David Carnoy/CNET

A lot of people love Nura’s original over-ear Nuraphones, which are uniquely designed with an in-ear component and personalized sound. I’m personally more fond of the company’s new NuraTrue earbuds, which also have a fairly unusual design and give you the option to create a personalized hearing profile. 

The buds look big but are lightweight. They fit a bit more like sport earbuds — they include a couple of sizes of stabilizing fins — and stick out of your ears a bit (they’re not exactly discreet). I got a good seal and comfortable fit with one of the larger tips and if you’re able to get a good fit, these deliver excellent sound and decent noise-canceling performance. Nura has some of the best hearing personalization and a quick 5-minute process, with no test tones involved, yielded good results for me with improved sound.

You can adjust the bass level with a slider in the “immersive” mode in the app and I found these delivered big sound with a wide soundstage. aptX audio codec support is available for compatible devices. 

The NuraTrue also have a “social” transparency mode — it’s good, but not quite up to the level of the AirPods Pro’s transparency mode in terms of how natural it sounds. Battery life is rated at around 6 hours with noise canceling on at moderate volume levels. I thought the touch controls worked well and these are splash-proof with an IPX4 rating. Call quality wasn’t quite what I hoped it would be — it’s fine but some callers said my voice sounded unnatural and canned when noise reduction was engaged in the noisy streets of New York. There is a sidetone feature that allows you to hear your voice in the buds, which is good.

Initially there were some complaints about the earbuds not playing loud enough, but a firmware update fixed that issue. I had no problem with the volume levels; they play plenty loud now, perhaps too loud for some people. Though fairly pricey, If these fit your ears well, they’re among the better premium buds, particularly for sound quality. Hopefully some firmware upgrades will make them even better over time.