BOULT Astra Neo Review – Best Budget TWS Earphones

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes

In the past, iLL has reviewed mostly premium products that could potentially burn a big hole in your pockets. This time around, we have something that hits different – not so different in quality, but different in the fact that it doesn’t break the bank. Today we review the BOULT Astra Neo True Wireless Stereo earphones.

This is the first BOULT product that’s in for review, so let us give you a brief introduction about this rather interesting wearable brand company. Founded in 2017, BOULT has emerged as the fastest growing wearable brand as per IDC’s latest report. BOULT isn’t a funded start-up and big corporation-backed company like most of its competitors. It is a completely bootstrapped company that has relied on the quality, price and innovation of its products to achieve significant growth. The BOULT Z40 TWS earphones also recently crossed the 1 million mark in units sold. As of 2024, it is India’s fourth largest wearable brand, and has managed to be extremely profitable in this hyper-competitive space. The company is Indian, and its products are Made in India.

Not Another Cheap Chinese Import

Most electronic companies use the “Made in India” tag in a rather misleading way. They import the product from China and simply package the product locally, thus qualifying themselves as “Made in India”. We suspected the same, but on clarification with the team at BOULT, we were pleasantly surprised to see that BOULT assembles their products from scratch in their own premises, located in various parts of India. This is solely the reason why we were keen in knowing what this company was all about.

Thus, it would be wise to not dismiss BOULT as just another cheap Chinese import company, like the gazillion brands in this space. That was a mistake we almost made, till the truth was clarified to us by the company.

BOULT Astra Neo

The BOULT Astra Neo is the company’s latest launch and a follow up to its Astra earphones. The Astra series is primarily aimed at gamers. The feature set of the Astra Neo is rich. Low latency (40ms), Quad Mic Environmental Noise Cancellation, IPX5 rated resistance, capacitive touch and fast charging. The Astra Neo is driven by a 13mm driver. It supports mSBC and AAC codecs. The earphones are available in black and white colours. We have received the black colour for review purposes.

BOULT Astra Neo – Design and Build

The BOULT Astra Neo’s case feels super light in weight, and lack the heft that TWS earphones from brands like Apple and Sony carry. Don’t mistake the lightness for lack in build quality. The Astra Neo is built well, with high quality textured plastic that feels tactile to hold. The Astra Neo is targeted towards gamers and the casing design does not hesitate to show that it is a gamers’ headset. The lid of the case has angled borders, with the top having two glossy lines running across it, giving a nice touch. Similar to the lid, the bottom of the case has a platform like design, making the centre of the case assembly like a trench. This design adds further to the tactile feel and grip of the BOULT Astra Neo earphones.

Your gaming PC probably has RGB LED lights. Life has come in full circle now, because the Astra Neo case and the earphones have LED lights. The lights aren’t just cosmetic, their pattern and colour signifies their pairing status. The whole lighting assembly gives the BOULT Astra Neo a very cyberpunk-era hacker vibe that is unique to these earphones. It would be nice if we could turn have the option to turn the lights off, for those stealthy moments. That feature is not available in the Astra Neo just yet.

The lid opening and closing mechanism works well. It can be opened by lifting the front of the lid, like most similar earphones. There is another way to open it, and that is by pushing the top of the lid. This a the first time we’ve seen such a mechanism in cased-earphones, and honestly, we love it. We couldn’t help ourselves from playing around with the opening and closing of the lid, like how we play around with Zippo lighters.

The body of the entire case doesn’t have any flex in particular, however, the lid does have a mild flex. On a positive note, the flex is not due to the hinge of the mechanism, but more due to the light weight material used for the lid. This light weight also adds to the somewhat abuse friendly character of these earbuds. You can throw them around casually, without really causing even a scratch.

Both the ear pieces have capacitive touch on the top side of their outer bodies. You hear a “click” sound on touching the earphone almost instantly. The touch controls can be used to connect/disconnect calls, and pause/skip music. We tested the controls on an iPhone and they worked just fine. The sensitivity of the touch controls is very high and very reactive. A little lower sensitivity could have been better, because there were multiple instances where an accidental feather touch caused the capacitive touch to engage.

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BOULT Astra Neo – Fit, Comfort and Isolation

The earphones come with silicon tips in three sizes. The size of the individual earphones is bigger than, say, the AirPods 3rd Generation, probably due to its big bass-focused drivers. Still, we had no problems in the fit and comfort of the BOULT Astra Neo. A one-hour gaming session of BGMI with the Astra Neo made us feel no discomfort whatsoever. They share the same character of silicon based earbuds i.e. they lack ventilation. If you want ventilation in an in-ear phone, the AirPods Pro 2 is your only choice but you need to dish out money that can buy you 24 pairs of Astra Neo buds.

Once fitted, the earphone grip themselves well. They can be used for activities like jogging, working out etc. without falling off. IPX5 rating ensures that the Astra Neo earphones are water-resistant, sweatproof, rainproof, or splashproof but not as fully waterproof.

Due to the silicon tips, the earphones are able to isolate external noises well. The tips also ensure that there is no sound leakage. The medium size tips fitted me perfectly and ensured a good seal. It is worthy to note that in order to achieve optimum sound quality, a vacuum seal in these earphones is a must.

