The Tozo HT2 is a great, budget-friendly headphone/headset! At the time I got them, they were $50 with a $10 off coupon, so I figured I’d give them a try since I’ve had prior experience with Tozo products—specifically, the T10 Bluetooth earbuds. If you’re curious, I still use the T10 earbuds everyday for running, working out, and walking my dog. But as expected, the HT2 is another fantastic product made by Tozo.I’ve had these headphones for exactly a week now and can say that I am more than impressed by their quality! The first thing that you will notice is the packaging. It is very sleek and modern. Inside the box, you’ll find the headphones, a quick instructions guide, a slightly more in-depth instructional pamphlet, some promotional material for their App and warranty, a ~2-foot USB-C cable, and a ~3-4 foot aux cable with 1/8th inch ends. The HT2 feels like it is made of pretty good quality plastic. The speakers are marked “L” and “R” for easy identification and are surrounded by comfy foam. The right speaker has four buttons, including the power button, a connected + and – button for controlling the volume (I’m counting these as two separate buttons), and a noise-canceling (NC) button.Holding the power button for about three seconds will turn the headphones on/off. Syncing the headphones was incredibly fast and easy. In mere seconds, I was listening to music. I ended up downloading the Tozo App, which allows you to play with the settings so you can customize things like the bass, mid-tones, and treble.The first time messing with the settings, I couldn’t tell if it was affecting the sound. Turns out, I had to update it. Here is one of the few cons of the HT2, updating the headphones through the App took about 10 minutes, which is fine. However, upon clicking on the “Update” tab, it doesn’t give you a warning pop-up or anything, it just starts updating, and during that time, you have to keep the headphones and phone powered on. The App says not to exit from it while it is updating either, so for about 10 minutes, I had to stare at a loading screen while worrying about whether my phone would go into sleep mode if I wasn’t constantly tapping at it. However, since the update, the headphones respond to the customization settings. Speaking of which, the customization settings are pretty in-depth and have about 10 points where you can articulate to your preference. I typically just use the default settings, but I can see people getting into it and editing their settings for specific types of music. But let’s get into the HT2’s sound quality and use case scenarios!The HT2 has great mid and treble tones but seems to be lacking in bass. That being said, I think the sound quality is truly outstanding. I listen to an eclectic range of music and found these headphones doing each genre justice. You can pick out and hear every instrument of a song, and vocals are crisp. These headphones are also good for podcasts as well. I’ve probably put around 25 hours of listening time with these and haven’t noticed anything weird regarding crackling, noise interference, disconnects, etc. I’ve also only charged these twice; the battery is pretty incredible, though I’d imagine it will degrade over time. Currently though, pretty good. The range is also good. I can go anywhere within my apartment (not big, about 850 square feet) and stay connected, even with doors closed/in other rooms. The Noise-Canceling function is pretty good, though it won’t block out loud noises completely, just muffles them. That being said, it made functions like vacuuming and using my food processor less noisy (for me at least lol). I did find them capable of blocking out moderate noises, such as office banter at work. The Noise-Canceling button switches from Noise-Canceling (default), to off, to something called “Pass Through” which I’m not entirely sure what it does, but it seems like it allows noise from outside to be hearable, whereas turning the NC off just seems like you have earmuffs on and can dully hear noise from outside. Since I am on the subject of the Noise-Canceling function for these headphones, I will say that the button placement is kind of weird. When looking at the right speaker head-on, the NC button is at around the 4 o’clock position. The first few times taking the headphones off, I found myself accidentally pressing the button. Eventually, I changed the placement of my fingers when taking them off to avoid this. However, the NC button is very sensitive and doesn’t take much force to activate/change the setting. For example, just taking off the headphones and laying it on a flat surface will often press the button in. This can be jarring when putting the headphones back on after having them off briefly, but not long enough to warrant shutting them off completely. Another minor con I found with these headphones is that they suffer from sound leakage/bleeding. This means that when in use, whatever you’re listening to can be heard from outside. Apparently, this is common for overhead headphones (not earbuds), so that’s why I find this to be a minor issue. That being said, if you work with others in a quiet setting, you might want to either listen at a lower volume or use other headphones/earbuds.So besides listening to music/podcasts/stuff, what else can these things do? Although I’ve only had them for a week, I was able to do some unconventional testing. These headphones act as a headset and have a built-in mic. Turns out, the mic works pretty well. I didn’t use these to make a phonecall, but I tested them by syncing to my laptop to do video meetings for work. I didn’t hear any mentions of them sounding bad or cutting out. The audio from meetings was good too, no echoing, or disturbances that you may get with lesser-quality headsets.Another thing that I tried with these (though I don’t recommend) is audio editing. I used these to edit some sound files through Adobe Audition 2024 and noticed a lot of latency. Granted, this is a problem that affects most Bluetooth headsets. That being said, since these headphones come with an Aux and USB-C cable, I’m sure I could have used either to connect directly to my computer and eliminate that latency.Something cool I decided to do with these headphones is to use the Aux cable to jack into a quarter (¼) inch adapter and into my old Line 6 Spider IV 15-watt practice amp. Turns out, it actually worked! The sound wasn’t that great, but I only spent about five minutes messing around. I was more curious to see if it would work. I’m sure if I put in some time, I could have made it sound better though. Maybe something worth updating on later.One thing that I haven’t been able to do with these (that will also warrant touching upon in a later update) is using these for gaming. The reason being is that I have a PS5 and apparently it requires an adapter/dongle to use Bluetooth devices.To wrap things up, the Tozo HT2 headphones are surprisingly high-quality for a low cost. The sound quality is excellent, though it lacks heavy bass—if that is important to you. The battery life is also really good. Though I didn’t touch upon it, wearing these headphones for longer periods is pretty comfortable. Typically, I find headphones to squeeze/hurt my ears after about an hour, but I’ve been able to keep these on for around four hours before I felt I needed to take them off. The Aux and USB-C cables allow you to directly connect to sources, allowing for flexibility and opening new doors for using these headphones. Though these headphones have some minor drawbacks (NC button sensitivity, weird/long App/headphone updating process, and sound leakage/bleeding), the overall value you get from the HT2s is more than worth the price.12/30/23 - UpdateI used the AUX cable to connect the headphones directly to my PS5 controller and they work great! Especially nice when my downstairs neighbor's dogs are barking nonstop. With that being said, I don't play multiplayer games, so I can't tell you how well the microphone works online or if it defaults to the microphone built into the controller.5/3/2024A little late, but I regularly use these with Audition 2024 for audio editing via the AUX cable that it comes with. Unlike with the Bluetooth setting, directly wiring to the computer (PC in this case) reduces audio latency. An added bonus is that using a direct connection with the AUX cable does not use any battery. Not sure if that is common knowledge for most people, but it was something I didn't know. On a related note, the battery for these are still great, and despite me using these pretty frequently, only warrant charging about once every two weeks or so.