TOZO Crystal Pods earbuds review – Earbuds with AI Translation

REVIEW – Another review of wireless earbuds?  I have done alot of these, and honestly, how different can yet another pair of earbuds really be?  Well, when it comes to the TOZO Crystal Pods earbuds, there are a few things here that might make you take a second look. TOZO drops the “AI” buzz word when pitching these earbuds and all the features that come with it, so it warrants a look to see if it’s all hype, or if there is actually something here that makes these different.  Let’s see what all the hubbub is about.

⬇︎ Jump to summary (pros/cons)
Price: $29.99
Where to buy: Amazon

What is it?

The TOZO Crystal Pods are wireless, noise-canceling earbuds with built-in AI features. They also come with a charging case.

What’s included?

• TOZO Crystal Pods earbuds
• A charging case
• USB-C charging cable
• 3 pairs of eartips (S/M/L)
• user manual

Tech specs from TOZO

• Bluetooth 5.4 with AAC codec
• IPX5 rating (rain and sweat resistant)
• 6 hours playtime on one charge ( with ANC off)
• Charging case charges earbuds fully 5 times, takes 1.5 hrs to fully charge the case
• 10 min charge provides 2 hrs of playtime
• 4 built-in mics and AI algorithm boost your voice and eliminate ambient noise
• Hybrid Active Noise Cancelling (ANC) with a maximum noise reduction depth of 38dB
• 32 built-in EQ presets
• Over 100 soothing/white noise sounds in the app

Design and features

The first thing I’ll mention is that these earbuds are called “Crystal Pods” for a reason.  The charging case is mostly clear so that you can see the earbuds inside them. Also, on earbuds themselves it is partly clear plastic so you can see a small part of the inside of the earbud.  To me, this is a bit gimmicky and doesn’t really add any value to the product, in my opinion. So there, I said it.  Now let’s get on to the meat of the review.

The charging case has a USB-C port on the bottom of it that is used to charge the case. On the front of the case is a single LED battery indicator that honestly isn’t that useful. I see this a lot on these really inexpensive earbuds, and I am sure it’s to save money. But it isn’t that useful to me.  Some of TOZO’s other earbud products have a case that shows a numerical value for the battery inside the case, which would be much more useful. But I get it that a more useful case would push the price up.  The case is rounded on all edges, and it’s small.  So it fits nicely in just about any pocket. The case takes about 1.5 hrs to fully charge, and a charged case can recharge the earbuds about 5 times.  That’s pretty useful, and it is what I experienced.   

The TOZO Crystal Pods earbuds automatically turn on when they are removed from the case and immediately start to pair with the last device that they were connected to, and automatically shut down when you put them back in the case. The design of the Crystal Pods is typical of many other earbuds, with a soft silicone eartip that fits in your ear, with a squarish vertical stem that hangs down from your ear. On the outside of the stem, at the top of it, you’ll find a round button that isn’t clickable, but rather is touch sensitive.  So you either tap or hold it, depending on what function you want to perform. And using the companion app (discussed later in the article) you can actually customize those taps and touches if you want, which is pretty cool.  You can choose from functions to control music playback, answering calls, adjusting volume, activating voice assistant, etc.  One thing that I wish was different was that the prompts in your ear are simply tones.  In some other earbuds, even cheap ones, I get voice prompts like “pairing” or “connected” so you know for sure what is going on.  With these earbuds all I get are tones, so you have to listen carefully to know what the tones mean.

The USB-C cable that comes with the Crystal Pods is really short, so I don’t really use it.  I use the various USB-C cables/bricks that I have around my house and office.  The user manual that comes with the product is helpful to have, although it doesn’t cover every feature of the product or the app.

Performance

The first thing I’ll talk about when it comes to performance are the touch controls.  In general, I don’t like earbuds that use touch controls for their interface, because of all the errant touches that happen when you try to adjust or move them.  But what is nice with these earbuds is that the Crystal Pods touch control is limited to the top of the stem on each earbud.  So using the sides of the squarish stem that hangs down, you can touch and handle the earbuds and not worry about an errant touch.  That’s nice.

When it comes to sound quality, this is where TOZO says that these earbuds shine because of the ‘built-in AI features’, for example, providing noise cancellation when making calls.  I use these to walk the dog which is usually on a walking path next to a noisy road.  I would call my wife while I was walking and she was able to have a conversation and hear everything I said, despite the noise from the traffic.  She could still hear the traffic faintly in the background, and sometimes the wind noise.  But she never said “I can’t hear you.”  And my opinion hasn’t changed with this category of earbud, in that I believe the call features are simply ‘nice to have’ features.  The main use case with most earbuds is to listen to music, audio, etc, and for listening to music the Crystal Pods do very well.

In general, the TOZO Crystal Pods right out of the case provide a pretty solid ‘base sound’, with not many highs present. To me, those earbuds with prominent ‘highs’ end up sounding cheap and tinny.  That’s not the case with the Crystal Buds.  I have enjoyed listening to music on them and the sound never sounded ‘cheap’. I also haven’t had a situation where I wanted more volume from the sound and wasn’t able to get it.  Turning the volume all the way up is actually a little bit too loud for my ears, so no complaints with that.  I tried using them on a long cross country flight, and as I expected, using earbuds on a plane with engine noise isn’t as nice as using over-the-ear headphones.  The Crystal Pods were usable, but after a little bit I switched over to my over-the-ear headphones to get better sound with less background noise.  But aside from that specific environment, I have used the Crystal Pods outside walking, daily in my office environment, and other public spaces and never been annoyed with background noise.

