Audiophile wireless headphones walk a seemingly endless tightrope, with consumer-friendly, feature-heavy designs on one side and barebones sound quality focused designs on the other. While over-ear headphones like the Focal Bathys and Noble FoKus Apollo have managed to execute a near perfect balance, it’s been tougher for TWS earphones to find that same balance. While previous FoKus earphone models have been more concerned with pure sound quality, FoKus Rex5 ($449) aims to combine Noble Audio’s engineering prowess with the latest generation of Bluetooth and DSP tech to truly bridge the gap between a consumer friendly audio gadget and HiFi IEMs. Does it succeed?
Build and Design
Rex5 comes packed in a fairly standard looking box, with the earphones, charge case, eartips, and charge cable packed inside. The metal case is very compact, and can stow nicely in your pocket, but inside they’ve carved out enough room to accommodate a wide range of eartip styles and sizes that you can use and leave on without impacting the device charging. The Rex5 shell has an aluminum base and resin faceplate, giving it a sturdy feel, and is among Noble’s most comfortable fitting TWS.
Internally, Rex5 is a 5-driver tribrid with one dynamic, one planar, and three balanced armature drivers. Noble doesn’t specify the specifics of the crossover, but based on the sound and past experience, I’d assume that the dynamic driver is in the bass, the balanced armatures are split between the mids and upper mids, and the planar is for the treble.
Using Rex5
While you can connect Rex5 to your device and get right to listening to music – and you can even control ANC via touch controls on the earphones – the real power of Rex5 comes from the app and sound customization features. The Noble FoKus app provides a number of sound customization and device configuration options. On the more basic end, you can configure the tap on the faceplate combinations to raise and lower volume or skip tracks, and on the more advanced end, you can take a hearing test and configure personal EQ preferences based on a combination the hearing test, parametric and graphic EQs.
The hearing test takes a few minutes to complete, and plays a series of tones at different frequencies and volumes to determine the general range of your hearing. It creates a personalized EQ curve that it saves to your device to compensate for any hearing loss or just general differences in hearing. The personalized EQ is also stored on the device itself, so that it is applied regardless of what device you’re connected to. After that you can use the EQ Curve feature to create a simplified parametric EQ curve to define your broader sound preferences. And finally there’s a standard 10-band graphic EQ that comes with a number of presets and the ability to craft your own set of presets. These settings combine to provide a heavily personalized sound signature that’s adaptable to different genres and moods.
In terms of the general use and connectivity, Rex5 provides the best experience that I’ve had yet with a Noble TWS. During my use, I didn’t have any issues connecting to multiple devices, and the general connectivity lived up to sets from brands like Sony and Sennheiser that I’ve used. The ANC quality is very good, and the Ambient (transparency) quality is solid – though not as clean and seamless as AirPods Pro or my Sennheiser Momentum Sport TWS.
Sound
Out of the box, Rex5 gives you a sound focused on clarity and detail that feels a little bass-lite. It has strong imaging separation with a wide, somewhat diffuse feeling soundstage. The base tuning wasn’t entirely to my preference, but the real power of Rex5 lies in the customizability of its sound signature. The thing is, DSP EQ controls are great, but being able to tweak the EQ doesn’t always translate into great sound quality and performance, but Rex5 delivers in this capacity.
Whether you stay light on the bass or pump it up, Rex5 delivers good texture and details in the low end, and it’s capable of providing plenty of impact and physicality if you crank up the low end. While out of the box you don’t get much midbass, adding it in can still feel highly natural and clean.
The mids are pretty hard to mess up on Rex5, and even if you scoop them out, there’s a good helping of detail that shines through. The driver selection in general provides a good balance between the natural low end impact, clear, well separated BA mids, and the snappy upper reaches.
The planar treble offers a treble that feels fast with a vivid presentation. Out of the box, it can be a little much, but you can dial back the quantity while still maintaining the clear, vivid quality of the upper ranges.
The soundstage width is rather impressive for Bluetooth earphones, and while the EQ can have a large impact on the consistency of the soundstage, Rex5 is capable of delivering an impressive three-dimensional soundstage and good imaging clarity and separation.
Comparison: Noble FoKus Prestige
In Noble Audio’s TWS lineup right now, you’ll find the FoKus Prestige ($599) at the top and Rex5 right below it, and both offer “pinnacle” experiences of their own in different ways. FoKus Prestige delivers quite possibly the best pure sound quality currently available in a TWS, with a more barebones package, while Rex5 delivers a higher level of technological sophistication.
In terms of the general connectivity, function, and day to day use, I found Rex5 to be much more consistent. For example, maybe once out of every ten times I take Prestige out of the case, only one of the earbuds connects and I have to reset them to get both to connect again. I didn’t have any issues like that with Rex5. The Bluetooth range and other general function is just a step above with Rex5.
Purely in terms of the sound though, FoKus Prestige sounds more natural, with bigger bass and a fuller sound midrange right out of the box. While you can EQ Rex5 to capture a tuning similar to Prestige, it lacks the effortless natural feeling of Prestige. The difference in sound between the two – even with all the EQing in the world – is sure to further stoke the fires of the EQ vs original sound debate.
Final Thoughts
While it can’t quite match the sonic heights of FoKus Prestige, Rex5 still delivers incredible sonic performance, and strikes a better balance between pure audiophile sound quality and the sort of convenience and features that you’d expect from a luxury audio product. Even if Rex5 isn’t quite the best sounding TWS that I’ve heard, it bridges that gap between a consumer friendly “gadget” and HiFi audio gear like nothing else out there.
