With the Meridian EQ set to ‘natural’ (who doesn’t want their music to sound natural, after all?) and a Qobuz-derived 24bit/88.2kHz file of A Tribe Called Quest’s We The People…playing, there’s more than enough sonic talent on display to make the HBS-FN7 a decently engrossing listen. Granted, while I did grow more accustomed to the quirks of the touch sensors and the expected amount of time needed for a touch to register, it still made for an imperfect system. And even though music is supposed to stop playing when you remove the earbuds, I never found this to be a guarantee. When placed into the charging case – and only when said case is connected to a power outlet – the FN6 earbuds are subjected to a 10-minute UV light cleaning process that supposedly eliminates 99.9% of bacteria. Don’t expect a car-wash level cleanse, but it is reassuring to know the FN6 lead a much cleaner lifestyle than most earbuds – particularly at a time when hygiene is at the forefront of everyone’s minds.

The one area the LG needed to improve was its audio reproduction – and with Meridian's help it absolutely did. While previous versions of LG’s Tone earbuds had muddied sound, harsh trebles and a severe case of sibilance, the FP8 now have a more lively sound that really focuses on accentuating the mids and lows with better overall balance. Speaking of conversations, call quality is another soft spot for the FP8. Friends and family we spoke to said we sounded echo-y and less crisp compared to other earbuds, but said we came in louder than traditional speaker phone. The result makes us leery about using these as your go-to pair for business calls and are probably best suited for short phone calls when possible. How they’ll hold up to higher decibel sounds like an airplane engine remains to be tested – another unfortunate downside of the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic – but so far we’ve been relatively impressed with the FP8’s noise cancellation chops next to our overworked air conditioner – the next best environment for a noise cancelling test. In terms of design, the LG Tone FP8 borrows a few pointers from the Apple AirPods Pro. Both sets of buds use silicone eartips that fit snugly into the ear canal by way of an ear-conforming shell that extends out to a small nub that runs outside the ear. Aesthetically there are a lot of similarities – but not enough to make them exact replicas of one another. According to LG, you can expect 10 hours per charge in the buds and around 24 hours total for the case with ANC off. When it’s on, we got around 6-ish hours of battery life and 18 with the case, which feels like the going average for noise cancelling earbuds.

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Noise-cancellation is a success of the slightly qualified kind, too. Set to ‘high’ there’s an unarguable reduction in external sound, though nothing like as comprehensive as, say, Sony’s WF-1000XM4 can achieve, let alone Bose’s spookily effective QuietComfort Earbuds. Set it to ‘low’ and the effect on ambient sound is negligible. But call quality is good – incoming callers sound crisp and complete, while we have no complaints from people in receipt of our phone calls either. Verdict You can also switch between ‘low’ and ‘high’ noise-cancellation here, as well as activate ‘find my earbuds’. This last feature puts a strident chirp through the ‘buds if you’ve temporarily mislaid them. So take your time to really understand the sort of product you’re looking for. Think about the sort of features that you need. Which ones are “nice-to-have” and which ones are absolutely critical. If you’re looking for a cheap option then don’t even consider the products that are all signing all dancing because you’ll be paying for features that you don’t need. Choose your retailer wisely

The EQ is where you’re likely to invest most of your time, but be warned, it’s quite more technical than others we’ve tested. Instead of keeping things simple by categorizing the different frequencies (lows, mids, highs), this EQ has you adjusting what look like decibel levels, which, unless you’re an audio expert, requires a steeper learning curve. You can skip the entire process of creating your own music profile by selecting from the four available presets: Immersive, Natural, Bass Boost, and Treble Boost.Maybe I’ve become too accustomed to assuming that every pair of true wireless arriving in a pill-shaped charging case, but the FN6’s housing stands out because of that. Wireless connectivity here is via Bluetooth 5.0 with SBC and AAC codec compatibility. That’s fine for handling even the biggest high-resolution audio files from any of the streaming services that offer them, but nevertheless, it’s not quite at the cutting edge. What I found to be a lot more impressive was the FN6’s ambient sound mode. Going for a cycle with the ambient mode switched on, I found the FN6 reached the perfect balance of feeding me just enough of my music that I wasn’t missing out, whilst letting in plenty of sound from the surroundings. On a busy London street, these are the earbuds you’d want. Battery – plenty to get you through the day

Bass sounds (of which there are plenty here) are textured and carefully hefty, with more than enough detail available to make the difference between actual instruments and machine-derived sounds obvious. There’s plenty of control on display, too, so the tune rumbles forward at the correct sort of pace – there’s no overhang and, as a consequence, the tempo is convincing. According to LG, the case kills about 99.9% of bacteria on the earbuds between uses – which is kind of comforting if someone in your house, say a girlfriend, likes to borrow your earbuds without telling you and doesn’t ever clean them. The Tone Free app offers you the opportunity to rearrange the touch-surface settings if you fancy. It’s also where you’ll find a selection of Merdian’s EQ settings (‘bass boost’, ‘treble boost’‘natural’ and ‘immersive’, none of which need much explanation) plus the place to store a couple of your own.For us, the buds were perfectly sized, they fit in the ear snugly and created a perfect passive seal without any effort at all. In case you need a larger or smaller eartip, LG includes both in the box, but we’d wager most folks should be fine with the medium pair that comes attached. To make the digital assistant available, you’ll have to go into the Touchpad settings in the companion app and select ‘Voice Command’ on either the left or right earbud, or both. When enabling the feature on my Android smartphone, I was met with responsive and speedy results. The results were practically the same on macOS with Siri pulling up Apple Music and calendar requests with ease. LG Tone Free review: App and special features Once the audio information is on board, it’s dealt with by a pair of 6mm full-range neodymium drivers, the tuning of which has had significant input from British hi-fi pioneer Meridian. It’s not the first product on which these companies have collaborated, but it nevertheless brings quite a bit of audio credibility to the HBS-FN7 proposition. For its audio division, LG gone to great lengths to highlight its collaboration with long-time hardware manufacturer, Meridian Audio, and it’s not hard to see (or hear) why.