What SORCERY is this? 😶 Noble FoKus Rex5 Review vs AZ100 vs Pi8
The Noble FoKus Rex5 has 5 drivers, a 10mm dynamic driver, a 6mm planar driver, and three balanced armature drivers all packed into the chassis. But what’s the point of squeezing so many drivers into each earbud? Both the Technics AZ100 and the B&W Pi8 have only 1 big driver but are some of the best sounding earbuds I’ve ever tried, so 5 drivers seems like an overkill, or is it? We’re going to compare their performance in terms of sound, noise canceling, mic pickup and transparency so buckle up!
Audio Features
What we’re looking at here is a pretty basic set of features packed into the Rex5. The main focus here is on sound, so it supports LDAC and aptX Adaptive. For convenience it’s got multipoint pairing and wireless charging. The only other thing worth mentioning is how they can be tuned with a whole suite of options in the Noble FoKus app to help you achieve the desired sound.
This includes a calibration suite PersonalEQ. This is quite similar to other calibration suites like Personi-Fi, Mimi and HearID, basically a hearing test that measures how sensitive your ears are to certain frequencies, then making louder those frequencies you’re less sensitive to. It seems to be quite accurate, and there’s an audible improvement in terms of airiness in the highs.
Aside from that, you also get presets, a 10-band graphic EQ, and a simple 3-band EQ which is much easier for people not familiar with self-equalizing.
Aside from the sound there’s not much else to do in the app except customize the controls and toggle between ambient modes, that’s it. So I would call the Rex5 pretty customizable, but I wouldn’t call it feature rich.
Microphone Quality
As for how its microphone performance compares to the AZ100 and Pi8, it’s a Rank C in my mic quality rankings list, meaning it’s okay in quiet conditions, but in more challenging noisy scenarios, it wasn’t able to filter out background noise that much, and my voice sounded very recessed, quite like the B&W Pi8. The AZ100 on the other hand, had the best mic pickup of this group.
👉 Have a listen to the microphone quality
(Tested in both quiet and noisy conditions using really loud cafe noise and wind noise from a fan.)
One more thing is, it doesn’t have sidetone voice passthrough, so talking on the phone is going to feel less natural because you can’t really hear your own voice that well. Some people don’t like sidetone, but I rather have that as an option.
Active Noise Cancelling
In terms of active noise canceling, out of these three, the FoKus Rex5 is about as effective as the Pi8, but as you can see from this measurement, it will be more effective in the upper mids region than the Pi8, which means better canceling of certain high pitched sounds. But if we’re talking about general silence, the AZ100 is the quietest of them all in almost all frequency ranges.
👉 Have a listen to the ANC quality
Transparency Mode
In terms of transparency, all of them are useful for for ambient awareness and verbal exchanges, and as you can see, the Rex5 follows the base ambient sounds level closely so passthrough feel rather natural.
But it should pick up more in the mids because when I’m speaking, my own voice sounds pretty muffled to me which is distracting when I’m trying to have a short verbal exchange. The Pi8 passes through voices better but it also does see a dip in the upper mids so there’s still some muffling going on.
Out of the three, the AZ100 feels the most transparent. But I’m seeing this weird spike in the 1.4khz region which, on one hand, is actually pretty good for voice passthrough, but on the other, also emphasizes hissy sounds like fans and air conditioning.
Sound Quality
In terms of sound quality, the Rex 5 sounds pretty awesome, and after A-B testing them, they do hold up to the best sounding earbuds in specific areas, but especially in terms of track separation and instrumental separation. In other words, they sound super clean.
This is the main benefit you’ll get with multi-drivers earbuds like the Rex5. Instead of one driver producing every sound you get specific drivers dedicated to specific frequency ranges like the 10mm one dedicated to lows and mids, the BA drivers in the audible highs, and the planar for even higher treble regions.
But number of drivers has very little to do with tuning, and based on their default tuning, honestly, I prefer the AZ100 and the Pi8 because the Rex5 sounds rather thin in the lower mids, which brings out the upper mids above 2 khz more, and this makes vocals sound a bit shrill.
Also, it doesn’t hit the low registers as deeply, so even though it has bass extension and texture, there’s very little body compared to the others. It’s also not very loud. In this group, the Pi8 is the loudest, followed by the Technics, and then the Rex5 which is about 30-35% softer in volume so you do have to push them a bit more.
Not much we can do about volume, but, the best part about the Rex5 is these are extremely versatile, very tunable. After performing the Sensitivity test, then calibrating them manually in with the 10-band graphic EQ, they now sound just as visceral and exciting as the Pi8 and AZ100, matching them in terms of bass and gravity, as well as adding more presence and smoothness in the vocals which takes the edge off the upper mids.
EQ Setting
One feedback that I have about the manual EQ is, although it remembers my PersonalEQ tuning, it seems my 10-band custom EQ does not carry over to other devices. Now, I wish it did because when I’m working the EQ, it doesn’t show me the gain numbers, so if I’m trying to copy it over, I’ll always have to check if my gain for that particular frequency is too high or too low which is less precise, more troublesome.
Also, on Android, LDAC streaming is the default, but there’s no way to activate aptX Adaptive even if my device supported it, not in Developer’s settings, not in Bluetooth settings, and not in the app.
And lastly, you can access a few more settings on Android compared to iOS, which shouldn’t be the case.
So there’s a bit of polishing needed in terms of UX. But that’s just software, and software improvements can be made with over the air updates.
Verdict
So overall, the main reason to get the Rex5 is not really the features because those are kept to the essentials, plus some that do appeal to audiophiles like Hi-Res codec support, it’s more about the sound. Now, it may not sound like the best out of the box, but they’re extremely customizable and can sound just as good if not better than the best sounding earbuds.
It just needs a bit of tweaking to get there. Its build quality and design is awesome too, it’s one of the most beautiful earbuds I’ve seen, it looks like expensive IEMs made of high quality materials.
My concern is that it’s quite pricey. It’s not that accessible for people who do care about sound, but also care about having better noise canceling and more features.
Case in point, the Technics AZ100 has 3-way multipoint, and many more settings to customize them in the app. As for the B&W, it only has a few settings like the Rex5, and even fewer custom sound options, but you can connect them to any wired audio source by using its case. That’s a competitive advantage for people who want to connect to older players that don’t have Bluetooth.
What’s the competitive advantage of the Rex5 that justifies the price? Only the sound but even that is subjective. But if you are an audiophile looking for an alternative to the B&W and Technics, I do recommend checking out the Noble FoKus Rex5 because, if EQed well, they are simply one of the best, if not the best-sounding earbuds.
Check latest price: Noble FoKus Rex5 - https://amzn.to/45c9zEi
Technics EAH-AZ100 - https://amzn.to/4hcKrQD
Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 - https://amzn.to/3U8n9lT
