| Category | Specification |
| Driver | 10mm high-resolution moving-coil driver |
| Battery | Up to 12 hours per charge; up to 50 hours with case |
| Weight | 3.8g per earbud |
| Durability | IP54-rated earbuds |
Buying a pair of earbuds under two grand usually feels like a gamble that you are destined to lose. Most brands love throwing fancy spec buzzwords onto the retail box, but the moment you pop them into your ears, you get tinny audio, cheap, creaky plastics, or a Bluetooth connection that stutters the second you drop your phone into your pocket.
Vivo is trying something different with the new vivo Buds. At ₹1,999, there is zero overpromising here. The pitch stays dead simple: give buyers huge battery endurance, a super-light fit, seamless two-device pairing, spatial audio, and audio that actually packs some punch.
I carried the Nilgiri Green pair around everywhere for a full week, using them across daily office work, chaotic bus commutes, and late-night gaming sessions. Here is my take on how they hold up.
Right out of the box, the vivo Buds look very impressive and very polished, with a full glossy finish on both the case and the earbuds. You get a Type-C port at the bottom and no pairing button anywhere in sight. Pop the lid open, and you see the buds sitting inside in a full monochromatic look. The design surely feels like it's punching above its price tag.
I got my hands on the Nilgiri Green unit, which has this calm, minty green tone that I ended up really liking because it is not loud. While it kept my oily fingerprints out of sight, it was an absolute magnet for dust and pocket scuffs. Just three or four days of sliding it in and out of my jeans pocket, I started spotting fine scratches all over, which showed up easily against the pale green plastic.
Another thing I noticed was the lid hinge. At first, it gave me this super-crisp, loud click whenever I snapped it shut, which felt great. But after a week of fidgeting with it, the hinge definitely developed a bit of loose play.
The earbuds carry that same glossy plastic that we see on the case, and they weigh just 3.8 grams each. The moment I put them on, that featherweight build paid off. The tips sealed into my ears effortlessly without making me feel that stuffy, inner-ear pressure. I even shook my head around vigorously to see if they would slip, but they stayed firmly in place.
I kept them on for several multi-hour editing shifts and felt no earache. Plus, with their IP54 rating, I did not have to stress when I got sweaty during quick evening runs or was caught in a light drizzle.
At this price point, nobody should go in expecting god-level sound, and the vivo Buds certainly are not pulling off audio miracles. Still, packing a 10mm high-resolution moving-coil driver inside, they hold their ground surprisingly well.
Whenever I test any audio gear, I queue up tracks across different genres to get a genuine feel for what the drivers can do. I kicked off my testing with vocal-heavy acoustic tracks and subtle piano arrangements, such as Raabta by Arijit Singh, All of Me by John Legend, and Imagine by John Lennon.
The overall delivery was decent for what you pay, but I did notice that the background instrumentation got a bit muddy during busier passages. Even with that slight muddiness, if you want my honest opinion, the sound comes across as much more vibrant and lively than I anticipated from a budget pair.
In fact, these buds handle bass-heavy tracks far better than pure acoustic melodies. It is not mind-blowing sub-bass, but it packs enough punch to keep things energetic. I cycled through my usual rotation of hip-hop, Punjabi beats, and rap to test the low-end thump, and the results were seriously impressive for the price tag.
The rhythm feels punchy and fun, though in that chase for bass energy, the buds do end up losing some of the finer instrumental details that audiophiles would crave.
On the codec front, you get standard AAC and SBC support. That is pretty much what every brand offers in this segment, so no surprises there. There is also no active noise cancellation here. Expecting ANC at this price point would honestly be an unfair ask, but I will admit that missing out on it made my daily metro commutes and walks through crowded markets a bit chaotic, since you can still hear the outside chatter cutting right through your music.
When it comes to taking calls, my experience with the vivo Buds has been pretty decent, but with clear boundaries. If you are sitting in a quiet office cabin, your bedroom, or anywhere without too much commotion around, the dual-mic setup works completely fine.
My voice came through loud, crisp, and natural on the other end, and I had no issues breezing through long catch-ups and routine work meetings.
The trouble begins once you step outside into genuine chaos. The moment I took calls along packed streets, near blaring traffic horns, or in crowded transit areas, such as during my metro commutes, the experience quickly turned unpleasant for both me and the person on the other end and me.
While the onboard AI noise cancellation and cross-flow wind duct try their best to suppress ambient racket, sharp street noises and chatter still managed to leak right into the conversation. My voice would sometimes sound slightly distant or compressed as the algorithm aggressively tried to fight the background noise.
If you mostly take calls indoors or in relatively controlled spaces, these buds get the job done reliably. But I definitely would not recommend relying on them for important calls while standing in the middle of a noisy market.
Over the years, the software experience for the Vivo TWSs has gotten just better. If you use a Vivo or iQOO phone, you get a few extra ecosystem perks, but I did a chunk of my testing paired with my Vivo X300 FE.
On third-party phones, you have to download the vEarphones app, but honestly, the overall difference in day-to-day use felt fairly negligible.
The app covers all the essentials well, including control remapping and dual-device pairing. Spatial audio is part of the package too, though right now it only works if you are paired with the Vivo X300 FE or the Vivo X300 Ultra. Vivo claims updates are on the way to fix that.
Naturally, you miss out on wear detection, so tracks will not pause when you pull a bud out, but at this price, that did not bother me at all.
What genuinely stood out was the low-latency mode. I do not have the lab tools to measure whether it actually hit the claimed 42ms mark, but during my gaming sessions, the sync was flawless. Gunshots fired on time, and footsteps came through right when they happened on screen.
The app interface is far from the prettiest software I have ever used, but it gets the job done without crashing or lagging.
If there is one area where the vivo Buds completely won me over, it has to be the battery endurance. Vivo packs a 51mAh battery into each earbud and a 513mAh cell inside the charging case. On paper, they promise up to 12 hours on a single charge and a massive 50 hours with the case.
In my real-world routine, keeping the volume around 65 to 70 per cent, I easily pulled around 9–10 hours of continuous music and video playback. That is phenomenal endurance value, especially for the price.
I used these buds through an entire workweek of editing, work calls, and daily listening without having to hunt down a charging brick once. When I finally ran them down, the charging was dependable too.
Dropping the buds into the case for just 10 minutes gave me roughly four full hours of playback, which was more than enough to cover my evening commute. Juicing the whole case back up over Type-C took about two hours, just as claimed. For anyone tired of constant battery anxiety, this setup feels practically bulletproof.
For two thousand rupees, the vivo Buds do not try to pull off any miracles, which honestly works in their favour. Rather than slapping on weak, gimmick-grade ANC just for marketing, Vivo got the daily stuff right.
You get crazy-good battery backup that easily beats most rivals around this price, a super-light fit you can wear all day, spatial audio, and two-device pairing that actually works without fuss.
Are there compromises? Absolutely. That shiny case picks up scratches way too fast, outdoor calls get messy in traffic, and I really missed having auto-pause when pulling an earbud out.
Still, if your week looks like mine, with hours of continuous music, quick gaming rounds, and jumping between a phone and a laptop without Bluetooth headaches, these give you serious value. If you have two grand in your pocket, buying these is practically a no-brainer.