Introduction

Campfire Audio has graced the TechPowerUp audience on a few different occasions now, especially when it comes to its various wired in-ear monitors that have contributed to a cult following the brand has achieved since its inception in 2015. The Portland, Oregon-based IEM brand has made and sold a wide range of IEMs ranging from the $199 single BA Satsuma all the way up to the $3375 triple DD Trifecta. Indeed, it’s latest trio of releases comprises of a limited edition colorway for the Trifecta—already sold out—in addition to new revisions of its two popular IEMs in the form of the Andromeda and Solaris (review coming soon). Needless to say then that when I received word of a true wireless stereo set of in-ear monitors from Campfire Audio, I was quite eager to see what an established IEM brand could do in the TWS market.

The Campfire Audio Orbit is certainly a unique looking set of TWS earphones based on what’s on the market. It does not aim to simply be yet another product that looks like the Apple AirPods and neither does it wish to be seen as a Samsung/Sony-style IEM wannabe. Instead, the Orbit has shells which clearly remind me of the Campfire Audio house design we’ve seen on its various wired IEMs. It took me no time to see this was the brand’s product, and this is great product awareness already. The color scheme is also eye-catching owing to the use of rarely seen colors which I suppose is a breath of fresh air too in a world of black and white. The Orbit uses a single dynamic driver and is supported by a first-party mobile app so there is a lot to see here with relatively high expectations placed upon it already. Let’s thank Campfire Audio for providing a review sample to TechPowerUp as we begin with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Packaging and Accessories

The Campfire Audio Orbit ships in a relatively tiny package that still manages to follow the same unboxing experience as I’ve had with the Satsuma, Honeydew, Mammoth, and Holocene, among other such Campfire Audio wired IEMs. There is an outer sleeve that uses the same two colors that are used on the IEMs and case itself with a tan outer section and a light green inlay which has the company logo and product name on the front along with a render of the TWS earphones. A label on the side has certification info as well as rated battery capacities with another confirming these are Bluetooth wireless earphones, in addition to having QR codes leading you to the product page and the online user manual found here. A gold-colored seal on the back can be peeled off to gain access to the blue-colored inner cardboard box with gold specks to add more flair. The logo makes another showing here with mountain peaks to remind you of the company’s roots in the US Pacific north-west. Open the box to be greeted by its slogan and the TWS case right away with other accessories underneath or inside a separate cardboard box.

Knowing these TWS earphones come with a set of ear tips pre-installed, I removed them for a group photo of the ear tips you get with the Campfire Audio Orbit in the form of three each pairs of silicone and foam tips in sizes S/M/L. The silicone tips use an off-white color that is different looking from the norm already and is one of the multiple ways the Orbit makes a visual statement even before we get to the audio part. This is a decent set of ear tips provided thus and be sure to try them out to help achieve that proper seal and fit which is crucial with IEMs. For those wanting a printed manual, we get one of those in the box too along with the expected short USB Type-C to Type-C charging cable and a set of branded pin badges.

Closer Look

The case is instrumental to true wireless earphones, providing storage and charging capability, and the one that ships with the Campfire Audio Orbit is on the smaller side of average. It’s easily pocketable thus and I also appreciated the design language continuing here with facets all around. The colors used are also in line with what we expected to see in the form of two shades of tan on the ABS plastic construction. The brand logo makes another appearance here with certification logos and the brand slogan on the back. The hinge is flush with the case and there are no sharp corners to snag in your pocket. There is a Type-C port on the bottom for charging with an indicator LED alongside—charging time is just an hour wired, although it also supports Qi wireless charging! Pop open the lid to see the light green color used inside and the IEMs neatly placed in their individual compartments. The smaller case size and the vertical orientation means that taking the Orbit IEMs out of the case is more frustrating that I wanted to experience, I had to dig each side out with my fingers from a sideways angle to get enough grip. The space in the middle hosts the charging indicator LEDs for the IEMs themselves in increments of 25%. You can also press the shallow button underneath to get a current battery level indicator as well as hold it down to reset the Orbit entirely. The case has a 1 Wh (270 mAh over 3.7 V) rated battery capacity with the IEMs themselves having a 180 mWh (50 mAh/3.6 V) battery inside. This means the case can provide ~2.5 charge cycles to the earphones.

