my CHE635-GC-GAWRGURAs showed up on thursday and i've used them pretty much exclusively since then to listen to a lot of different kinds of music from various media, live streams, podcasts, and a film.
i haven't exhaustively tested the batteries but it does seem like the 10 hours claimed in the manual is about right. so, it's not quite enough for a flight from los angeles to london, but they'll get you from atlanta to london just fine. the charging case is pretty big, with a full-size 18650 li-ion battery in it, and i've barely been able to drain it to about 80%. for a lot of people i think this is something you'd charge once a week unless you also end up using it to recharge your phone at some point. i don't expect to carry the case around in my pocket much because i think the painted illustration would rub off.
the bluetooth SOC and firmware are excellent, certainly better than what i've tried from sony, moondrop, or fiio. the CHE635-GC-GAWRGURAs pair reliably and immediately with my android devices and with the tempermental bluetooth transmitters i use for live streams and for my turntable setup. range is the best of any TWS device i've tried. paired to the transmitter in my office that i use to listen to streams, i have no droupouts even in the laundry room in the opposite corner of the house with four heavy plaster walls in between the devices. the low-latency mode does not work for a nintendo switch's onboard bluetooth transmitter, but the shortcoming is on nintendo's side. the voice prompts are extremely clear and easy to understand, in contrast to the muddy and distorted voice prompts of most TWS SOCs. to switch between devices, i need to disconnect them from one device before trying to connect them to another, but i've never seen anyone but sony get that right, though i assume apple does too. the only modern electronic feature that's really missing is active noise cancellation.
the sound is mediocre, as expected of consumer-oriented headphones. there is too much bass, by about 4-5 dB. there's not any particular problem area, but just too much of everything from 20 to 200 Hz or so. i suppose most people will like that. the upper midrange is generally too quiet for my taste by about 2 dB, but there's also a big narrow peak somewhere in there that makes it difficult to fix this without measurement gear and parametric EQ. they generally sound like macha795's graph of the CHE-627s, except that the treble rolloff is not there, and is probably an artifact of his measurement mic. for most genres they are good enough without reducing the bass, but for classical music they create too comical an exaggeration of the double basses that needs correction. as with most bluetooth receivers, there's a noise gate to hide the noise from the bluetooth electronics, but it's set up better than what i've heard on other receivers, and the threshold is low enough that just brushing a record on my turntable will open the noise gate.
the factory eartips created an annoying suction for me, and i needed the largest size to get a good fit, where i normally use the medium size from basically any eartip manufacturer. comply Tx400 foam tips fit the nozzles, but the case won't close because of their length. medium moondrop spring tips fit, but the large ones are too large for the case, and neither resolved the suction problem for me. most normal third party eartips will fit the nozzles but are too long for the case. i did find foam eartips on amazon from a brand called "iiexcel", designed for beats studio earbuds, and all three sizes fit the CHE635-GC-GAWRGURA just fine, and they're short enough to charge and close the case. i feel like the sockets in the case are backwards, because i have to either hold my hand upside down when i grab the earpiece from my ear, or rotate the earpiece in my fingers to put it back in the case.
in general i think they're slightly better than i expected. the groove coaster branding is funny because they're such a poor fit for rhythm gaming, but people who play rhythm games should know that and shouldn't be taken by surprise.
