Skullcandy Push Ultra Truly Wireless  Headphones Review

The Skullcandy Push Ultra are wireless earbuds with an ear hook design. They differ from more conventional-looking rivals like the Mpow Flame Pro Truly Wireless, with large buds that sit at an outward-facing angle and don’t enter the ear canal very deeply. They’re almost entirely covered in a sporty silicone-like material that should resist fingerprints effectively.

The Skullcandy Push Ultra are somewhat comfortable. Unlike many other wireless earbuds, they’re one-size-fits-all, with no selection of differently sized ear tips. Their bulky outer buds can cause some minor fatigue over extended listening sessions. However, due to their shallow, angled fit, the ear tips don’t exert much in the way of pressure, and their slightly flexible ear hooks should conform to a wide range of ear shapes and sizes. If you're looking for similar Skullcandy earbuds but with a more comfortable design, check out the Skullcandy Push Active True Wireless.

The Skullcandy Push Ultra’s control scheme is adequate. Controls are mirrored on both buds, so you have complete functionality regardless of the unit you’re interacting with. The two volume buttons are also used for track skipping, with a two-second press on the up or down buttons resulting in track skipping or rewinding, respectively. The large black center cap can be tapped to play and pause music as well as answer calls. A triple tap activates your phone’s voice assistant while a double-tap followed by two-second hold switches between their three EQ presets: “Music”, “Movie”, and “Podcast”. You can tell when you've switched modes via an audible voice notification.

The Skullcandy Push Ultra are very portable, though their ear hooks add slightly to their size, especially compared to smaller alternatives like the similarly-named Skullcandy Push Truly Wireless or the Skullcandy Indy Evo Truly Wireless. Unfortunately, their case is very bulky and might be very tricky to put into your pocket.

These earbuds have a decent charging case that supports wireless charging and should do a good job of protecting them from bumps, drops, and scratches. It’s large but quite well-built overall, though it should be noted that the charging port on the inside of the case has trouble aligning with the buds, so the actual recharging process is a little more finicky than it needs to be.

The Skullcandy Push Ultra’s build quality is good. The case and buds themselves are made of a silicone-like material that feels like it’ll endure a couple of drops without sustaining damage, though the case’s zipper feels like a potential weak point. They’re also rated IP67 for dust and water resistance, though that isn’t something we test for.

The Skullcandy Push Ultra should do a good job of staying in your ear, mostly by virtue of their ear hooks. Due to their shallow in-ear fit and consequent lack of an airtight seal, they’re slightly less secure than the Mpow Flame Pro Truly Wireless.

• Skullcandy Push Ultra headphones
• Charging case
• USB-C charging cable
• Manual
• Quick start guide

The sound profile of the Skullcandy Push Ultra is quite uneven overall. Bass is severely lacking, resulting in a loss of punch and body in most tracks. Mids are mostly accurate, though a slight dip in the range means that vocals might be pushed slightly toward the back of the mix. Treble is also a little uneven, with some missing detail on finer vocals and instrumentation. If you're looking for a bit of added thump and rumble, you should take a look at the Skullcandy Indy Fuel Truly Wireless, which have a better-balanced sound profile.

These earbuds have disappointing frequency response consistency performance. It’s tricky to achieve a similar re-seat on separate listening sessions, so you’ll hear sounds in the bass and treble range differently.

The Skullcandy Push Ultra have awful bass accuracy. It’s heavily underemphasized across the entire range, with very little low, mid, or high bass. Regardless of your preferred musical genre, tracks are lacking thump and body. However, since their bass response is very sensitive to the earbuds’ fit and positioning, you may have a much different listening experience.

These earbuds have very accurate mids. They sound clear and present, though a dip in the upper mid-mid and lower high-mid range slightly weakens vocals and lead instruments and pushes them toward the back of the mix.

The treble accuracy of these earbuds is alright. Dips across the low-treble and high-treble range dull some finer details. That said, treble is highly dependent on the earbuds’ positioning, so your experience could vary significantly.