The Campfire Audio Orbit are a set of two wireless in-ear monitors that certainly look and feel similar to the other wired IEMs I’ve reviewed from the brand, except of course there is no cable connector here. The shells are composed of ABS plastic again to match the case and get the same color scheme too, which can be divisive but is certainly unique. Be sure to peel off the plastic sheets on the underside that prevent the magnetic connections to charge these IEMs in the case and then you will notice how these are fairly tiny even compared to other TWS earphones. The face plate, if you will, has the truncated Campfire Audio logo as a glossy insert along with a large vent at the top for the dynamic driver inside and another placed closer to your mouth for the microphone to pick up your voice. The same Campfire Audio faceted design makes its way here too and the overall design is ergonomic to better fit in your ears. There is L/R branding on the inside to help identify the left and right channels, respectively. Note the two magnetic pins here and a front vent for the dynamic driver to be used along with the larger rear vent we saw before. A stainless steel spout-style nozzle is fitted onto the shells that is angled in slightly and is ~5.2 mm in diameter at the end, where there are cutouts in the nozzle to help prevent contaminants from entering the acoustic chamber. The shells are also IPX5 rated, so they are fine to use during a workout or while caught in the rain.

The curved nozzle and the presence of a small notch towards the end means the earbud tips have a natural end point when inserted into the nozzle and also remain in place. This is also beneficial to prevent earbud tips from coming loose and remaining in the ear canals when removing the IEMs! Seen above are the two types of included earbud tips in size M which come with the Campfire Audio Orbit. As I mentioned before, try out the different sizes and types to see what works best for you and note that there is no guarantee both your ears will use the same size earbud tips either. Once you have settled in on your desired earbud tips, the next step is to simply insert these in the ears.

Fit, User Experience, and Audio Performance

Here we see the right side of the Campfire Audio Orbit placed in an anthropomorphic pinna that does well in showing my own experience with these. I have average-sized ears and found the pre-installed size M silicone tips to work best. The relatively small shell size means those with smaller ear conchas will find these to be a good fit. This is why getting the correct tips to seal well is paramount for everyone else. There is enough wiggle room to adjust the buds section of these IEMs to also orient the vent towards your mouth for better voice pickup too, although the form factor of these IEMs means it’s still not going to be the best experience in that regard. The units weigh ~5 g each making them not physically fatiguing at all, and of course there are no wires to be concerned about, given the TWS concept. Battery life is rated for 8.5 hours off a single charge which is seemingly at 80% volume, although I will say 80% volume here was on the louder side for me and my typical 60-70% volume netted me 9 hours per charge more often than not. Total use time with the case is closer to 30 hours in my experience, although the earphones take ~60-70 min to charge so you need to account for this break. I do wish the case provided more charge cycles but it is relatively small so the capacity is understandable. As for driver composition, the Orbit uses a single dynamic driver per side although the driver composition is closer to what is found in decent wired IEMs courtesy the use of a 10 mm LCP diaphragm.

We get Bluetooth 5.2 support for the Orbit in addition to codec compatibility in the form of SBC, AAC, and aptX. It would have been nice to see newer codecs on board, especially given aptX HD is a few years old already, let alone something else like aptX Adaptive or even LDAC/LHDC. I had no problem getting the set to pair with my phone, laptop, and PC alike. There is also a first-party mobile app called simple Campfire Audio itself and it is available on both Android and iOS. This is a brand new app that currently only supports the Orbit given the product is also Campfire Audio’s first wireless set, and unfortunately this is where I had a lot of issues with random disconnects and app crashes. I waited for multiple months to see if the company would issue any fixes or firmware updates only to be told there was no current plan to do so. When it works, you have a logically placed menu and home page as seen above. This includes real time battery levels for the individual units, a 7-band EQ and ability to customize touch controls. Here too things could be better such as having actual dB numbers for the EQ menu, explaining what the various presets do, and so on. Unfortunately I had barely enough time at any given session to get the app to do what I wanted to, and any crash meant all progress was gone anyway since the settings are not saved on board the earphones. I even got a second set of the Orbit to see if perhaps the original was faulty and it was clear the issue was with the app and not the hardware itself that works fine. For what it’s worth, I will mention that the integrated microphones work fine enough for online calls and such but are pretty weak and further away from “high-quality” compared even to a few other TWS earphones—especially the ones with a stem pointing towards your mouth—than I would have liked. These picked up environmental noise quite a lot and tamed my voice significantly too.

