Adidas RPT-01 Headphone Review: Made From a Sporting Mindset
Purchase Price: $99.99
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Headphones are one of the most popular technology accessories in the world. You can pair them with just about any electronic device through Bluetooth, making them extremely versatile and easy to move from one device to another as you upgrade. It’s no surprise that basically any company in the world can produce this form of technology using their brand without much R&D required. Did you know the world-famous sporting shoe brand Adidas, produces a mid-end pair of headphones for $99? Ya, we didn’t either. Let’s see what it’s all about!
Out of the Box
The Adidas RPT-01 Sport On-Ear comes in weighing in at 213.5 g (.47 lb). Included with the box is a USB-C charging cable, detachable ear cushions and a rubber headband to make cleaning easier after an intense workout. It features an IPX-4 rating which is resistant to water splashing and is plenty enough to handle sweaty workouts. It probably won’t be able to endure heavy rain, so I wouldn’t recommend taking it out for a jog in the rain. The RPT-01 comes equipped with Bluetooth 5.0 with a range up to 800 feet. That’s pretty impressive distance as Bluetooth 5.0 really stretches how far your phone can be away from you and the headset while you focus on your workout.
Battery Life
The battery life on the Adidas RPT-01 has been absolutely stellar. Adidas advertises up to 40 hours of continuous playback, but seeing as these are technically sporting headphones, there’s no way anyone has time to put these headphones to the test for a 40-hour workout session. Even professional athletes wouldn’t be able to drain this in one continuous session. However, if you use it with the routine of a regular Joe who hits the gym often and plays pickup games at the local gym once a week, they hit a full charge in 3 hours out of the box and lasts about 2 weeks without needing another charge. Given that my workout sessions have been 30-45 minutes each time, this is a terrific on-ear headphone for the gym. In this manner, it’s well suited for shortened listening periods.
Fit and Comfort
Adidas chose to craft these headphones with a type of washable knitted material. It’s soft feeling and actually looks pretty good. In a product field full of black plastic, these do stand out a lot among the sea of other headphones. The fit on the Adidas RPT-01 is super snug. That isn’t a surprise as it is obvious that they designed it that way to cater for a high movement workout. Because of that, it’s honestly not the most comfortable fit on my head. I don’t have the biggest noggin and it’s still a tight fit for me. So I can only imagine people with a bigger head would feel like these headphones were crushing their skulls. However, the detachable ear cushion is soft and the rubber headband fits well on my head, but the curve on the headphones that gives it that tight fit, makes it hard to wear for a long periods of time. It’s snug enough that it won’t fall out from running and jumping but it’s not going to be the most comfortable thing to keep on for activities longer than 30 mins at a time. So even though the battery life is stellar, it won’t really matter if you can’t keep it on your head.
Function
There are 2 buttons on the headphones: a power button and a customizable button. Each cup houses one button. It’s nothing flashy, but it’s practicable in situations where you need to pause your song or podcast. There’s also a companion app you can download in order to reprogram the button. It’s a neat addition, but not something critical for me and my type of usage. The real beneficial design to the Adidas RPT-01 are the detachable ear pieces and the rubber headband. Having the option to remove those to wash is such a nice feature for sporting wear. If you visit the gym regularly, you’ve probably seen that some of the most disgusting things are people’s gym bags. If people toss these headphones into their smelly bag, they can at least now clean their headphones thoroughly. I bet people won’t take advantage of this functionality, but it’s terrific to be able to maintain the cleanliness like this. I was dismantling and cleaning this after every workout and it’s by far the cleanest set of headphones I’ve ever used.
Sound Quality
The main selling point to buy one of these is to encourage an active lifestyle. Actually, the real point of these headphones is for Adidas to slap their logo onto a product in order to sway their customers who already buy their shoes to also trust the brand when it comes to using headphones for anything sport-related. Sound quality is an afterthought. We’ve seen tech companies (like Apple Beats) and their take on how headphones and earphones for athletic uses should be like. This is an athletic apparel company making tech. You can absolutely see the difference in approach just by the look and design of the products. Being a fashion company, Adidas chose to go for a design choice focused on aesthetics and practicality over a performance based one.
Simply being an on-ear headphone set already is a detractor for me in the sound quality department. On-ear headphones are more compact than their over-ear counterparts, but often times will feel tighter on those ears. The fit of it is going to affect the quality of the sound you hear and these are not the clearest sounding headphones. Everything from noise isolation to sound leakage is just meh at best. While there are over-performing on-ear headphones on the market for sure, most on-ear headphones rely on usage in a calm environment to enhance the sound you receive. This set with sporting uses in mind, is only going to exacerbate the issue of lackluster audio quality because you’re going to be wearing this inside a loud gym (at least the ones I go to in LA). At the absolute ideal listening scenarios, I’d judge these to be average sound quality at best, with minimal bass and treble ranges.
Verdict
The idea of having detachable and cleanable pieces for a headphone primarily used at a gym is actually a terrific design idea. The washable material and a fit that doesn’t lose its grip on your head are the real highlights of the Adidas RPT-01. You can absolutely see the fundamental differences in outlook from the design team here compared to a traditional headphone maker. But the down side to the RPT-01 is that this super tight on-ear fit is not the most comfortable to wear for a long duration. That eliminates the portability factor that on-ear headphones traditionally provided. Add in the lacking sound quality and the RPT-01 makes me end up taking them off and putting them away in favor of a headset made by a traditional tech-focused company more often than not.
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Martin
Always in tune with the beat, audiophile doesn’t even begin to describe Martin’s intense passion for music. Whether it be in the front row of an Anderson .Paak show or popping to a Lizzo track in the back of a coffee shop, this Mechanical Engineer is meticulous with what goes through his earlobes simply because he knows exactly what it takes to make a quality headset.