The wireless audio market is a highly competitive one, and my personal hypothesis has been that in order to survive, the majority of products generally sound at least decent. I really put this one to the test recently with the OTTO Pastel which far from perfect – in fact, I would only recommend it to those who are not critical at all about their listening and would be happy to listen to a cheap mono radio playing in the corner of a room. But that was only AU$17 for a set of over-the-ear headphones with ANC which is a big stretch, financially speaking.
But that test was inspired by an earlier acquisition, fuelled by the OzBargain mantra of “buy now, ask questions later”. Rewind to late November 2024, to this posting which promised a pair of MOONDROP Space Travel ANC Bluetooth earbuds for just shy of AU$29, all inclusive. In the past, I’ve been burned by listing where sellers confused ENC with ANC – the former being a form of noise cancelling, but of the captured audio from the microphones instead of cancelling the noise you might hear (which is the latter). But this listing was genuine and MOONDROP are a fairly well known name in the Chi-Fi scene for offering pretty well tuned IEMs. How would this budget offering fare?
Unboxing
The product being named “space travel” is somewhat space themed, but I’m not sure exactly how. The box it comes in is shrink wrapped with a clear plastic cover on the front showcasing the charging case holding the earbuds. The transparency does remind me of the clear electronics craze of the late 90s, when clear Nintendo Gameboys were all the rage. But then again, the off-white beige plastic also reminds me of the 90s.
The back of the box lists the full specifications of the unit – including Bluetooth v5.3 connectivity, AAC and SBC codec support and 4 (earbuds) + 12 (case) hour battery life. The item has a barcode number of 6972585501491.
The case is definitely aesthetically unique and the design does optimise space and keep things simple, without such affordances as a full lid to cover the case or multiple indicator LEDs. On the front is just one indicator LED which shines to indicate charging and changes colour to indicate critical battery.
On the back is the MOONDROP logo in orange, but otherwise, the case is a pleasing contrast between clear and off-white beige.
The stems are visible and accessible from the sides, as the only way to extricate the earbuds from the case.
The top is open to the elements, albeit with a nice touch in the clear plastic moulding which clearly shows the left and right indications.
Power comes in from underneath, which also lists the key specifications including 37mAh 3.7V battery in each earbud and 380mAh 3.7V battery in the case. The unit carries FCC, CE approvals, with the FCC identifier of 2AY45-MD-TWS-022 filed by their legal entity, Chengdu ShuiYueYu Technology Co.,Ltd. (a literal phonetic transliteration of the three Chinese characters that appear in their logo, representing water, moon and rain). From the internal photos, this unit uses a Bluetrum BT8892E chipset (presumably a close relative to the BT8892A).
Also included are three other sizes of tip and a USB-A to USB-C charging cable.
In terms of paperwork, a thick multilingual manual booklet is included, alongside a QC inspection card, an illustration of the suggested way to wear the earbuds and Chinese support and tips leaflets.
The earbuds have left and right indicators printed on them in orange, with a grey and orange colour scheme and a mecha-style angular graphics along the back of the stems. The stems themselves have a rounded square profile, with the top having a noticeable seam.
The earbuds have holes and slots, the rear slots likely for the feedforward noise cancellation while the front ones may be used for a bit of bass extension. The holes towards the bottom may be used for call audio microphones. The earbud tips are made of the standard black silicone, but the cross-section of the aperture is a larger ovular shape rather than round as in most other TWS earbuds.
The charging contacts, of which there are two, are positioned on the bottom of the rounded-square stem. These are contacted by pogo pins recessed in the charging case, with a magnet providing the downward force to keep the earbuds in the case and against the charging contacts. I’d have to say that they are quite striking – in a world where most earbuds are rounded rather than angular, and black rather than beige, this really does stand out.
User Experience
On the whole, it would seem the Space Travel TWS set suffers some of the common drawbacks of low-end, cost-optimised designs. The first is that it simply doesn’t remember the last mode it is used in – it always boots up in “normal” mode, requiring two long presses to get it into ANC mode (my preferred mode). This may also be a “feature” to try and prolong battery life, which I found a little more limited than more serious products. Another commonality is that the maximum volume is relatively limited and while it does play loud enough for my liking, there’s not much headroom for those who really like their music loud. On the upside, this should be a positive for avoiding potential hearing damage.