BOULT Astra Neo – Pairing and Connectivity

We set up the BOULT Astra Neo in both iOS and Android devices and the pairing process was quick, niggle-free and seamless – courtesy the Bluetooth 5.4 support. We were able to pair and connect these earphones to an iPhone in less than a minute, which is about the time it takes to pair a new set of AirPods. That is a rather impressive feat for earphones that cost less than two Grande sized coffee cups at Starbucks. When the earphones are back in their case, and you take them out and fit them in your ear-canal, you hear the “Connected” notification almost instantly, provided your Bluetooth is switched on.

BOULT Astra Neo – Audio Quality

Now to the lion’s share of BOULT Astra Neo earphones review – the sound quality. The 13mm drivers do require a burn-in time of around 2 hours to fully open up, such is the quality of unified audio drivers. After they are burnt in appropriately, the Astra Neo reveal themself. The sound signature that the Astra Neo earphones carry is “bassy”, while managing to retain detail and a certain degree of sibilance.

The bass extends to the lower spectrums, but the sub-bass ultra low spectrum remain untouched. However, they do shine in the mid-low band, and that is what makes the Astra Neo suitable for gaming. Clearly, bass is a strength in these TWS earphones. You can feel the thump in bass-heavy tracks, the kind of thump you feel when you’re in a nightclub. They do a good job in giving you that bass-punch. That is a lot of bass for a lot less money.

The mids and highs share the same character to each other i.e. they are not too pronounced, but the detail is still there. You will surely not be missing any subtle and nuanced sounds in the Astro Neo. The treble lacks in extension, so sounds like rattles, high-hats, female vocal extensions etc. won’t make you deaf or uneasy.

Performance of the Astra Neo is pretty much uniform across all volumes, till it reaches the upper limits of 90% and above, where there are signs of miniscule distortion. The earphones can get really loud, definitely much louder than the OnePlus Bullets 2 and even the Apple AirPods 3rd Generation. We found these earphones to perform best at 50-60% volume, which is when the sonic character is the most revealing, providing and clear and detailed sound.

For the sake of comparison, the BOULT Astra Neo sound much, much better than the OnePlus Bullet 2, which cost the same but are wired. That is saying a lot for BOULT, you get better quality than a OnePlus product priced the same, with features the Bullets don’t come with. To summarize the sound signature, we would say the BOULD Astra Neos are laid back and thumpy, a nice mixture of character indeed.

We tested the Astra Neo for phone calls and had no complaints. The voices never pierced our ears at high volumes, something that plagues many earphones which cost significantly higher than the Astra Neos (example: Galaxy Buds). Even when listening to podcasts, the earphones performed really well.

It is only when things get too busy i.e. scenarios such as a lot of instruments playing together, and lot of explosions happening together etc., when the Astra Neos struggle to keep up. That is when the soundstage suffers and the instruments get mixed up. Keep in mind that this is a 1000 buck (INR) wireless earphone, so we aren’t really complaining. Just nitpicking for the sake of it.

BOULT Astra Neo – Microphone

The BOULD Astra Neo features a Quad Mic with Environment Noise Cancellation and Acoustic Echo Cancellation. We tested the microphone quality in three different scenarios: a small room (for echoes), a crowded bazaar with lots of ambient noises (cows mooing, hawkers shouting, honks and horns), while riding a bike (wind noise).

The microphone performed well in the first two scenarios. Echo was eliminated by the Astra Neo almost completely. In the second scenario, the excessive background chitter-chatter and noises were lowered significantly, although not muted entirely. The chip in Astra Neos are designed to block out certain frequencies, and noises that don’t fall in that frequency range make it through to the speaker. In no way there were getting annoying though, they were nicely contained. It is only in the third scenario that we wished the Astra Neos performed better. Wind noise made itself through to the microphone so much that the mic had difficulty in picking up the speakers voice.

BOULT Astra Neo – Battery Life

BOULT officially claims the battery life of the Astra Neos to be an astonishing 70 hours or total playtime. Testing the battery had its own challenges. First and foremost, the earphones are not designed to tell you the battery of each earpiece. It only gives one figure, so it is difficult to judge with the figure really means. However, after about 2 hours of gaming, 3 hours of listening to music and 30 minutes of phone calls, the battery life read “100%”. We will test this out more and update this review once we get a more clear picture about this.

BOULT Astra Neo – Conclusion

The BOULT Astra Neo Truly Wireless System earphones punch way above their weight, competing against similar products that cost 10-20x the price of the Astra Neos. The launch price of the Astra Neo was Rs. 3,499, but BOULT is running an offer where they’re being sold for an astonishing price of Rs. 1,099. In FlipKart, the Astra Neo has received almost 60,000 ratings (averaging to 4.1/5) and 6,000 reviews, showing the immense popularity the brand and the product enjoy.

At this price, all we have to say is that this is a pure value for money deal. It offers premium features like Bluetooth 5.4, water resistance, capacitive touch, noise-isolating microphone etc. at a price that is very, very reasonable. It sounds decent. It can do the job for gaming, music and movies without breaking a sweat. It performs great in phone calls. At times we were not able to distinguish between the BOULT Astra Neo and AirPods while doing phone calls.

The BOULT Astra Neo is an epic product and a winner. BOULT, a homegrown Indian brand that designs and assemble their products themselves, are doing a great job in making quality affordable products that are reachable to the masses in the country.