Choosing the best Bluetooth headset can be baffling and this gets even more challenging when you’re looking at the affordable segment. The market is already flooded with a lot of recognized as well as unrecognized brands and if the pedigree of a brand matters to you more than the utility of the products it produces, there are many options from legacy brands like JBL, Motorola, Philips, Sony, and some newer and popular ones like TAGG, Boat, etc.

Toshiba RZE-BT180H Bluetooth Headphones Box Contents

The box is made out of thin cardboard and has a transparent window, offering a peek at headphones inside. The low quality of the box leaves a poor first impression about the headphones and we’ll see in the later sections whether this is actually true or not. Inside, you get:

The experience after opening the box was just as lukewarm, and this is because the AUX cable supplied in the box appears to be of poor quality, and in case of our unit, the AUX cable did not even work properly. This appalling quality makes for a bad start, and coming from a well-known brand, this is really questionable and discomforting.

The most noticeable thing about the Toshiba Bluetooth headphones is the choice of the dandy, fluorescent colors including orange, green, blue, along with the relatively duller grey. We received the green unit for review and the dual-tone design makes the build of the headphones intriguing, if not exciting. But the feeling withers away as soon as one takes a closer look at the headphones.

The right headphone houses the buttons for basic controls as well as the micro USB and the headphone jacks. Besides dedicated buttons to increase and decrease the volume, the central button is useful for play/pause controls as well as to switch the headphones on or off. The volume buttons can also be used to jump tracks by long-pressing. There is a tiny LED beside the buttons which it blinks blue when the headphones are connected and red when the battery is low or a device has disconnected.

It breaks my heart to see a headphone sound this awful. It almost feels like Toshiba has simply rebranded a cheap white-label product without putting any effort in tuning the audio output. The hollow bass makes leaves you feeling as if the instruments were made out of plastic, while the mids feel too feeble and trashy to shoulder crucial parts of the music. Likewise, the treble sounds too blunt and far from striking.

I did manage to fetch out some bearable audio by adjusting the equalizer but that has to be tweaked with every track change, and this can get annoying and is certainly not very convenient for non-savvy users. The sound quality just does not make the cut for me and even when I can fix it by adjusting the EQ, the experience is still not as satisfying as I would like it to be.

While the build and the audio quality on the Toshiba RZE-BT180H Bluetooth headphones are not up to the mark, it does fairly decently in terms of the battery life. The battery on the headset easily lasts for almost nine to ten hours which is more than the claim of eight hours by the company. However, please do note that this is on using the headset at two-thirds of the volume (for the reasons stated above).

It’s clear that these attractive-looking Bluetooth headphones by Toshiba show off poor design, sound quality and have no features that make a compelling case in their favor. To sum it up, here are all things that are bearable and bad about Toshiba RZE-BT180H Bluetooth headphones.

  • Decent battery backup

Cons

  • Terrible, cheap build quality
  • Very uncomfortable
  • Rigid and peeving headband
  • Abysmal sound

Toshiba RZE-BT180H Bluetooth Headphones: Stay Away for Your Own Sanity

After using the Toshiba RZE-BT180H Bluetooth headphones for a week, I can say that the experience almost felt like a punishment, and besides the sub-standard sound quality, the discomforting build is what made the experience unbearable for me. Yes, those striking colors will be attractive but only if you these headphones as a prop for your desk and not actually use them.

If you wish to spend your hard-earned money effectively, you can pick up the Energy Sistem 2 Bluetooth Headphones (Rs 2,599) which offer a much better sound quality, almost the same battery life, and great comfort. You may also check out the boAt Rockerz 600 (Rs 2,274) which will offer clearer audio but with a battery backup of only 6-7 hours. Lastly, if you can be satisfied with a pair of wired headphones, there are plenty of options but I’d recommend you to go for a reliable option from Sony – the MDR-XB550 (Rs 2,999) with emphasis on bass performance.