When it comes to the user interface, I’d have to say that the touch controls are well implemented and are not too sensitive. Stray activations are pretty rare in my experience. The voice prompts by “Mitsuki Yuki”, their Vtuber character, are probably something that will divide users. It’s not entirely intuitive, with “Hmm” meaning normal mode, “Hey” meaning transparency mode and “Shh” meaning ANC mode. But instead of shh, it sounds more like “Sheeee”.
To their credit, the unit does support AAC codec, as claimed, which would make these a good choice for Apple as well as Windows 11 usage, while only some Android phones have AAC support – the above was from my Poco F3. This is perhaps a good option to have, even if the audio quality is marginally above SBC, as it seems to have enhanced connection stability. I found coverage in AAC mode to be excellent – covering the inside of my house from end to end (transmission distance ~15m) through walls without dropouts. Even outside, I can get another 4-5m before the audio starts to stutter, so it easily exceeds the claimed range, in line with most Bluetooth v5.3 devices.
Audio quality would be the greatest strength. For such a low cost TWS pair, my expectations were that it would sound like the OTTO Pastel to some degree, but instead, I found it sounding a bit more “midrange” in its clarity. The bass is present and well controlled, the mids are warm but clear. The treble is where things break down a little, being a bit nervous, suggesting some inconsistency, but it certainly is not a fatiguing listen in the same way the OTTO Pastel was. It truly seems a big achievement to get this level of clarity at this price using a single dynamic driver. As you will hear later, the microphone also works quite well.
But that’s counterbalanced by the fact that the fit in my ear canal was a bit difficult, requiring a bit of rotation to get it to sit nicely and seal, without being irritating. The boxy stem of the earpiece can become apparent at some angles. But when it does seal, it sounds quite acceptable. The other main “gotcha” is the feedforward-only ANC which works decently with lower level indoor ambient noise, but seems to be overwhelmed when actually outside and commuting. As a result, I would consider it more as a “bit” of help, but not quite anywhere near what combined feedback and feedforward ANC solutions can achieve. If the wind hits your ear just right, the wind noise can be a bit distracting. It’s not isolating in the same way that the QCY Melobuds Pro was, but it doesn’t claim to be in all fairness. At least I didn’t experience any errant whistling or feedback.
Transparency mode did work, but was somewhat noisy and a bit loud for my liking. The lack of adjustability is a small downside – but I usually prefer pulling the earbud out (as uncomfortable as it might be) as it’s usually better manners and the multiple long-press fumble to switch between the ANC -> Normal -> Transparency mode just isn’t going to work most of the time.
The design of the case, while certainly helpful to the theming of the product and keeps things basic, does unfortunately mean that dust and dirt can enter. Without a lid, the earbuds rely on magnets to secure them in place and there is a chance (although slim) they could get jostled out of place in transit in a bag. I found the most difficult part of use to be the inserting and removing the earbuds from the case – while the stem has a square profile, there is no “track” in the case to keep it aligned with regards to tilt, so it may tilt out of the way and not go into the pogo pins. Likewise, extraction of the earbuds is achieved by sliding up on the stem, which is the only exposed surface in the right orientation, but the thin width means that you really have to get the fleshy ball of your finger to do this.
The single LED on the charging case, interestingly, is actually well implemented in my opinion. It glows white consistently while charging and if you insert one earbud at a time, it blinks to acknowledge charging that earbud. When the case is low, it shines orange-red and if you place earbuds into an empty case, it blinks red to indicate this. While you won’t know the charge level of the case precisely, given you can only get around four full charges from the case, it’s not such a big issue. The fact the charging port is on the bottom may allow dirt to accumulate, but it’s not a major issue either since the magnets do keep the earbuds in even if the case is rotated.
MOONDROP Link
For MOONDROP products, they are supported through the MOONDROP Link application, also known as just MOONDROP. At present, the app has fairly middling ratings of just 2.5/5 stars on Google Play, but it is a fairly basic app.
