LeEco CDLA Type-C Earphones – Review

With the introduction of its second LeEco did something which no other mobile manufacturer dared to do, until then. They took a bold step and got rid of the 3.5mm audio jack. Instead, they introduced audio over USB-C port. But the Le 2 and Le Max 2 being the world’s first phones with USB-C port audio, they must have made the earphones available in the box. Instead you will have to get them separately. LeEco has introduced a few variants of USB-C CDLA headphones and the basic model LeEco CDLA Type-C Earphones is available now.

Design

The material used on the LeEco CDLA Type-C Earphones is plastic and it is of good quality. The design is a doppelgänger of Apple Earpods. But the LeEco CDLA Type-C Earphones have flat wires and USB C jack instead of 3.5 mm audio jack. It has a mildly lid LED on the ear buds, when connected to the mobile. It fits in very comfortably and good for travel but not good enough to stay on ears during any fitness activity. Overall, the design is very impressive and the quality of construction is commendable.

Audio Quality

If there is one word to defined sound out of the LeEco CDLA Type-C Earphones, that would be “Clean”. Let me elaborate. CDLA or Continual Digital Lossless Audio is a proprietary audio technology from LeEco. Any mobile with 3.5 mm audio jack would have a DAC chip (digital to analogue converter). The conversion is not lossless and most of the information is lost before it reaches the speaker driver. Now with CDLA, the DAC is built on the ear bud and it directly delivers lossless music to the driver. With the traditional system, the quality is as good as the DAC and now with CDLA, the quality is as good as your earphones.

Read more about the CDLA here.

I listened to various music under multiple genres and here is what I found about the LeEco CDLA Type-C Earphones. The headphones delivered clean music. The clarity of the audio was way beyond my expectation. The lows, highs and mids were disticlty separate. The treble was pronounced much better than the bass. However the bass is also decent, though it did not deliver punchy thumps.

At the moment, I don’t have any other CDLA headphone to compare it with. But compared to other 3.5 mm jack solutions, the quality is truly amazing.

I see one big disadvantages of any early adopter. If you forget your CDLA headphones at home, you have to go back and there is no other way. LeEco does provide a USB-C to 3.5 mm convertor, but the conversion quality is not great and also practically you may not be carrying it with you always. The earbuds are expensive and make sure you don’t lose them.

Having said that, I would give a huge thumbs up for LeEco for making the first bold step and I would like to see more CDLA solutions in the future.