ear canal. This might not be ideal for everybody, as you may feel some fatigue after a while. Also, since they have physical buttons on the earbuds, you need to lightly push the earbuds inside your ears to register commands, especially with multi-press commands.

The control scheme of the TrueConnect is surprisingly complete for truly wireless in-ears. They have one physical button on each bud and offer most functionalities. You can play/pause or take/end calls on both earbuds, which is nice. You can also control the volume on the right earbud and skip tracks with the left one with multiple presses. They can also activate your device’s voice assistant. While the control scheme is easy to use, you need to push the headphones inside your ears for some inputs to register, especially on multi-press commands. Doing so can get a bit uncomfortable.

Like most in-ears, the TrueConnect are very small earbuds and don’t trap much heat inside your ears due to their design. You shouldn’t feel that much of a difference in temperature when wearing them for long periods of time, and won’t sweat more than usual when working out.

Like most truly wireless designs, the TrueConnect are very portable. You can easily fit the two buds inside small pockets or a bag, and their case, while slightly bulkier than some other truly wireless headphones, is also easy to store.

They come with a great, hard charging case that protects the headphones well against scratches and impacts. However, while the headphones are rated IPX5 for sweat and water resistance, the case isn’t. This case doesn’t have a lid like most truly wireless cases, but swivels to open. This is a nice touch and prevents the case from opening when dropped. Overall, the case is solid, feels heavy, and is well-made.

The TrueConnect are well-built truly wireless headphones. The earbuds feel dense enough to survive a few accidental drops but could break if you were to sit or step on them, because of the stalk design. Nevertheless, they feel solid and shouldn’t break from normal usage. They are also rated IPX5 for sweat and water resistance, which is good, but we don’t test this internally.

The TrueConnect are stable in-ears that can be used for jogging and most sports activities. They also come with a good amount of tip options, so you should find one that will have a secure fit inside your ears. Most people will find that the foam tips offer better stability than the silicone ones. They shouldn’t pop out of your ears, and since they are truly wireless, you don’t have to worry about having a cable in your way or yanking the headphones out because they got stuck on something.

• RHA TrueConnect headphones
• 7 silicone tip options (3 sizes)
• 3 foam tip options (3 sizes)
• Hard charging case
• USB-C charging cable
• Manuals

The frequency response consistency is excellent. If the user can achieve a proper fit and an air-tight seal using the assortment of tips that come with the headphones, then they should be able to get consistent bass and treble delivery every time they use the headphones.

The bass is great. Their LFE (low-frequency extension) is at 10Hz, which is excellent. Low-bass is overemphasized by about 4dB, which adds a bit of thumpiness to the mix, which some may like. Mid-bass, responsible for kicks of drums and bass guitar, is over our target by about 2dB, which won’t be too noticeable. The high-bass, responsible for warmth, is over by more than 2.5dB, which will make the mix a bit boomy. Overall, the bass of these earbuds is slightly overdone but can be great for bass-heavy music.

The mid-range performance of the TrueConnect is very good. The response is well-balanced, but there is a noticeable broad dip in mid-mid. This will push the vocals and lead instruments to the back of the mix, favoring lower-end frequencies.

The TrueConnect’s treble range performance is sub-par. Half the range, up to 7kHz, is quite underemphasized. Those frequencies will lack detail and brightness and will be noticeable on vocals, leads, and cymbals. Also, frequencies after the 7kHz may sound a bit bright and piercing on some S and T sounds, but not everyone will hear this as intensely.

The imaging performance is excellent. The weighted group delay is at 0.08, which is excellent. The GD graph also shows that the entire group delay response is below the audibility threshold. This ensures a tight bass and a transparent treble reproduction. Additionally, the L/R drivers of our test unit were very well-matched, which is important for the accurate placement and localization of objects (instruments, voice, footsteps), in the stereo image. However, these results are only valid for our unit, and yours may perform differently.

The soundstage is poor. This is because creating an out-of-head and speaker-like soundstage is largely dependent on activating the resonances of the pinna (outer ear). The design of in-ears and earbuds is in such a way that fully bypasses the pinna and doesn't interact with it. Also, because these headphones have a closed-back enclosure, their soundstage won't be perceived to be as open as that of open-back earbuds like the Apple AirPods (1st generation) Truly Wireless or the Bose SoundSport Free Truly Wireless.

The noise isolation performance of the TrueConnect is decent. Even if they don’t have any ANC features, they passively block a good amount of ambient noise. They achieved more than 12dB of isolation in the bass range, where engine rumbles sit, which is decent, but very impressive for passive isolation. However, there seems to be a weak spot centered around the 200Hz mark. In the mid-range, important for blocking ambient chatter, they achieved an isolation of 18dB, which is very good. In the treble range, occupied by S and T sounds and fan noises like A/C systems, they provide about 37dB of isolation, which is also very good.

Like most in-ears, the leakage performance of the TrueConnect is excellent. They basically do not leak, so there's no need to worry about disturbing people around with your music, even if you listen at very loud volumes. With the music at 100dB SPL, the leakage at 1 foot away averages at 25dB SPL and peaks at around 40dB SPL, which is roughly as loud as an average home and well under the noise floor of an average office.

The performance of the RHA TrueConnect integrated mic is mediocre. Speech recorded or transmitted with the microphone will sound thin and lacking in brightness. It will be intelligible in quiet environments. In louder environments, though, it will struggle to separate speech from background noise in loud situations like a subway station.

The TrueConnect’s microphone has a sub-par recording quality. The LFE (low-frequency extension) of 281Hz means speech recorded or transmitted will sound noticeably thin. The HFE (high-frequency extension) of 3.2kHz is poor and results in speech that is muffled and lacking in detail. It also negatively affects the intelligibility of speech, but will still be understandable in very quiet environments.

The integrated microphone of the RHA TrueConnect is average at noise handling. In our SpNR test, it achieved a speech-to-noise ratio of about 16dB, indicating it is best suited for quiet and moderate environments. However, the microphone will struggle to separate speech from ambient noise in loud situations.

The TrueConnect last over 4 hours on one charge, which is decent for truly wireless headphones. Also, they take about a single hour to fully charge, which is short and convenient. Their charging case holds 4 additional charges, which brings their estimated total battery life at about 20 hours. There is also an advertised quick-charge feature that gives you 50% of the battery life for only 15 minutes of charging. For a longer battery life on a single charge, take a look at the Creative Outlier Air.

They don’t have a companion app for customization options.

The TrueConnect are Bluetooth truly wireless headphones. They support Bluetooth version 5.0, which may provide you with better overall performance, but we couldn’t test this as our current test bench dongle supports version 4.2 for now. Unfortunately, they don’t support NFC or multi-device pairing.

The latency of the TrueConnect is very high, and you will notice a delay when watching video content or when gaming. Some apps and devices seem to offer some sort of compensation, but the delay will most likely still be very noticeable.

These truly wireless headphones can’t be used wired.

They come with a nice hard charging case that holds 4 additional charges but doesn’t have any other inputs. On the upside, they have a USB-C connection to charge the case.