Installed on my phone, it can find the Space Travel set, showing a bright image when connected and a dull image when not connected. The visual aesthetics are fairly neat.
Unfortunately, the app’s capabilities are somewhat limited – this may be due to chipset limitations of this particular model, but tapping into the device homepage, we have the ability to adjust the volume, enter the EQ settings and open the user guide. When it comes to equaliser settings, there are only three settings to choose from, with no custom setting available. I found the “Reference” default mode to be most to my liking, it being quite close to what is often considered a “consumer” sound signature with a little bass emphasis.
Then I discovered it was possible to configure the touch settings by pressing on the image of the earbuds themselves. This allows some limited customisation, but if I recall correctly, it didn’t seem possible to completely disable the touch functionalities (which is something I often like to do).
No account is required to use the app, although you can choose to register one if you’d like. The settings page has few things of note – the setting page only allows you to configure night mode, language, enable a floating-window mode, configure auto-connection and music sync (not pictured). The Product page is more for promotion of their other featured products – hey, a Hoyoverse collaboration featuring Robin from Honkai Star Rail. I’m sure that will appeal to some players … but I’ll pass. I guess I just don’t love my waifus enough (chuckles quietly).
Tests
The first thing I tested was runtime under the basis of audio playing at a comfortable volume for commuting, connected to my Poco F3 in AAC mode, with ANC turned on. On a single earbud charge, the playtime was 3h 30m in the right side and about 3h 43m in the left side which is a notable discrepancy. This is slightly below the claimed four hours for the earbuds.
However, when we include the charging case into the equation, the total playtime from everything fully charged to everything fully empty reached 15h 49m. This compares closely with the claimed 4h + 12h = 16h total advertised on the back of the box. This is still somewhat less than more expensive wireless earbuds can offer – many are pushing close to twice as long runtimes, but at this price, compromises have to be made.
With regards to charging, the whole arrangement went from flat to full in just shy of two hours at 1h 56m. The peak charging current was 330mA, with the delivered charge being 552mAh at 5V suggesting even more charge delivered than the official battery capacity (even when assuming a linear charger circuit). This discrepancy may be due to the fact the unit runs its LED continuously while it is charging. Nevertheless, this result supports the claimed capacity as being genuine.
Direct Link: mdst-mictest.mp4
With regards to the microphone, I tested it in my semi-noisy fanned environment and it fared relatively well. The noise cancelling is evident and so is some slight (potentially) Bluetooth-related losses. But the voice comes through very well – intelligible, not excessively “swimmy” or “robotic” as some “AI” noise reduction algorithms have a tendency to do, and relatively complete with regard to spectrum considering the Bluetooth 16kHz mSBC limitations. I’d have to say this is a good result.
Conclusion
While this is one of MOONDROP’s low-end sets, I was still impressed by what it could do for its price. It didn’t nail the ergonomics of the case, the comfort of fit, nor the sealing of the earbuds in my ear canal. The ANC would be considered mediocre at best, easily overwhelmed by the likes of commuting noise, but is better than nothing. But when I did get it sealed, the audio was very well balanced and the result sounded fairly honest (especially considering their published graphs). The bass is present, not overwhelming, while the vocal region is nicely represented. The treble is a little “nervous” and inconsistent – but that’s what their graphs said it would be. It still sounds great for the price and a whole lot sharper and clearer than the OTTO Pastel did.
Of course, if you’re critical about your audio, this is not going to be your choice of product. But if you’re on a budget, it’s an entry-level price for performance that punches above its weight class. Best of all, the microphone also works well.
Other key downsides have to do with the limited battery life and the case that has no lid closure and thus can be a dust magnet or an earbud-losing hazard. To expect no compromises at this price-point would be unfair, but I think the compromises MOONDROP have chosen are not dealbreakers. To me, this set is good enough to be a take-along back-up in case my favourite set is somehow flat or left behind somewhere. Even though they may be a bit old now (based on the “2023” in the name), they will still get the job done.
But more than anything, I suppose it teaches me that perhaps some brands still clearly care about sound quality more than others … and even though this is an entry-level product, it’s left behind a great impression. I still can’t believe I got it for AU$29 all inclusive … although that’s probably a price you won’t be able to find today.
