Back in the glorious tech golden age of the nineties and noughties, you couldn't move for cheap tech (or, as I often called it then "cheap techy tat"). Themed MP3 players, custom memory sticks, awful airline earbuds, tacky accessories you'd stick to your iPod; all of these lined the walls of supermarkets, post offices, corner stores. Not so much, any more.
It feels like cheap tech is much harder to find now; our heightening tech expectations (techspectations?) combined with the advent of Temu and AliExpress has taught us the dangers of e-waste. But has all this concern for landfill taken away a special kind of novelty that the best cheap earbuds don't replace?
German retail chain Aldi, however, missed the memo. As revealed to me by my editor, nestled between the plastic cheese and battery-farmed chicken, the brand sometimes offers honest-to-goodness headphones. But not in all stores, and with vague reliability: while Aldi's website makes mention of wireless in-ears, the photo my aforementioned editor captured at their Aldi revealed sports earbuds instead.
So does Aldi actually sell earbuds or not? And what kind? And are they good? Also, dare I ask, will they be reminiscent of that nostalgic yesterday of e-waste and toxic-smelling plastic? To find out, I hopped on a bus (and then another, and another, my hunt took a while) to pick up a pair of the Aldi earbuds.
Finding the Aldi buds
Aldi: a brand synonymous a decade ago with cheap prices and exotic, international delicacies. Nowadays, it's a chain I associate with hit-and-miss food, varied availability, and a truly dystopian shopping experience (every single store I visited required a receipt to exit, with no exit for non-purchase browsers, and not even attendants nearby to let them out. What a world we live in, when you're literally not able to leave a shop without paying for something. Shame on you, Aldi).
That's right, I visited multiple Aldi stores near me to find the earbuds, as well as several Lidls too. Both of these budget supermarkets are known for their yard-sale central aisles, where you can pick up basically anything under the sun, but it actually took me quite a lot of searching to find a supermarket that actually had such an aisle.
Perhaps this is because I live in zone 2 London, and I ended up travelling for hours, jumping between various stores, before I finally found one with a random-tech aisle (and could, thankfully, receive a receipt to let me out! I'm free!).
Wonderfully, the Aldi that finally delivered had a veritable tat cornucopia (Aldi Colliers Wood, for anyone who lives in South London). Not only did it offer the sports earbuds in question, but it had smart security cameras and solar-powered speakers too. What finds! I'd have picked up the latter, if not for my worry about the amount of toxic chemicals two pieces of bargain-bin tech might be leaking into my flat (and the fact that my TechRadar audio editor only asked me to test the earbuds...)
A brutal unboxing
These earbuds aren't, of course, called 'Aldi Earbuds'. They're actually the Balco Wireless Sports Earbuds; no, I'd never heard of Balco, and brief searching only revealed a 2000s sports doping scandal. A more thorough search showed that Balco is a product import company, with the sports earbuds likely being sold as something totally different in their home country of China.
The buds were clearly imported to the UK for Aldi, a fact given away by the signature massive barcode on the back.
The box must be the most feeble piece of gadgetry packaging I've ever received; I accidentally tore it in two while trying to open it. But it's entirely recyclable, including the innards and wrap for the USB-C cable, so no harm done (and no plastic stinking up my flat). That's right, a USB-C cable is included, as well as two alternative pairs of ear tips in different sizes — I really wasn't expecting that at this price, and it's a nice touch.
The case is pretty big, but not unduly so for sports-hook buds. It feels a little flimsy, but has a four-LED charge indicator which wins my approval.
Enough dancing around the topic, what about the buds? They're your standard hook-style sports earbuds, with an in-ear tip and a thin beam of plastic that loops around your ears. It's pretty plain, with no branding or superfluous features, but I do like the Violet Quartz color (which, as far as I can tell, is the only color option).
They fit really well and, surprisingly, offer touch controls. That's right, touch controls on £11.99 earbuds, which was a pleasant surprise (if you've begun a drinking game every time I write "surprising" or "unexpected", stop right now for your own health). And while the inclusion of in-box extras and touch controls should have prepared me for the big twist, I was still caught unawares.
And Betty when you call me, you can call me Al(di)
I'm shocked to write this: the Aldi earbuds don't sound half bad. They sound just as good as $100 earbuds I've tested in the past, and better than some other budget buds I've reviewed.
What I like about the buds is that they're definitely warm, but without leaning too heavily on the bass. It's present, but so are mids, which are more apparent than in the vast majority of bass-heavy or V-shaped buds I've tried. There's a solid soundstage too.
There's way more detail than I was expecting. Listening to Down Under as I write this, I can clearly hear the repeated shaker, the reverb on Colin Hay's voice, the secondary rhythm guitar in the chorus. Too many earbuds nowadays (especially workout earbuds) focus on thumping bass that blows everything else out.
I'm not going to pretend the buds sound perfect, and they're not going to get confused for the Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 in a blind listening test. It's more that they avoid the common pitfalls of many commercial earbuds. They sometimes sound just a little tinny, other times muddy, but for non-audiophile listeners I'd say they'd do just fine. However tinny or muddy you're imagining, based on your own use of cheap tech in the past, dial it back about 50%: it's nowhere near as weak as you'd expect.
Has Aldi secretly employed Bose to tune its earbuds? I don't imagine so: it's a sign of the times. We're in the latter half of the 2020s; budget tech has caught up with top-end stuff to the point when it actually works pretty well. A $10 pair of buds on Amazon is going to sound acceptable, just like how a $100 smartphone or $20 smartwatch will work just fine.
It's why brands now sell their tech by the feature set: a single driver can only be so good, and now budget brands are reaching the same ceiling premium ones hit, we can enjoy decent audio for less. When even JLab is selling ANC earbuds for under $40, you know that we're in the budget tech glory days.
Lasting a long time
You've just read hundreds of words complimenting the Aldi buds, but the more I used them, the more I discovered an increasing number of rough edges.
The most notable was in the build quality: a noticeable join mark, which you can see in the above image, shows the factory-line creation of the buds. A crack appears if you flex the hook, and I don't see them surviving a harsh bend.
This continues to the case, which feels a little cheap. It's made of hollow-feeling plastic, doesn't stay open if you don't hold it, and requires some finagling to ensure the buds are properly inserted. I'm curious to see how long the case lasts. The biggest problem I've had with other earbuds is when the charging connector, which lets the buds receive power when in the case, stops working properly — the Aldi buds do feel prime for breaking in this way.
Other issues arose too: these also aren't headphones you should take a call on. I received one during a run, and the caller told me they could barely make out what I was saying; I actually had to disconnect the buds to continue the call. I later tested the microphone myself and it's so poor, you'd think the signal was being bounced around the moon.
At certain points of my testing, I was also hit by spells of bad Bluetooth connectivity. It didn't happen often, but about once a day I'd have a period where my song would keep stopping and starting.
I used these earbuds for about two weeks before covering them; from my experience, cheap tech shows flaws in the long term. So however solid the Aldi sports buds seem now, a couple of months could bring them to their knees in ways other buds would survive. But then again, that's not guaranteed: a few years ago, I bought some £20 sports earbuds on Amazon, and they've lasted me ever since.
If you're a big exercise head, I'd still recommend buying from our list of the best running headphones; they have diverse feature sets, robust designs and sometimes unique audio features, all of which will make them great for daily gym sessions or ultramarathon training.
But if you just want some buds while you do couch to 5K, or to accompany you on weekly Parkruns? Honestly, I think these will be just fine... as long as you can stomach a trip to your local Aldi, and maybe a few more if your local doesn't sell them.
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