Budget class:
- Hoco EW42
- hoco f9
- Hoco F9-5
- Hoco Pro A3
Average level:
- Samsung Galaxy Buds 2
- Huawei Freebuds 5i
flagships:
- Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2
- Soundcore Liberty 3 Pro
- Anker Soundcore Freedom 4
According to Evgeny Kharitonov, editor-in-chief of Ferra.ru, Hoco today occupies a segment that Xiaomi, Realme, Honor and other Chinese brands have left in the struggle for brand prestige and higher margins. That is, the niche of the cheapest headphones without cheating in features and mass marriage. The sound quality in such models is average, the speech microphones are of poor quality, the autonomy and reception range are not outstanding.
But Hoco has practically no competitors – for a similar budget (up to 1,500 rubles), there are fake headphones or wired headphones with the logo of well-known brands, or younger models of TWS headphones under the brands Lenovo, Realme and Honor Choice. .
At the same time, Lenovo and Honor Choice budget headphones are created mainly by third-party contracting companies under license – they only have an inscription from select manufacturers, and the quality in this price segment does not differ from Hoco.
He also emphasized that the extreme popularity of the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 is one of the wonders of parallel imports. These are headphones of the 2021 model year, which at the beginning of 2022 poured into the Russian markets in large quantities at a price of 4-5 thousand rubles, the price from federal retailers (with EAC certification) is 10 thousand rubles.
Similarly, the Samsung Galaxy Buds Live fashionable headphones came to Russia at an affordable price, but this model did not gain popularity due to poor noise isolation and unusual design (bean-shaped headphones).
Compared to Xiaomi, Realme, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus and (Anker) Soundcore, competitors’ headphones are not worse, only Samsung and Huawei have higher recognition and, as a result, popularity.
Evgeny Kharitonov also summed up that flagship headphones from Sony, LG, Sennheiser, JBL and other brands are now poorly represented in retail, and the entry threshold for Apple AirPods TWS headphones with active noise canceling is starting at a painful level. 20 thousand rubles, so buyers logically choose products of Chinese brands, whose laptop and smartphone accessories they bought many years ago and were satisfied with the quality.
Source: Ferra
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
