Sivga S01

Verdict

The Sivga S01 offers great open-ear, air conduction sound and a design that’s fit for workouts at a price that makes it a better option than pricier open ear earphones.

Introduction

The Sivga S01 are open-ear wireless earphones squarely for the fitness crowd with its sweatproof earhook design and battery life to last a week worth of workouts.

It joins a growing number of headphones that have adopted air conduction or open-eared design with speakers near the ears to deliver a bigger sound than bone conduction headphones. Sivga is also doing that for less money than the competition, significantly cheaper than the Shokz OpenFit, Cleer Arc II Sport and Oladance’s open ear headphones.

Does paying less get you an inferior set of open ear earphones, or is this true wireless pair a surprise package on a budget?

Availability

The Sigva S01 are priced at £69.90 / $69.90, making them considerably cheaper than other open ear truly wireless earphones like the Shokz OpenFit (£179 / $179.95), the Cleer Audio Arc II Sport (£199 / $199) and the Oladance Wearable Stereo ($179.99 / £199.99).

Design

• IPX5 sweat and water resistant 
• Twisting ear hook design
• Case with wireless charging

This is the Chinese audio brand’s first sports-focused headphone, so it’s good to see that it’s opted for a design that typically provides the most reliable fit for a range of different exercises.

The IPX5 rated sweat and water-resistant earphones come in either black or white and feature an ear hook that can be rotated left and right to ensure a good fit for different ear shapes. 

While not as svelte as the Shokz OpenFit, the distribution in weight between earhook and the slightly curved main speaker units that deliver audio is well balanced to make sure they stay put and they don’t feel like they’re clinging to your ears or sitting uncomfortably either. 

I’ve used them for sweaty high intensity workouts, runs, general gym time and worn with sunglasses and caps and have been very satisfied with the secureness of the fit overall.

It’s also good to see Sivga has opted for a set of physical controls that are simply integrated here letting you play and pause audio, skip tracks, adjust volume, handle calls or summon your phone’s smart assistant through single and multiple button presses and are easy to use even during more fast-paced workout time.

Those earphones sit inside of a charging case, that can fit into a trouser pocket but certainly doesn’t disappear inside of it. Open up the case and you’ll find a useful battery status notification screen that indicates the case’s battery in percentage levels as well as the level of battery for each earphone. It’s primarily charged up by a USB-C cable, but you can also drop the case directly onto QI-certified wireless chargers to power it up too.

Features

• Over 9-hour battery life
• Bluetooth 5.3 for stable and fast connections

Connectivity-wise, the S01 have been near flawless. I’ve used them with an iPhone 14, Google Pixel 6a and paired them with a Garmin Forerunner 965 sports watch and a MacBook Air. I’ve only had a single brief connection drop out when paired to an iPhone, which resolved itself a few seconds later.

The battery performance is good at more moderate volumes. I’ve also got a lot of time for the useful battery status screen baked inside of the charging case. Sivga says you can over 9 hours off battery life off a single charge, but I found it fell short of that at near to top volume. 

Over an hour of use saw battery drop by 20%, which would work out to 5 hours as opposed to 9 hours. That’s quite a significant drop off. The 600mAh charging case gives you an impressive 46 hours in total and you do have the convenience of wireless charging here as well.

For calls, Sivga says it employs noise cancellation technology to cancel out external noise and in general, taking calls is a good experience and it’s not a struggle to deal with calls in loud environments like it can be with bone conduction headphones.

Sound Quality

• Balanced sound profile
• Strong bass
• Smooth mids

As mentioned at the top of the review, the Sivga S01 joins a new group of wireless earbuds that opt for what is referred to as air conduction to deliver open-ear sound. That’s essentially done by placing 16.2mm diaphragm speakers and a design that directs sound to your ears without physically blocking external sound from reaching the ears. 

Sivga says the S01 has been tuned to deliver strong bass, clear and smooth vocals, and delicate treble. What you get out of the box is what you have to live with as there’s no EQ presets to play around with here. Thankfully though, the sound you get is very good.

Unlike some of the open-ear, speaker-style earphones I’ve tested, the S01 offers a surprisingly well balanced and very polished sound profile. I used the ‘Songs to Test Headphones With’ playlist on Spotify to get a good sense of how it handles a range of music genres, and it holds its own across a range of genres.

On Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy, you get a lovely thud of bass that doesn’t overpower the treble and mids with a pleasing soundstage and warmth you typically don’t associate with bone conduction headphones. It’s a similar story on Jamie xx’s Gosh and Massive Attack’s Teardrop, where bass is well reproduced, the Sivga keeps to its promise to deliver that strong bass.

There’s plenty of finesse on tracks like London Grammar’s Wasting My Young Years where the mids are smooth and detailed. On Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God), the trebles aren’t super sparkly but there’s still a nice clear, refined quality to them and it isn’t as harsh sounding as I’d anticipated. It’s the same story on Sam Cooke’s Nobody Knows The Trouble That I’ve Seen.

Crucially it retains that sound profile when it needs to compete with exterior sound and the level of awareness and hearing audio around you is a good balance in both busy indoor and outdoor environments.

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