MULO Thunderstruck 700 review

MULO Thunderstruck 700 is a new entrant into the wireless headphone segment of the Indian consumer market. The Thunderstruck 700 is the company’s top-tier offering for those who love good bass in their music and has an IPX4 certification to go along.

Two of its closest competitors, the Xiaomi Mi Super Bass Wireless Headphones and boAt 900 Wireless V2, don’t offer sweat and splash resistance, which is what makes the Thunderstruck 700 different.

MULO Technologies is a relatively new company in the Indian audio space. However, its team consists of musicians, sound engineers, and designers who put their collective experience in recording studios into fine-tuning their product catalog.

Here’s how the MULO Thunderstruck 700 sound.

Price and availability

The MULO Thunderstruck 700 is priced at Rs 1,899 and is available exclusively on Amazon India. For comparison, the Mi Super Bass headphones retail for Rs 1,799 while the boAt 900 V2 is priced at Rs 1,499.

Look and feel

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MULO Thunderstruck 700 weighs just 100 grams and is extremely lightweight to carry around. The body is made mainly out of plastic with rubber support for the headband, while the foam earcups have a patterned texture. The earcups are removable and can be washed to rid them of false odor due to sweat.

The wireless headphones are specially designed for use during outdoor activities and commute. It has even received an IPX4 certification making it resistant to sweat and usual splashes of water. However, it’s still not recommended to take this to your pool-side listening sessions.

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The structural design of the headphones is a bit bare-bones, but it helps keep the weight minimal and increases portability. The earcups can be rotated to 180-degrees, which helps in better storing the headphones inside a bag when on the move. The ultra-portability of the Thunderstruck 700 makes it an excellent fit for accompanying you in your travels if you’re the adventurous kind.

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On the right earcup, there’s a one-button control that allows volume control, play/pause music, and even receives calls. The same button can also be used to change music tracks, all of this, without even taking the headphones off.

The buttons are plastic, just like the rest of the body which aren’t as tactile as you’d expect them to be. Given that the headphones are targeted towards the budget segment, don’t keep up your hopes as these are a pretty basic set of headphones that focus on the essentials of wireless music listening.

The ear muffs on the Thunderstruck 700 themselves are a bit smaller so it’s a bit uncomfortable if you have regular-sized ears. The ear flap known as Pinna doesn’t gel perfectly with the textured earcups when playing back bass-heavy tracks. The vibrations emitted from such tracks make it a bit uncomfortable while wearing the headphone.

One of the highlights about the Thunderstruck 700 is the removable and washable earcups. While removing the earcups is easy, putting it back on is easier said than done. There isn’t a mechanism in place which allows users to put the earcups back perfectly on the pair of cans. You will have to swivel and rotate the earcups pack on the pad which involves every bit of fiddling as you may imagine.

Overall, there’s nothing extraordinary about the design of the Mulo Thunderstruck 700 and being a budget wireless headphone, the essentials are every bit in focus here.

How does it sound?

Mulo Thunderstruck 700 features a 40mm speaker driver who has a loud-bass signature. So, users who love listening to bass music tracks will feel right at home using these wireless headphones.

The Thunderstruck 700 can manage highs just fine with loud and thumping bass. Even the vocals in music tracks are differentiable, which is surprisingly good considering its price.

Moreover, these wireless headphones do provide some amount of noise reduction at volumes over 80%. In our use, often we couldn’t make out the ambient noise while listening to music from them, which is surprisingly good.

The headphones use Bluetooth 5.0 to transmit music wirelessly, and in our use, we did not face any connectivity or sync issues. Due to the inclusion of this Bluetooth standard, users can enjoy listening to music on-the-go and be assured of a lag-free experience.

The Thunderstruck 700 provides good audio quality for its asking price, something that’s amiss from the budget wireless headphones category.

The headphones are fitted with a 300mAh Li-Po battery, which Mulo claims can provide up to 12 hours of playback time on a single charge. Note that it is with volume levels set to 80%. It also supports quick-charging, and we were able to charge these headphones in around 3 hours. That’s just a bit more from the claimed charging time of 2.5 hours.

Verdict

Coming from a budding brand, Mulo Thunderstruck 700 is a decent pair of headphones, something that is rarely seen in the audio space in India. We liked the headphone’s ability to handle high and low frequencies, and its thumping bass is tuned to amuse the bass heads.

The closest competitor we can think of for the Thunderstruck 700 is Xiaomi’s Mi Super Bass wireless headphones, which have better build quality, comfortable fit, voice assistant support, and up to 20 hours of battery life on a single charge. Also, its priced Rs 100 less than the Thunderstruck 700.

Overall, being a first-generation product, the Mulo Thunderstruck 700 gets the basics right. However, the compromises it makes in getting there could prove to be a bummer for some users. Right from the build quality of the headphones to the uncomfortable fit of textured muffs, we hope the Mulo addresses some of these issues with its next generation headphones.