Introducing the brand new Sudio Fem. It now comes with a radically new design from Sudio, and it immediately broke my preconception about the Fem when I first held it on my hands and had them in my ears.
Bearing the Swedish word for number 5, I have to say that the Sudio Fem is up for a mambo as there are a lot of changes from its predecessors. These are great changes, by the way. Combined with a few more upgrades, the Sudio Fem is looking like a champ – so how do we feel about it?
Unboxing
Let’s start by saying that Sudio will now ship you the Sudio Fem in this new box. It has a pull tab at the front to reveal the contents within.
In terms of the unboxing experience, the new Sudio Fem is actually pretty much the same as before. Still having a clean packaging design with an image of the product itself printed at the front.
At the back, we can see some quick highlights in the features available and certain included accessories.
Opening up the box itself reveals that Sudio is still really paying attention to the unboxing experience. It slides out sideways smoothly, revealing the Sudio Fem itself and also the accessories box.
Digging out everything reveals the warranty card, user manual, the aforementioned accessories box, and also the Sudio Fem itself.
Inside the accessories box, we can find multiple different eartip sizes. Sudio has included a total of 5 different sizes and has pre-installed the middle one for you. It’s great to see that Sudio cares about the user experience out of the box since the Sudio Fem uses a custom-designed silicon eartip.
Design
Looking at the cradle itself, the Sudio Fem comes in this circular shape. Comparing with the Niva and the Tolv that we reviewed previously, the Fem is somewhat in between in terms of size. The cradle is also covered in a soft-touch material same as how the Tolv was.
The shape combined with the soft-touch material made the Sudio Fem fairly difficult to open as it can slip off my fingers easily. I can foresee that wearing gloves while trying to open the Sudio Fem might be an issue, too.
At the side around the 10 o’clock of the Sudio Fem is where the charging port is found. Yeah, it’s off-centered on either x- and y-axis if we are to use the Sudio logo on the lid as a reference point. Just a little weird. What’s great here is that Sudio has moved to USB-C and I sighed in relief when I saw it. Finally, I have another solid reason to ditch other cables!
Opening up the cradle reveals the earbuds themselves. When Sudio first showed us the Fem, I thought to myself – what in the world is that design? From what I can find out, SBC is most commonly supported but AAC offers better audio fidelity, though it depends on what device you’re using. For Apple users, go for AAC.
The overall frequency response is still bass-heavy, but it’s not overwhelming. The bass thumps tightly and is enjoyable, whereby the highs don’t sparkle with ear-piercing frequencies – which I personally prefer. The vocals, however are dragged down to a lower frequency.
I’ll have to say that the overall sound quality has improved compared to the last generation since it sounds much clearer than before.
Battery life
Interestingly, Sudio didn’t provide us the battery capacity at all. That doesn’t matter since we are still going to wear the Fem and test out its battery life on our own.
Interestingly, we got a big gap in our tests. Depending on what volume we’re listening to music at, we can get somewhere around 4 hours on higher volumes and up to 6 hours on lower volume. No surprises here as higher volumes do need more power to drive the speakers.
The cradle also provides slightly more than 2 complete charges of the earbuds themselves, totaling up to about 18 to 20 hours of listening time depending on the volume. One of our main complaints about the Sudio Tolv from earlier this year was its confusing battery indicator LED on the cradle itself.
Now with the Sudio Fem, it’s using a conventional 4 LED setup here which indicates 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% battery life. However, another minor complaint here is that these battery LEDs don’t light up when I open the cradle. It will only light up after I flicked either earbud so that it disconnects and reconnects back to the case. Minor complaint, but perhaps something to look into.
Wrapping up the Sudio Fem review
I think overall, the Sudio Fem is a big improvement over the Sudio Tolv from earlier this year. It comes with numerous upgrades in parts that really matter to me as an end-user – particularly the better comfort fit and also USB-C charging port.
Is the Sudio Fem the perfect pair of true wireless earbuds? I’d say close enough as it is made for those who seek a no-frills, easy to use experience with great sound. I still think a companion app to manage ANC and ambient sound features could’ve been implemented since the Sudio Fem already has the hardware to do so. But, having to develop an app means higher cost, and price matters.
The Sudio Fem is priced at only USD $139 (RM649), which is only $10 more than the Tolv. If you’re already considering the Tolv to begin with, then buy the Fem instead. Seriously, the Fem feels like it’s two generations ahead of the Tolv.
The brand new Sudio Fem is an easy recommendation for me if you are looking for some high-quality, premium true wireless earbuds – especially with great microphones. I personally have upgraded from the Tolv to the Fem, too.
Where to buy?
Head on over to https://www.sudio.com/my (starting 3rd December 2019) and enter code “SUDIOFEM” to get 15% discount! That means you can get the Sudio Fem for only ~RM551.65, and I think that is a fantastic deal for all that it offers.
Exclusively from now until the end of the year, Sudio Sweden is having a promotion! You can get a FREE gift bag and FREE delivery to Malaysia and worldwide.
Also, remember to hashtag #Sudio #SudioSweden and #SudioMoments too.
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