Skullcandy Rail ANC | Booming Bass, but not Perfect
Amazon links in this article are affiliate links. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Quick Summary
(Note, the Rail ANC is different in both drivers (and the addition of noise cancellation) compared to the older Rail.)
The Skullcandy Rail ANC is the best bass heavy pair of earbuds I own. They have legitimate sub-bass rumble without being muffled. The touch controls are customizable, the battery is decent, and they even have ANC.
But they're not perfect. The ANC is quite weak and the software is a bloated mess.
Connectivity, Battery Life, and Case
The Rail ANC uses Bluetooth 5.2 with multi-point. It can connect to two devices at once, but only plays audio from one at a time.
Battery Life
ANC off: 10 hours earbuds + 28 hours case = 38 hours total.
ANC on: 7 hours earbuds + 20 hours case = 27 hours total.
Fast charge: 10 min = 2 hours playtime.
I was able to fully charge my Rail ANC earbuds and the case in about an hour and a half with my fast charger.
When you open the case, the case and earbuds will light up colors. Blue is to show they’re done charging and red means they’re not done yet.
This case comes with a very strange charging cable. It's USB-A to C. But the type-A side doesn't have the shielding over it. Ultimately it functions the same as any other USB-A cable, and you can use whatever other cable you want as long as one side is Type-C.
One issue I have with the case is sometimes the earbuds stay on while in the case. Randomly they might even wake up and connect to my phone or PC without me doing anything. Very irritating bug.
Controls
Default controls.
My preferred controls.
The touch sensitive area is on the logo. It's extremely easy to accidentally activate these when putting them on, taking them off or readjusting.
I've been setting one tap on both buds to do nothing which helps a lot.
Like all of the other earbuds I've reviewed so far, tapping and holding will only raise or lower the volume notch by one level if you set that as a shortcut. This is separate from system volume. Holding it longer will just transition into pairing mode.
Audio Quality
Audio measurements taken with my miniDSP EARS (not industry standard)
The Rail ANC uses 12 mm dynamic drivers with a frequency response range of 20 Hz - 20 kHz.
With the stock tuning (which is just "music" in the app), the Rail ANC is mostly balanced, but with a clear emphasis on the bass. And this reaches deep into the sub-bass.
They’re not the absolute clearest in terms of detail - for example the Method 360 is definitely more revealing. However, it's a smooth, mostly natural sound, with a closed in soundstage. The treble isn't jarring and doesn't distort easily.
The real strength is when you increase the bass, either manually, or with the bass boost preset.
These aren't using any haptics like the Crusher series, it's just the drivers themselves pushing out real power and boom. If you want it to sound like an earthquake, you can do that.
Absolutely Bass Arena approved.
The only real weakness I have with the sound is even when maxed out, these don’t get super loud.
ANC
The active noise cancellation on these is very weak. It's not quite as bad as the Crusher ANC 2, but outside of the white noise that these generate, you'll barely notice these blocking out anything.
Microphone Audio Quality
The Rail ANC’s microphone isn’t great, but it’s par for the course for wireless earbuds. The strong background noise cancellation results in isolated vocals, but also a heavily processed sound that lacks clarity.
Skull-IQ App
The Skull-IQ App is one of the most bloated pieces of software I've ever used in my life. It does all the basic features right, but it has a ton of unnecessary "features" shoved in like Spotify tap and taking photos.
As for what it does well, you can change the equalization, though you only get one custom EQ. You can also change the controls. Make sure you use the software shortcuts to max out the volume on the earbuds. You can get rid of the shortcut later, but without doing that, these won't be very loud.
They could have just left the app at that.
Most of these tiles are pretty useless, and some are just information blurbs or straight advertisements.
There's no way to turn off or turn down the audio prompts such as ANC on, connected, voice control on which are extremely loud.
Voice Control turns itself on every single time you open the app - which makes me never want to open it.
Comfort and Build Quality
These are all plastic except for the small magnetic charging point on the bottom. They're IPX4 for a small amount of sweat and water resistance.
The Rail ANC comes with 3 sizes of eartips. I use the largest. They're very soft and mold to the shape of the ear canal well. When you first put them in, they're super comfortable.
The catch is something about the type of plastic they use makes these very slippery.
These will start to slip out after prolonged use. Since there's no hook or wing, you can't lock these in place either. I do manual labor with these, and I have to constantly readjust them as soon as I start to sweat.
So these can work for workouts, but they won't be that reliable. I'm actually going to check out the Skullcandy Sesh ANC to see if those are better for that use. I give these a B in both build and comfort.
Verdict
The Skullcandy Rail ANC is the best bass focused earbuds I've used so far.
If you're looking for massive bass, I recommend these. They've got some bugs and the ANC and software sucks, but if you want bass over everything else, get these.
