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11mm, 12mm, and 14mm (ear tip diameter)

Sure, you can do a quick search query and find a lot of inexpensive true wireless earbuds, but it can be hard to tell which ones are worth your time. For under $30 USD the updated Dime 2 has a lot to offer, if you don’t mind making concessions. We spent a week with the Skullcandy Dime 2 to see how this set stacks up against the budget competition. Let’s see what you get for not much scratch, where it surprises, and where the bone head brand slips up.

Available in three colorways, our test set of Skullcandy Dime 2 is a matte True Black. Skullcandy also produces a grey cased set with light blue buds, and a black cased set with kelly green buds. Out of the box the low-profile 32g case of the Skullcandy Dime 2 looks easy to lose, but it has Tile app support (more on this in a bit).

Housing 6mm dynamic drivers, the Skullcandy buds come with three sets of silicone ear tips: 14mm, 12mm, and 11mm. The short-stemmed buds are easy to wear with the default 12mm. While the plastic feels a little cheap and the seams are rough—especially along the middle of the stem—each bud fits in my ears really well and the interior plastic is smooth. Fortunately, that rough seam doesn’t make contact with your ears, so it does not impede comfort. Honestly, Skullcandy has done what Marshall should have done with the ill-fitting and roughly finished Marshall Minor III.

The Dime 2 uses a single button on each bud. These buttons have the upshot of providing immediate tactile feedback so you have no doubt when you enter a command. With that said, the Dime 2 buttons are oddly stiff, requiring not just one finger, but also a thumb to hold the stem so you don’t jam the buds hard into your ears when pressing. The buttons work okay, but not as effortlessly as buttons along the top, or a squeezable stem might. Conceivably, the stiff buttons successfully counteract misfires when adjusting the buds.

Yes, you can work out with the Dime 2. With its IPX4 rating, the buds work just fine with sweat exposure. The buds do not have any stabilizers, therefore, much of this answer depends on your individual fit. I can exercise without losing the buds and minimal adjustments.

If you lose a bud, at least you can track its location with Tile, and the price makes it less daunting if something goes sideways and a bud somehow breaks. One missing feature is any kind of transparency mode, so if you want to talk to people while exercising, the Dime 2 isn’t the ideal choice. Its slightly exaggerated bass response might be a good pick for people who find extra bass motivates their routine.

The company’s budget constraints show when looking at the Skullcandy Dime 2 case and its microUSB connection, rather than the current, USB-C. It still charges, so at worst this is only annoying and not an impediment. The Dime 2 case has slots that expose the buttons on the buds, but it’s unclear why. Because the buds power off when slotted into the case, you can’t initiate Bluetooth pairing mode with the buds in the case. Basically you just get less protection against dust, debris, and bumps.

Otherwise, the case is extremely compact with both a magnetic and snap-on lid. The lid itself has very little flex. If one spot seems a bit weaker, the hinge looks easy to bust. Even so, the buds lock solidly into place with strong magnets, and Skullcandy includes the tiniest lanyard to connect to a keychain. The tool included with your phone to open the SIM card tray works pretty well for threading the lanyard, because it’s very small.

As an OS-agnostic app, you can download Tile for Android or Apple for free (though the app strongly pushes you to upgrade to paid) to keep location data on your compatible items. Once you register and give the app the rights to your location settings, it walks you through each step to track and identify the left and right earbuds. When you tap to find the buds, the buds will emit a whirring noise.

You can’t add the case, so if you lose the case when the buds aren’t in it Tile can’t locate it for you. If you already have a Tile account and use the system, it’s handy to have it in one app.

Because the Dime 2 controls aren’t customizable you’re stuck with the default settings. This is where the budget further reveals itself. It can also be easy to forget some of the commands. Besides volume and track skipping, the controls are the same on both buds, which is considerate for accessibility reasons. The Dime 2 supports mono listening with either earbud, at least.

The Dime 2 connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth 5.2. After setting the Dime 2 up, the buds maintain a stable connection over 10 meters with walls and doors in between. The buds are fast to pair with my last used device. I’ve only lost connection once, and the earbuds are great about automatically reconnecting.

You get your choice of the SBC and AAC codecs—no aptX here. At under $30 USD this isn’t surprising. For Apple users, the AAC codec is as good as it gets. Given that AAC and SBC don’t tend to prioritize low latency with Android, the Dime 2 might not be the best pick for streaming video for these users. For audio-only, it works fine with most applications, though if you want a better quality codec, this isn’t ideal for Android.

Connecting the Skullcandy Dime 2 theoretically should be as simple as popping the buds out and waiting to hear a voice saying “pairing” while the buds flash red and blue interchangeably. In reality, pairing the earbuds takes several attempts, and requires popping the earbuds out of the case and holding down the button on the stems (where the Skullcandy logo is) for four seconds to manually prompt pairing. It can take a while for my iPhone to find the Dime 2, and at first only the left bud connects, which means having to do the process again with the right one.

In our test of constant music playback peaking at 75dB(SPL), the Dime 2 battery lasted 3 hours, 3 minutes. If there’s a significant quibble to make with the Dime 2, the battery life is it. While most people don’t listen to anything for 3 hours straight, some of us do. Think about audiobooks, podcasts, and long work days wearing your buds in the office. I can easily drain the Dime 2 during one session from a full charge. Skullcandy doesn’t give you a quick charge to top up the battery either. It takes an hour to fully recharge the buds. This battery life is workable if you only wear buds for a short workout or commute.

Skullcandy suggests there are 8.5 hours of juice in the case. Depending on the volume of your playback, it might be difficult to reach that figure. The lack of quick charge, additionally, means your buds could spend a lot of time charging and not playing. It takes 5 hours for the case to fully charge from empty, at which point the case’s LED changes from red to green.