The Skullcandy Push Ultra have sub-par peaks and dips performance. A bump that extends from the mid-bass to the mid-mid range produces some boominess and clutters vocals and lead instruments. The following dip in the mid-mid range pushes vocals and lead instruments to the back of the mix. Steep peaks in the mid-treble range make some sibilants and details sound piercing and overly sharp.

The Skullcandy Push Ultra’s stereo imaging performance is very good. Their weighted group delay falls beneath the audibility threshold, ensuring a tight bass and transparent treble. While their L/R drivers are well-matched in regards to phase response, some minor amplitude and frequency mismatch are present. This has a very minor impact on their ability to accurately replicate an object’s location in the stereo field and consequently makes for a marginally less immersive listening experience. That said, these results are only valid for our test unit, and your own device may perform very differently.

These earbuds have an awful passive soundstage, similar to any other pair of earbuds that bypass outer ear interaction. It's worth noting that their somewhat loose seal creates a slightly more expansive, open soundstage than other earbuds.

The Skullcandy Push Ultra don’t have any virtual soundstage features.

The weighted harmonic distortion of these headphones is very good. Aside from some spikes in the low-bass and high-treble ranges at moderate volumes, most of the frequencies fall within good limits, which should ensure clean and pure audio reproduction.

These are the settings used when testing the Skullcandy Push Ultra. These results are only valid when using this configuration.

The Skullcandy Push Ultra do an awful job of passively blocking out background noise. The volume of sounds in the bass and mid-range is barely reduced at all, so you’ll hear quite a bit of rumble from bus engines and fellow commuters if you take public transit while wearing them. They perform slightly better when it comes to higher-pitched ambient noise, but not by much. Conversely, their poor noise isolation could be helpful if you're a runner who wants to stay aware of your surroundings.

The leakage performance of these earbuds is satisfactory. Escaping sound occurs mostly in the treble range and is audible over the noise floor of an average office, which might be annoying for people nearby if you like to listen to your music at high volumes. Consider the Skullcandy Sesh Evo True Wireless if you're looking for a pair of Skullcandy truly wireless in-ears that leak less audio.

These earbuds have an integrated mic.

The recoding quality of the Skullcandy Push Ultra’s microphone is poor. Those on the other line might hear your voice as sounding thin, muffled, and lacking in detail.

The microphone’s noise handling capability is terrible. It struggles quite a bit with isolating speech from even moderate background noise. If you frequently make phone calls in crowded or noisy environments, these probably aren’t the best option available.

These earbuds provide mediocre battery life. They only last a bit over 5 hours on a single charge and lack any energy-saving features like an auto-off timer, which is somewhat disappointing. They charge exceptionally quickly, with a full charge taking under 20 minutes. Their case also holds nearly six additional full charges, which is also quite handy. Their lack of a master bud is another helpful feature since you can listen to one while the other charges in the case.

Update 08/05/2020: The Skullcandy Push Ultra's companion app is awful. It has basically no functionality, allowing you only to update the firmware of the headphones and enable the "Find My Earbuds with Tile" feature. It displays the headphones' current EQ preset but doesn't allow you to change it.

The Skullcandy Push Ultra have decent Bluetooth connectivity. They use Bluetooth 5.0 but don’t support multi-device or NFC pairing and have somewhat high PC latency. However, their audio latency on iOS and Android mobile devices was low enough to stream videos on YouTube without much of a problem. It should be noted that apps compensate for audio lag differently, so you may have a very different experience in your day-to-day usage.

These earbuds are Bluetooth-only and don’t support non-Bluetooth wireless connections.

These truly wireless earbuds don’t support wired connections.

The Skullcandy Push Ultra aren’t compatible with PS4 consoles and their latency is too high to recommend them for PC gaming.

These earbuds’ reliance on Bluetooth connection makes them incompatible with Xbox One consoles.

The Skullcandy Push Ultra come with a case that holds just under six charges. It can be recharged wirelessly or via the included USB-C cable.