Testing was done similar to all other TWS earphones as seen here. Seen above is the measured frequency response for both channels of the Campfire Audio Orbit, which can be inspected further here if interested. I’ll first give props to Campfire Audio for the excellent channel matching achieved here, and the second sample tested measured identically too so sample variation seems minimal as well. Perhaps there is some DSP-based tonality ongoing here, and this may also be why I was hoping to see a firmware update because the stock tonality with the Orbit as of the date of this review is unique but not well executed in my opinion. You could classify this sound signature as V-shaped perhaps, although where we see recessed mids followed by a rise is now pushed out so far into the upper mids/lower treble to where the Orbit doesn’t have a clearly defined tonality. If all you care about is bass then you have plenty of it here courtesy a 16 dB rise starting from 2500 Hz, which feels weird to even type. In practice, I feel like an EQ filter was missed out here perhaps since there is no ear gain at all and I wanted to use the app to fix this. Indeed, when I did get it to my preference using the onboard equalizer, the Orbit was among the best sounding TWS sets at any price point I have heard. The app crashes made it all the more frustrating to where I ended up then using Equalizer APO on my laptop, as well as Poweramp Equalizer on my phone to tame the bass shelf from ~300 Hz going down, level out the lower mids to an extent, and add back some ear gain.

The reason I went through these efforts is because the driver chosen here is one of the better ones I’ve heard in IEMs as a whole, be it wired or wireless. It has good punch for a wireless set and natural timbre with a more amenable tuning too. The bass quantity is plenty for me to begin with and now it is no longer muddy or boomy compared to the stock tonality that is all over the place here. I also get lower mids back to allow for male vocals to be forward-facing while retaining instrument separation. However, EQ wasn’t going to change the part where the soundstage came off cramped. The out-of-box experience is also worse for female vocals wherein they barely make any impressions owing to the recessed upper mids and lack of ear gain, so this is the biggest improvement with EQ in my opinion. Likewise, the mid-treble elevation relative to the lower energy before and after makes for weirdly bright and shouty response in a very narrow range. String instruments and piano keys felt like they were being played next to my ear whereas I also had vocal echoes coming up in a highly unnatural manner. Overall, it’s really hard to describe the stock sound from the Orbit except to say it’s bass and then nothing I’ve heard before thereafter.

For context, I have above a few other TWS sets in the price range the Campfire Audio Orbit goes for, and higher too. This includes the $350 final ZE8000 that I am currently testing too which has its own tonality issues, and reminds me of the Orbit taken to 11 owing to an even better driver with excellent technical performance but lacking on ear gain one more time. The ZE8000 is more expensive than the Orbit but gives you more features including ANC and more codec compatibility too. Then there’s the $300 HIFIMAN TWS800 which is extremely large (for TWS sets) and goes with a high impedance driver and included amplifier to put forth a V-shaped tuning that feels more normal. Fit aside, I do think the TWS800 gives you better value too even without any app of its own. But really the issue here is the Orbit has basic tuning issues and an app that is frustrating to use, and so there is not a good enough reason to go for this over something much less expensive such as the $80 MOONDROP Sparks that offers nice tuning with an okay driver. This is all the more easier to justify once you realize the Campfire Audio Orbit costs $249 from the Campfire Audio store as well as authorized retailers and the value proposition gets worse outside the USA—£249 (inc. VAT) in the UK from HiFiHeadphones, for example. It’s not going to win a recommendation from me in the current state of the IEM’s tuning and the stability issues of the app, and knowing that there was no real answer to these issues in the past few months since release also makes it worse.