Tribit XFree Go headphone: Amazing sound, great price, and one glaring flaw

These cans sound like headphones that cost three or four times as much, but the controls on not one but two review units locked up after an hour or so of sustained use.

- JON L. JACOBI

Before I discovered the price of Tribit’s XFree Go headphones, which wasn’t provided until weeks after the product showed up, I was thinking they’d retail for $100—or maybe $80 given Tribit’s penchant for lowball pricing. In my book, they sound every bit as good as the Sony set I use on a regular basis.

Discovering that they were selling on Amazon for just $25 was darn shocking. I’ve never heard a worthwhile headset priced less than $50, let alone one that sounds as good as this. But then I started watching movies.

A SHOWSTOPPER OF A FLAW

I quickly discovered a major problem: The XFree Go became unresponsive after a relatively short period of sustained use. They’d still produce sound, as long as the Bluetooth connection remained, but I couldn’t adjust the volume or even turn them off. There was no indicator LED to show what was wrong—no nuthin’.

The only way I could unfreeze them was to plug them back into an AC outlet and wait. I don’t know if every XFree Go suffers this glitch or if a new production run will fix the problem. Thinking I just got a defective unit, I had the company ship me a replacement—which suffered from the very same problem. That tells me the issue could be common or even universal. I’ll revisit this review—and my verdict—if Tribit can send me a pair that doesn’t exhibit the flaw, but for now I have to say: caveat emptor.

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