Review: Ultimate Ears Fits

Whether you’re running a marathon or watching Wandavision in bed, comfort is king when it comes to wireless earbuds. Not only is a well-fitting pair less annoying, but a proper seal also has a dramatic impact on the sound quality of the headphones.

Ultimate Ears' engineers know a thing or two about great-fitting earbuds. For years the company has made custom headphones for world-famous musicians on the stage. The new Fits bring a taste of that bespoke life to everyone. 

Pop the headphones in your ears, then run through a quick series of app-based prompts, and an ultraviolet light inside the earbuds activates, molding each side to your ear canals. It sounds too good to be true, but it isn’t. I’ve been using my self-molded pair for months, and they're the most comfortable wireless earbuds I've ever tested.

The Fits look like AirPods with the earbud portion shifted halfway down the stem. A tube on the outside of each bud holds the touch controls, mics, and other components, and the driver sits closer to the eartips lower down.

It might seem odd to put the eartips in the middle of the stem, but this attachment point makes them stay better balanced in my ears than Apple's AirPods, which tend to slope toward the floor over time.

Ultimate Ears Fits.

Photograph: Ultimate Ears

I should warn you about the smell. The tips themselves come wrapped (to prevent premature molding), but break open the seal and it'll smell like the inside of a dentist's office. The odor quickly dissipates after the molding process.

Getting the headphones to a custom fit is as easy as unsealing the tips, popping them in your ears, and opening the Ultimate Ears Fits app. In-app prompts will tell you what do to and when. The eartips will then light up—as the ultraviolet light reacts with the unmolded tips to harden them—and you'll feel the buds get warm in your ears. Sixty seconds later, you're done.

The oval-shaped charging case is equally ergonomic. It's larger than some others (to accommodate the big, custom-molded eartips), but not so big that it won't easily fit into a medium-size pocket or handbag.

A great, custom-fitted seal means you get pretty awesome passive noise reduction with the Fits. Plop the buds in your ears, and they reduce the sound of the outside world at least as well as the Jabra Elite 85t and other active noise-canceling competitors.

The seal also has another benefit: great bass response. The Fits sound like they go lower and have more authoritative low end than similarly priced competitors, which makes sense given just how well they fit. Even with the same drivers, a better seal nearly always means better sound.

I particularly enjoyed listening to hip hop and other higher-energy workout music when moving around. It’s not often I get to enjoy the full-frequency spectrum while out on runs, especially as I’m always testing different earbuds with different fits. With this Ultimate Ears model staying so securely in my earholes, I lapped up every note.

Call quality is decent too, thanks to two included microphones that have been strategically positioned on the inside of the earbuds’ stalks. And they have good battery life. They get 8 hours per charge, with the case holding an additional 20, and you can get back an hour of listening time after 10 minutes of charging thanks to the built-in USB-C port.

The biggest issue with the Fits is the lack of a great sweat-resistance rating. They are rated at an AirPods-beating IPX3, but that’s not really what I’d like to see from well-fitting headphones I use so often on runs. If the fit isn't a huge concern for you and you want a workout-specific pair, consider the cheaper yet more rugged Jabra Elite 85t.

The Ultimate Ears Fits mold to the shape of your ears. 

Photograph: Ultimate Ears

It’s nitpicky, but a wireless charging case should be a staple feature, as you'll find it on most other headphones at this price range. I've fully embraced the wirefree future, after all.

Another flaw is the touch controls. I hate most control systems on earbuds and therefore rarely use them, but if you demand good touch controls, look elsewhere. The tappable touch sensor on the Fits works fine for a single mappable function, but not multiple.

These headphones also don’t have a “hear through” mode to pipe in ambient audio from the outside world—handy if you're biking and you want to hear cars nearby. At least it's easy to take these earbuds on and off, so I didn’t mind pulling one out for quick conversations.

The Ultimate Ears Fits aren't my favorite earbuds of all time, but there's still a lot to love. They feel great in my ears, sound awesome, function perfectly, and have enough juice to make it through an entire workday.

If you’ve been searching for earbuds that actually fit your weirdly shaped earholes, as my fiancée self-describes them, these are easily the best buds around.