SANWEAR Review: I tore apart my SANWEAR earbuds by SAN Sound. Here's the $12 worth of parts inside your $299 "Hyper Reality Audio" headphones.
I know this is a fresh account. I don't use Reddit — I've been neck-deep in SAN Sound's Discord and NFT ecosystem for the past 4 years. But I searched "sanwear reviews" recently and the only results are a handful of press previews from people who wore these things for 20 minutes at a booth at PAX. Nobody is telling you what happens after month two, or better yet, what's actually inside of them. So here I am.
I'll get to the earbuds, but you need the context first because it directly impacts the product you're being sold.
Who is SAN Sound?
SAN Sound started as a Web3/NFT music ecosystem project in 2022. They had a whitepaper promising a streaming platform, listen-to-earn tokens, governance, global events, VIP experiences, weekly art drops, privacy tech, and about 300+ other things. They sold NFTs (mint was free, but secondary marketplace was not) and charged people 0.4 to 5 ETH ($600-$8,000+ depending on market) to "soulbind" those NFTs, which was supposed to unlock this whole ecosystem. Hundreds of people paid in, myself included. I was one of their biggest supporters — financially and otherwise.
They delivered earbuds and a basic app + another NFT collection. That's it. Out of 300+ documented promises, maybe 3-4 were fulfilled. The streaming platform? Gone. The tokens? Gone. The events? Gone. The governance model? Gone. The weekly art drops? Gone. The merch? Gone. The original team members? Gone. The VIP benefits? Gone. So on. All of it, gone. They just quietly pivoted to "we're a headphone company now," edited their whitepaper (numerous times) on the same URL to cover their tracks (the Wayback Machine has the originals), and started gaslighting anyone in the Discord who brought up what they were promised.
This is who is asking you to spend hundreds of dollars on earbuds. Keep that in mind.
The earbuds: incredible sound that falls apart in weeks
I'll be honest about one thing: the audio quality out of the box is legitimately impressive. The frequency response is flat and transparent, the spatial imaging on the Gametypes is better than most gaming headsets I've used (Astro A50s, HD650s, Turtle Beach, HyperX, SteelSeries). David Leung, their engineer, is genuinely talented at tuning audio.
But that's the bait. Here's what actually happens when you live with SANWEAR:
The sound quality degrades within months because the components are the cheapest garbage China has to offer. The plastics are flimsy. The silicone tips are so cheap I literally got a rash in my ears from wearing them. I've gone through dozens of pairs (I was given a bunch of them, which is one of the few things they actually did deliver) — not because I wanted to, but because they keep dying or degrading. Left earbud randomly stops working after weeks. Right earbud died permanently numerous times. Connection drops randomly. Constant resets. I had pairs where the audio quality that blew me away in week one was noticeably worse by month three.
Compare that to my Astro A50s — lasted years, zero degradation. HD650s — legendary durability over many years. SANWEAR? You're rolling the dice on whether they'll last past the return window.
I took a pair apart. Here's what $299 buys you on the inside.
I cracked open a pair to see what's actually inside these things. What I found:
The main circuit board is stamped "XC301X_440_V41" — the XC301X is a low-cost Chinese Bluetooth audio chipset. This is the same category of chip you'll find in $20-$40 earbuds on AliExpress. It's a basic single/double-layer PCB with hand-labeled silkscreen markings (BAT, TX, RX, GND). For reference, premium earbuds at this price point use custom multi-layer boards with far better component integration. This is commodity hardware.
The driver is a small dynamic driver with a basic felt surround. To be fair, this is probably where most of the actual tuning work happens — David Leung's audio engineering skill is in how this driver is configured, not in the physical component quality. But the driver housing, the solder joints, the wiring — all of it is budget-grade. Red and black wires hand-soldered to the board. That's it.
Inside the earbud shell itself — thin injection-molded plastic, no acoustic dampening material, no sophisticated internal chamber design, not even fully colored internally. Just components dropped into a cheap plastic cavity. The battery is a tiny generic LiPo cell.
