Boat Nirvana Crown Review: TWS earbuds with a fancy and feature-packed charging case

Pros:

Cons:

Price: Rs 2,799

Rating: 3.7/5

The sub-Rs 3,000 segment of true wireless (TWS) earbuds in India is a crowded space with very few differentiators. Yes, you do get some exceptionally high value audio products that sound and perform great for their price tags, but nothing that truly stands out. In order to get noticed, Boat has taken a slightly different path with their Nirvana Crown TWS earbuds in terms of design and functionality. Let’s figure out if they appeal to the ears as much as they do to the eyes.

Boat Nirvana Crown: Design and Comfort (8/10)

The earbuds design is pretty standard with silicone tips, short stems and a combination of matte and glossy finish. There’s a tiny Boat logo at the back with touch zones at the top and an LED at the base of the stems.

Coming to the buds, the Nirvana Crown earbuds are lightweight and sit comfortably in the ear canals. The fit is snug and can be worn for long. They don’t pop out of the ears during workouts or jogs, and given that they are IPx4 rated sweat resistant, can be your workout companion. The right sized silicon tips offer decent passive noise isolation and also help in improving ANC performance.

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While the buds are unassuming, the charging case grabs all the attention. It is more than a charging case with a multi-functional button (MFB) and a rotating dial (Sonic ARC as Boat likes to call it) that lets you control quite a few functions of this product.

Boat has taken a leaf from CMF’s playbook and taken it a level or two higher with a vibration motor for haptic feedback and customisable LED lights that also inform you about the battery and volume level. More on that in the next section.

The case isn’t the most compact, and though it can be slipped into your pocket, expect a noticeable bulge. The build quality is good and it sports a matte lower body with a glossy lid. The combination looks good but is prone to scratches, so handle it with care. The case has a USB-C charging port but no Bluetooth pairing/reset button.

Boat Nirvana Crown: Features and Specifications (8/10)

Each earbud is fitted with a 10 mm dynamic driver and three microphones for calling and active noise cancellation (ANC). It claims to support 50 dB hybrid ANC. You also get wear detection sensors that are quite rare in this price bracket and dual-pairing to connect these earbuds with two devices simultaneously. These Bluetooth 6.0 compliant TWS buds support SBC and AAC codecs. You also get spatial audio and other sound tweaks through the companion app.

Speaking of which, you need to download the Boat Hearables app and sync the Nirvana Crown with it. But before that, you are forced to register with your phone number and email just to access the features of this product; something we did not appreciate. I understand doing that for warranty and service but demanding your personal information just to let you use these earbuds is crossing the line.

Once done, the app lets you customise a lot of aspects of this product right from controls to sound. The UI is not the simplest but is pretty neat once you get the hang of it. The app lets you configure the touch controls for the buds as well as the MFB, and the dial on the charging case can be rotated to increase or decrease the volume. Some gestures can’t be altered but there are enough available for you to play around with. You can also change the LED colours on the charging case for different functions.

There are a couple of things I would like to bring to your notice. Firstly, the earbuds do not support triple tap gesture and you only have single and double tap to assign play/pause, skip track or some other function. As a result, expect accidental taps while adjusting the buds when single tap is enabled. Secondly, the dial on the case is overly sensitive and I would have preferred a bit more resistance while rotating it. So if you plan to keep the case in your pocket or your bag, don’t forget to lock the controls (triple click the MFB and hold) to avoid unexpected volume changes.

Boat Nirvana Crown: Performance (7/10)

Loudness is not a problem for these Boat earbuds as they are perfectly audible at 60 to 70 per cent volume even when outdoors. The wireless range is fine too with the buds maintaining a stable connection at 10 metres with no obstruction between them and the source device. We faced no latency issues either with no perceptible lag between the video and audio when watching videos. The company states that it can go as low as 50 ms.

The ANC performance is decent at best. It is very much functional, but do not get carried away by the 50 dB noise reduction figures that the company advertises. It reduces certain low frequency sounds like the whirr of a fan or a hum of a car engine, but isn’t that effective at dampening midrange sounds like human voices in public transport.

The Transparency performance is also acceptable for the segment, and while you can have a quick chat with someone in quieter places without removing the earbuds, you may need to strain your ear in buzzing areas.

Moving on to the sound quality, it is typically Boat with excess bass. The default sound is distinctly V-shaped with boosted bass and treble and suppressed mids. While this is not exactly my preferred taste in sound, it will certainly appeal to a large demographic who loves the extra bass; a demographic that the company calls Boat-Heads, I suppose. The extra treble somewhat balances the boosted low end frequencies and lends a bit of sharpness to the sound.

While the vocal clarity is decent, the overall midrange reproduction is below par with unremarkable instrument separation and detail in audio. I don’t want to be overly critical given the price tag of the Crown Nirvana and that a vast majority of its target audience is fine with it provided there’s ample thump in the audio. As long as you are aware of what you are buying, there’s nothing right or wrong about your sound preference.

Genres of music like EDM, pop or Bollywood party tracks are quite enjoyable on these earbuds. Instrument heavy music, not so much. You get a handful of sound tweaks including a 10-band equaliser to alter the output and spatial audio to broaden the soundstage a bit which are worth a try. But keep your expectations in check as these earbuds do not deviate much from their core sound signature.

Boat Nirvana Crown: Call quality (7/10)

The call quality on these Boat buds is above average, with people on the line audible to each other indoor as well as outdoors. Even outdoors, things are largely smooth with a lot of background noise kept in check. A bit more sharpness in the voice would have been better though, as they sound a bit bassier than ideal. Despite that, these earbuds are more than decent for calling. However, beware of accidentally muting the mic by taping the back of the earbuds while adjusting them during a call.

Boat Nirvana Crown: Battery life (7/10)

The battery backup here is pretty good though not chart-topping. Boat simply states overall battery backup figures of up to 40 hours with the buds and case combined. Neither the battery capacity nor battery life figures for the buds with and without ANC have been mentioned. During our test run, the buds lasted close to 5 hours with ANC on all the time and about 7.5 hours without ANC with the average loudness around 65 per cent.

The case can charge the buds thrice more taking the overall battery backup figures in the 20 hours to 30 hours range depending on the quantum of ANC usage. As I said, these may not be close to the highest but are perfectly acceptable figures. These earbuds also support fast charging, with a 10-minute charge promising close to 3 hours of playtime without ANC, which is quite handy. The product can be charged fully in about 90 minutes, while the buds alone take less than half of that to go from empty to full.

Boat Nirvana Crown: Price and verdict

The Boat Nirvana Crown is priced at Rs 2,799 with a one year warranty and can be often spotted for a couple of hundreds lower. These may not be the best sounding earphones in this segment (unless, bass is the only factor you are concerned about), but are certainly the most feature-rich.

Be it wear detection or dual pairing or customisable sound and controls, these Boat earbuds have it all. And let’s not forget the showstopper - its charging case that adds more control without the need to indulge the phone.

As for competition, there is no shortage of that in this segment. But it boils down to what exactly you are looking for. If you are looking for a pair of TWS earbuds with similar features (barring the charging case functions) and superior sound quality, the OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro would be a good option for a similar price.

If you are looking for one where the case does more than charging, you may have to spend another Rs 800 to 1000 more for the CMF Buds Pro 2, which also offers far superior sound and performance. Choose one with the features that matter most to you.