Lypertek Tevi Review: Affordable True Wireless Earbuds to Please Enthusiasts, Budget Buyers

Straight up, the Lypertek Tevi makes a neat impression in its overall sound signature. It sounded neutral – something that is a bit rare given how most mainstream earphones tend to offer higher lows and a lower midrange. In simpler terms, if a new brand is out to please a larger section of buyers, they tend to shoot up the bass in tracks, while reducing much of the instruments as well as vocals. Not the Tevi, though – upon initial impressions, its sound offered a more neutral signature, where the bass was well balanced with the rest of the tracks, the instruments sounded clear and distinct but not too plucky or sharp, the vocals sounded measured but had flair, and the highs did not exhibit the kind of shrillness that many affordable earbuds get wrong.

These impressions only grew with time. I spent most of my time with the Tevi streaming music through my smartphone only via Apple Music, because – let’s face it, if you’ve spent any amount of money for a dedicated high resolution music player to stream your local FLAC files through, it is highly unlikely that you would leave the fate of your daily post-work unwind session to a seemingly unknown quality as Lypertek. Despite the constraints of the file quality as a result, the Tevi fared impressively well – bass response is uniformly strong yet well balanced, from tracks such as the sober Ghir Ghir by Advaita, Billy Sheehan going close to bonkers in The Audience is Listening by Steve Vai at G3 2005, Tokyo (live), Flea going nearly as bonkers in RHCP’s wicked Slane Castle opening version of By The Way, and the despair-inducing double bass in Clint Mansell’s all-time genius behind Lux Aeterna from Requiem for a Dream’s soundtrack.

The reason why I stress upon the bass response is because it is really quite easy to hide behind heavy bass and classify a pair of earbuds as passable. Impressively, the Tevi did not do that. Instead, it allowed the mids to flourish, which gave a clearer image of what the Tevi’s sound signature really is. The overall sound signature is more bright than warm, with higher emphasis on the vocals and the upper range of instruments, than the lows. However, the Tevi does not exhibit sibilance, although slight traces of it can be heard at 100 percent volume. The overall sound shows a lot of composure, which makes the earbuds reasonably versatile. Without an equaliser, the Tevi by default suits genres like metal and rock, more than hip-hop, techno and EDM. Tune the sound with an external EQ, and you get it to produce still-strong but clean bass lines, which defines its versatility.

Some of the aspects that are not so good about the Tevi is the overall tightness of the sound – the Tevi does have the feeling of being a little hollow. This is something that most dynamic drivers exhibit, and is something that takes away from its audiophile-class frequency tuning. Soundstaging is not great, either – the overall audio output is quite constricted, which restricts the virtual room that good earphones with sharp response and neutral signature can create. The Tevi’s timbre is also not the sweet, willowy spot that I prefer, either – instead, it’s a bit on the chirpier side, which fans of upbeat, enthusiastic music would appreciate. It’s not bad at all, just not something that many rock enthusiasts may like.