I have mentioned this in just about every review I have ever done for this ‘in the ear’ earbuds form factor.  My ears just don’t work well with these types of earbuds that have little silicone tips that insert into your ear canal and hang down from the ear.  If I try to do anything with lots of movement, they fall out.  So as long as I am sitting (like in my office during the day), they are fine.  Which is why my main use for these Crystal Pods is in my office every day.  For that, they are great for me.  All my kids use these types of earbuds form factor and they don’t have any problems using them while running, working out, etc.  So I believe this problem is unique to people with my kind of ears.  Whatever that is.

A word about the companion smartphone app

One of the things that I think gives the TOZO Crystal Pods an edge is the smartphone app from TOZO.  I have used companion apps with other earbuds, with varying levels of benefits.  Some of those apps with other headphones/earbuds don’t do much.  For example, the app that comes with my Soundpeats Breezy open-ear headphones only provides me some limited functions like basic EQ adjustments, etc.  But the TOZO app provides me much more. Here is a screenshot of the main app homepage:

First, you’ll notice that you can easily switch back and forth between various ‘modes’, like noise cancellation, transparency, reducing wind noise, etc.  I honestly didn’t notice much difference at all between ‘reduce wind noise’, ‘leisure mode’, or ‘normal mode’. Transparency mode clearly allowed me to hear some of the background noise, like if I was walking outside and wanted to hear traffic sounds.  It wasn’t that strong however, so I would have to turn the volume down quite a bit to hear background sounds.  And the ‘noise cancellation mode’ was also not that strong.  I mean, it did reduce the background noise a little, yes. But TOZO says it reduces background noise by 38 dB, which wasn’t that much, in my opinion.

And here are some screenshots of the 32 EQ options that you have to choose from, including the ability to adjust the sliders yourself to make your own EQ, and save it.

Next, it has a ton of options for listening to soothing sounds, like if you wanted to fall asleep.  For example… rain showers, ocean waves crashing, and forest sounds. I don’t use sounds like this to fall asleep, but I imagine some folks would like it.  Here is a screenshot that shows those soothing sound options at the bottom of the screen, as well as the AI Features at the top, which I’ll discuss next:

So let me now detail some of the pretty cool AI features that I think make the TOZO Crystal Pods, in combination with the app, different from other earbuds you have seen.  The first feature I’ll mention is the “AI Chat”, which doesn’t do much.  It just uses AI to answer questions for you, like asking SIRI or Google.

There is a ‘Meeting Recording’ feature that when activated can listen to a LIVE meeting going on, record a transcript of it, and create a summary of the meeting complete with bullet points of what was discussed.  This app feature can actually be used to capture the sound using either the TOZO earbuds, or using the phone microphone. I tested this by having a fake meeting between my wife and me. I placed an earbud in front of each of us, and then we pretended to have a discussion.  We discussed that we wanted to get together next week with our employees to plan a larger event for the company.  I was kind of blown away with what happened next.  We just talked with each other and watched on my phone screen as it captured our words and transcribed the discussion word for word.  Then after I stopped recording, the AI in the app put together a complete summary of the meeting. (see screenshot below).  It was pretty impressive, and captured literally everything we talked about.  I then was able to email the transcript and the summary to myself right from the app.

Did I mention that you can use this feature in 17 different languages?  Yeah, super cool. Here are the languages:  English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Italian, Simplified Chinese, Russian, Thai, Malay, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew.

The next AI feature is called “Realtime Translation”.  To test this, I opened up a YouTube video and listened to an Italian lady speaking.  The app listened to her (through my earbuds) and translated onto the screen perfectly what she was saying.  The second AI feature with language translation is called “Face to face translation”.  I selected the 2 languages of English and German (since I know a few phrases in German!).  As you can see from the screenshot, I set the earbuds to listen for English, and set my phone mic to listen for the German.  So in this use case, imagine you are traveling in German with your earbuds in, and you speak to a German speaking person.  I would hold the button to speak English, and then I would hold the button when the other person is ready to speak and hold the phone close to their mouth. As you can see from the screenshot below, it’s pretty darn cool.

Final thoughts

For a price of $29.99 these earbuds are a great deal, especially when you consider the additional features you get with the companion app with the AI extras like the language translation.  My list of ‘improvements’ listed above are not deal breakers for me. Sure, I wish the battery indicator was more useful, that there were more helpful voice prompts instead of tones, and I believe my ears are forever plagued with an inability to keep earbuds in my ears. But would I want to increase the cost of these earbuds to get those features.  Not really.  If I travelled a lot internationally and needed a translation tool at my immediate disposal, these TOZO Crystal Pods would be in my travel bag every time because they just work and would be very valuable and worth every penny. But not everyone will need those translation features, I get it.

Will you audiophiles be blown away listening to music? Probably not.  But the sound is very good, and the ability to make phone calls with them is also very good.  Not perfectly crystal clear sound with the best noise cancellation, but very good sound with decent noise cancellation.  I use these in my office every day because I don’t move around lot, so I don’t really have an issue with the earbuds falling out of my ears.  Finally, I suppose the best compliment I can give the TOZO Crystal Pods earbuds is that all my other earbuds that I have used up till now have found their way back into the gadget drawer and these earbuds are on my desk.

What I like about the TOZO Crystal Pods

• Great battery life
• Compact charging case
• Customizable touch controls
• AI translation features are great
• The companion app is very useful

What needs to be improved?

• For me, a tighter fit in my ears
• A more useful battery indicator
• I wish there were voice prompts

Price: $29.99
Where to buy: Amazon
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by TOZO. TOZO did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.

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