The bill of materials on this is probably $8-$12 per unit. The audio tuning recipe is genuinely clever, but it's running on hardware that would embarrass a $40 earbud. This is why the sound degrades — the components physically can't sustain the performance the tuning is designed for. It's like running high-performance software on a disposable burner phone.
The design is form-over-function nonsense
The triangular case looks cool in photos and is a nightmare to actually live with (I have users numerous different pairs daily for almost 4 years). It doesn't fit in your pocket. It doesn't sit right on a nightstand or desk. The earbuds themselves are oversized. Putting the earbuds back in the case is a bizarre circus feat.
And the LED lights.... Oh, the f'in LED lights. They never fully turn off. If you're in a dark room, the case glows like a molly induced raver nightlight. I literally have to bury the case under blankets to watch something in bed without it lighting up the whole room. Earbuds don't need LED lights. Nobody asked for this. Literally nobody.
Comfort is a serious problem
This isn't just me. COGconnected published a review of the Hardwires last week and said they could only wear them for 15-20 minutes before needing to take them out because of the suction pressure. The twist-and-lock mechanism creates this pressure seal that exhausts your ears. I've experienced this across every model. When they're sealed properly and the audio sounds great, your ears are paying for it. When they're not sealed, the audio suffers. There's no comfortable middle ground.
The companion app
It works for EQ and basic controls, but it's cluttered with blockchain nonsense that has no reason to exist in an audio-only companion app. Multiple reviewers have said the same thing. If you just want to adjust your earbuds, you have to navigate around crypto wallet features and NFT integration that nobody outside the Discord community asked for, because they were promised it (that promise never came true).
The pricing is delusional
- Gametypes: $299. The audio is worth it for maybe 8 weeks. Then you need a new pair. No.
- Quantum: $249. Same cheap build, shinier case, same degradation. No.
- Hardwire: $99. Closer to reasonable, but you still get 15-20 minutes of comfort before your ears give out.
These are $49-$79 earbuds with $249-$499 price tags. The audio engineering is doing all the heavy lifting, and even that doesn't hold up because the hardware it's built on is too cheap to sustain it. It's like putting a sports car engine in a body made of papier-mâché. Incredible for the first lap. Then it falls apart.
"But the reviews say they're great"
Yeah — from press people who wore them at a convention booth for a demo. They ran an entire campaign offering people free earbuds in return for a review, and a lot of the reviews are from community members who were promised a lot of things, in hopes that those things would come true if the earbuds took off. Of course they sound amazing for 20 minutes. That's never been the issue. The issue is what happens after the return window closes and you're stuck with degrading audio, dying earbuds, and a $300 triangular nightlight raving paperweight.
Ask yourself why there are almost no long-term user reviews anywhere online. It's because the community that bought in early (like me) got burned so badly by the company's broken promises that most people just walked away. The ones who stayed got gaslit in the Discord when they tried to speak up. I watched it happen. I lived it.
Bottom line: do not buy SANWEAR.
The audio technology is real. David Leung can tune a driver (as good as he can break promises - which is really good). That part I won't take away from him. But he has zero sense of product quality, the company uses the cheapest possible materials to maximize margins, the design prioritizes "looking cool" over being functional, and the organization behind it all has a documented track record of taking people's money, promising the world, delivering almost nothing, turning over their entire staff, and then pretending it never happened.
There are dozens of better options at every price point from companies that haven't screwed their own community. Sony, Sennheiser, JBL, even the mid-tier stuff from Anker — any of it will last longer, fit better, and cost less.
If anyone wants receipts — the archived whitepapers, the documented promises vs. delivery, the Discord screenshots of the founders gaslighting their own supporters — I have all of it. Happy to share.
TL;DR: SANWEAR earbuds sound incredible for the first few weeks maybe even months, then the cheap components degrade and they start failing. I've gone through dozens of pairs. I tore a pair apart — the internals are $8-$12 worth of commodity Chinese components, the same chipset found in $20 AliExpress earbuds. The design is impractical, the comfort is poor, and the prices are 4-5x what the build quality justifies. The company behind them originally promised 300+ deliverables to their NFT community, delivered 3-4, pocketed the money, quietly pivoted to "just a headphone company," and gaslights anyone who brings it up. Save your money. Buy literally anything else.