The Skullcandy Dime 2 relies entirely on isolation to block noise. It does this with limited effectiveness, blocking sounds above 1kHz only. It still muffles incidental noise like crashing plates. Because the Dime 2 is pretty basic, there’s no active noise cancelling to tackle low repeating droning sounds. You don’t get transparency mode for when you want to hear the environment either.

Skullcandy proves you don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars to get a good frequency response. The Dime 2 has a distinctly consumer-oriented curve, with some exaggeration in the lows, and peaks above our target around 5kHz to 7kHz by over 5dB. This treble exaggeration alongside bass and sub-bass receiving 3dB to 5dB in over-emphasis can lead to slightly too quiet sounding mids. Sounds above 8kHz receive too little volume, meaning the Dime 2 reproduces those harmonic overtones more quietly than our ideal.

Listening to Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time) by Elton John sounds, broadly speaking, good. The kick drum and bass guitar play too loudly (for example at 00:30 when the bass comes in is downright distracting) compared particularly with the piano once the full instrumentation begins. The volume of the acoustic rhythm guitar edges towards a little loud, but not unpleasantly so. John’s double-tracked lead vocals sound clear, with a good amount of detail. In comparison, the Master & Dynamic MW07 Go plays John’s vocals and acoustic guitar slightly quieter and reproduces the percussive elements of strummed guitar strings and initial hits of the cymbals with more emphasis than the Dime 2. Both have some bass emphasis.

The song One Less Set of Footsteps by Jim Croce sounds quite nice, except for the slightly boosted sibilance (s sounds) due to that 5kHz to 7kHz over-emphasis. Otherwise, that extra bass volume on the Dime 2 adds some low-end oomph to a mainly trebly track.

Certainly, pricier earbuds exist that sound objectively worse, and a bit of extra low-end oomph is somewhat down to personal taste within reason. The Dime 2 toes that line: in the sub-bass, it’s too loud but around 100Hz, the exaggeration isn’t overwhelming. Overall, the frequency curve is one of these earbuds’ strengths.

In ideal circumstances, the Skullcandy Dime 2 microphone sounds reasonably good, especially at this price point. Where the dual mics stumble is with the introduction of environmental noise. Clatter from your office will be captured by the mics, though your voice ought to come through still. Once you try using the Dime 2 on the street, or outside when it’s windy, the mics will start to clip and lose portions of what you say. If you only occasionally need to use buds for phone calls indoors, it sounds decent.

With our Dime 2 paired to an iPhone, the earbuds can’t play the caller’s voice through the headset. Instead, the iPhone delivers audio to the phone’s speaker, rather than the earbuds. What results is a scramble to turn off Bluetooth or to place the buds in the case before answering.

It doesn’t make a difference whether the Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Call Audio Routing is set to “Bluetooth Headset” or to “Automatic”: we still experience the same issue. After re-syncing the earbuds, resetting the earbuds, “forgetting” them from our iPhone’s device settings, and ensuring they’re fully charged, the issue persists. Weirdly, when making a call from the iPhone (as opposed to answering), the buds work just fine. It also works just fine from an Android device, whether initiating or receiving a call.

Unfortunately, the Skullcandy Dime 2 doesn’t have any app to look to for updates to fix such problems. We reached out to the Skullcandy team and it doesn’t appear to be a known, widespread issue. Keep this inconsistent performance in mind depending on your device.

For under $30 USD you can’t knock the Dime 2 too hard. It fits more comfortably than some pricier competition, for one thing. The case is compact, though the brief battery life and lack of quick charging impede its usefulness. These buds are definitely meant as a straightforward music package, and for that purpose, they perform, but they’re a little rough around the edges.

You don’t get the frills of mappable button commands, and the buttons themselves are stiff. This one is not for you if you take a lot of phone calls, because the mic is mediocre and works unreliably, particularly with iPhones. Skullcandy doesn’t provide additional app support for updates (besides Tile if you lose it), but you do get mono listening and an IPX4 rating.

With the low price, it’s a low-risk investment. The Dime 2 is a decent set of backup buds for those times when you don’t want to risk your more upscale buds. If it weren’t for the lackluster battery life, I’d say everyone should have a pair as a spare for music.

Sometimes it’s worth saving a few bucks; this is not one of those times. The original Skullcandy Dime seriously rolls off the midrange and bass. Unless you only listen to podcasts, that frequency response difference alone is reason to spend the extra $10 USD for the newer, Dime 2.

At about $20 USD, the JLab GO Air POP pushes the price-to-features ratio to the limit. Surprisingly, it has a good sound, if a little light on the low end. The GO Air POP has an IPX4 rating like the Dime 2. If your main concern is phone calls, it’s probably not the best pick. The GO Air POP has an incredible 11 hours, 4 minutes of battery life. This completely trounces the Dime 2 battery life.

In the land of budget options, consider the Anker Soundcore Life A1. For sizeable doses of bass, the A1 delivers. You still retain some luxuries like a very nice IPX7 rating, which you don’t find on even some of the most pricey true wireless buds. Anker gave the Soundcore Life A1 wireless charging compatibility and an impressive 8 hours, 23 minutes of battery life on a single charge. Still, it’s worth noting that while the A1 sells in the neighborhood of $50 USD, that’s nearly double the price of the Dime 2.

Nope, the Dime 2 does not work with the Skullcandy app, so controls and firmware are not able to customize or update. It does use Tile for tracking the earbuds.

Skullcandy claims the Dime 2 is better for the environment, but besides recyclable packaging, it’s not clear how the Dime 2 is better for the environment than other true wireless earbuds with batteries.