Yobybo Ultrathin CARD20 Earbuds Redefine Portability

When Apple dropped the first Airpods in 2016, many companies immediately developed their own true wireless alternatives. The race for earbud marketshare has become somewhat of a battle royale–and for good reason. The Yobybo CARD20 is something we haven’t seen before.

Yobybo?

True wireless earbuds are used for everything and are carried around at all times. More and more people walk around with earbuds in as much as possible, seamlessly switching between music and phone calls, brandishing a company’s product the whole time.

Many major players (Klipsch, Sony, JBL, Sennheiser, to name a few) have been pushing forth their own true wireless earbuds since the advent of the Airpod. However, Yobybo is the first I’ve seen to approach the design of their earbuds from a fundamentally different perspective.

The thickness and weight of earbuds and their cases are immediately visible and always felt. Yobybo honed in on this unmissable aspect of design and created a pair of earbuds that pack flatly into a small, half-inch-thick case. I’m so intrigued by the CARD20 because it’s clear that Yobybo is trying to do something that hasn’t been done before. That’s not just me talking — this year, the revolutionary design earned the new company an iF Design Award.

What’s in the Buds?

The Yobybo CARD20 earbuds have no silicone tips. The company’s kickstarter campaign refers to this as a pressureless, half-in style of application, meaning they don’t sit fully in your ear canal. They sport 13mm drivers, Qualcomm QCC3020 connectivity chips with Bluetooth 5.0, and CVC 8.0 voice cancelling technology.

Yobybo’s Kickstarter campaign for this first release of theirs ended February 27th, and the earbuds were also shown at CES in Las Vegas (click here to read about other headphones from CES that we’ve been excited about). On top of the state-of-the-art hardware inside, the earbuds have a 4-5 hour battery life. Three additional full charges are stored in the carrying case.

Yobybo CARD20 earbuds are IPX4 certified and, as seen in the image above, each one weighs less than 4 grams. They’re available now for $129, emphasizing again that Yobybo is taking aim at the other leading manufacturers. Many popular true wireless earbuds are at least $50 more expensive, and some go significantly higher.

Form & Function

Mic tests and reviews already out for the CARD20 earbuds are quite promising. It seems that the extra oomf from those 13mm drivers sacrifices some clarity in the lower-mid range. For something so tiny, though, Yobybo has definitely come out of the gate with an amazing product.

Thanks to the aptX playback within, there’s almost no latency when these earbuds are connected to your laptop. These are good-sounding, lightweight earbuds that can pack up into a case thin enough for your wallet.

Yobybo’s CARD20 true wireless earbuds offer ingeniously slim, featherweight design at a price slightly lower than other leading TWS earbuds. We’ll see if it’s enough to put Yobybo on the map, but I’m eager to spend some more time with them.