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The Tone Free app offers you the opportunity to rearrange the touch-surface settings if you fancy. It’s also where you’ll find a selection of Merdian’s EQ settings (‘bass boost’, ‘treble boost’‘natural’ and ‘immersive’, none of which need much explanation) plus the place to store a couple of your own.
We’re always happy to see aptX Low Latency involved if for no other reason than a lot of us tend to consume video content while on the move – but LG hasn’t quite got around to it yet. LG claims the Tone Free comes programmed with in-ear detection, but it’s poorly done. Every time I took off the buds, music paused, but only for about 1.5 seconds before resuming play. Speaking of which, diving into the accompanying Tone Free app provides the chance to manipulate the equalizer settings with four pre-set modes: immersive (default), bass boost, natural and treble boost. If none of these take your fancy, there’s also two custom slots to employ your own unique interpretation.The charging case itself has a party piece, of course: it uses UV light to clean the earbuds free from bacteria when they’re inside and the lid is closed. Until we see a wireless speaker with an integrated hand sanitiser dispenser, this is the product feature that’s most appropriate for the times. Speaking of conversations, call quality is another soft spot for the FP8. Friends and family we spoke to said we sounded echo-y and less crisp compared to other earbuds, but said we came in louder than traditional speaker phone. The result makes us leery about using these as your go-to pair for business calls and are probably best suited for short phone calls when possible. Granted, while I did grow more accustomed to the quirks of the touch sensors and the expected amount of time needed for a touch to register, it still made for an imperfect system. And even though music is supposed to stop playing when you remove the earbuds, I never found this to be a guarantee. For its audio division, LG gone to great lengths to highlight its collaboration with long-time hardware manufacturer, Meridian Audio, and it’s not hard to see (or hear) why.
Taking the FN6 wireless earbuds out of the circular charging case, and it’s hard not to make immediate comparisons with Apple’s top-end wireless earbud. However, there are a few subtle differences to be found, and the earbuds themselves are incredibly stylish. Noise-cancellation is a success of the slightly qualified kind, too. Set to ‘high’ there’s an unarguable reduction in external sound, though nothing like as comprehensive as, say, Sony’s WF-1000XM4 can achieve, let alone Bose’s spookily effective QuietComfort Earbuds. Set it to ‘low’ and the effect on ambient sound is negligible. But call quality is good – incoming callers sound crisp and complete, while we have no complaints from people in receipt of our phone calls either. Verdict Bass sounds (of which there are plenty here) are textured and carefully hefty, with more than enough detail available to make the difference between actual instruments and machine-derived sounds obvious. There’s plenty of control on display, too, so the tune rumbles forward at the correct sort of pace – there’s no overhang and, as a consequence, the tempo is convincing. So take your time to really understand the sort of product you’re looking for. Think about the sort of features that you need. Which ones are “nice-to-have” and which ones are absolutely critical. If you’re looking for a cheap option then don’t even consider the products that are all signing all dancing because you’ll be paying for features that you don’t need. Choose your retailer wisely The one area the LG needed to improve was its audio reproduction – and with Meridian's help it absolutely did. While previous versions of LG’s Tone earbuds had muddied sound, harsh trebles and a severe case of sibilance, the FP8 now have a more lively sound that really focuses on accentuating the mids and lows with better overall balance.
The LG Tone Free buds offer quality sound, unique features, and they clean themselves.
To make the digital assistant available, you’ll have to go into the Touchpad settings in the companion app and select ‘Voice Command’ on either the left or right earbud, or both. When enabling the feature on my Android smartphone, I was met with responsive and speedy results. The results were practically the same on macOS with Siri pulling up Apple Music and calendar requests with ease. LG Tone Free review: App and special features It all sounds great on paper, but here’s the problem: there’s no way to see the actual results. You’re basically taking their word for it, and while the certifications do instill some sense of trust, there’s no practical way for the average consumer to determine whether the buds are indeed a germ-free after a 10-minute charge. LG Tone Free review: Sound quality How they’ll hold up to higher decibel sounds like an airplane engine remains to be tested – another unfortunate downside of the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic – but so far we’ve been relatively impressed with the FP8’s noise cancellation chops next to our overworked air conditioner – the next best environment for a noise cancelling test. Maybe I’ve become too accustomed to assuming that every pair of true wireless arriving in a pill-shaped charging case, but the FN6’s housing stands out because of that.
You can also switch between ‘low’ and ‘high’ noise-cancellation here, as well as activate ‘find my earbuds’. This last feature puts a strident chirp through the ‘buds if you’ve temporarily mislaid them. In terms of design, the LG Tone FP8 borrows a few pointers from the Apple AirPods Pro. Both sets of buds use silicone eartips that fit snugly into the ear canal by way of an ear-conforming shell that extends out to a small nub that runs outside the ear. Aesthetically there are a lot of similarities – but not enough to make them exact replicas of one another. Once the audio information is on board, it’s dealt with by a pair of 6mm full-range neodymium drivers, the tuning of which has had significant input from British hi-fi pioneer Meridian. It’s not the first product on which these companies have collaborated, but it nevertheless brings quite a bit of audio credibility to the HBS-FN7 proposition. On a typical workday, I managed to get through just over seven hours of semi-constant use, with the headphones connected at all times. That’s in addition to the FN6 being used to send and receive audio during a Zoom call. That’s pretty impressive, and while it might not see you through to the end of a full day on a single charge, LG’s got you covered with speedy charging in the case. It’s a strange thing to admit in the midst of a pandemic, but there’s a case to be made that the LG Tone Free FN6 couldn’t have been released at a better time.
EXCLUSIVE: LG’s answer to the AirPods Pro sound good and keep your ears clean
Battery life, with active noise-cancelling switched on, is an entirely unremarkable 16 hours or so, all in – that’s five hours in the earbuds themselves and another couple of charges in the case. That figure rises to more like 21 hours if you turn noise-cancelling off. The EQ is where you’re likely to invest most of your time, but be warned, it’s quite more technical than others we’ve tested. Instead of keeping things simple by categorizing the different frequencies (lows, mids, highs), this EQ has you adjusting what look like decibel levels, which, unless you’re an audio expert, requires a steeper learning curve. You can skip the entire process of creating your own music profile by selecting from the four available presets: Immersive, Natural, Bass Boost, and Treble Boost.
The other issue you’ll encounter is that the buds might drop the connection every so often. It happened less frequently after we updated to the latest software, but right out of the box the buds might cut out on you every once in a while should you choose not to update. Battery life With a wide array of washing machines in its product portfolio, LG knows a thing or two about cleanliness, so it makes a lot of sense to see the inclusion of a UV cleaning mechanism with the FN6. Sure, the feature is nothing new, but this is one of the first times a big brand (Philips also has a pair of self-cleaning earbuds) has jumped on the technology.On top of everything else, the earbuds are IPX4 water-resistant that makes them fine companions for the gym or a light sprinkle and they offer upscaled spatial audio – similar in some respects to Creative’s Super XFi technology. We’ll get more into the weeds with that in a minute but the effects are fun… though maybe not as immersive as we’d like them to be. According to LG, you can expect 10 hours per charge in the buds and around 24 hours total for the case with ANC off. When it’s on, we got around 6-ish hours of battery life and 18 with the case, which feels like the going average for noise cancelling earbuds.
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