30 second review
The Adidas FWD-02 Sport are true wireless earphones that are firmly aimed at runners, promising a secure, sweat- and weather-resistant design, powerful sound, and the kind of battery life that should be right for you. hour.
Wireless earphones tick all those boxes for us, and while you can certainly find a slightly more versatile sound profile in earphones from the likes of Bose, Jabra and JBL, the FWD-02 holds its own in terms of power, and so does Adidas. offers the possibility to customize this sound profile.
The FWD-02 Sport offers good features for the price, but it lacks active noise cancellation, which you can find in competing racing headsets at the moment. That said, if you're looking for a distinctive set of earphones that stay put and sound great overall, then that's what the FWD-02 offers.
Adidas FWD-02 Sport price and release date
- Available now
- $170 / £139,99 / A$270
The Adidas FWD-02 Sport was released in February 2022 priced at €170 / £139.99 / AU$270.
This puts them in the price range of other truly wireless sports earphones, such as the Bose Sports, Jabra Elite 4 Active, and JBL Reflect Flow Pro earphones.
Design and features
- silicone wing tips
- IPX5 water resistance
- Touch controls
To make sure the FWD-02 Sport is ready to stay in your ears, Adidas opted for a wingtip style design here. These silicone tips are removable, with four extra sets of tips in the box that should ensure they fit comfortably inside your ears. We tried a few pairs, and best of all, the spikes didn't feel itchy to wear or slip during longer workouts (even when things got a little sweaty).
Adidas also uses silicone tips to achieve a good sound seal and again there are four sets in total to ensure you can achieve the optimal fit.
The buds themselves feel relatively light on the ears. They're not the lightest buds you can get at this price, but they certainly weren't heavy either. There's a nice grippy finish to the outer surface of the earphones and they look quite inconspicuous.
Adidas slapped them with an IPX5 water-resistance rating, making them technically capable of withstanding low-jet water spray. This actually makes them capable of withstanding sweat and light rain, but there are sports earphones on the market with higher IP ratings that offer better protection against water and sweat.
Touch controls on the outside of the headphones can be used to manage calls and play/pause audio, with a double tap to skip tracks and a triple tap to go back.
In the Adidas headphones companion app, you can disable these touch controls and also adjust what they control; for example, you can set them to activate awareness mode or launch the Adidas Running app so you can hear your progress during runs. There's also a Spotify control mode and the option to control your default voice assistant as well.
Using these controls can be a bit confusing. They are much more suitable for workouts when you have the option to stop and play them once, twice or three times. However, if you're in a fast race, using the controls reliably can be tricky - we had to constantly stop because we weren't successful on the first or second try.
The Adidas earphones app, available for Android and iOS, offers a few extra features besides adjusting touch control settings. You can use the equalizer to adjust the sound of your headphones, see the music playing on your device, check the battery status of each headphone, and also adjust the recognition mode function. It's a simple app, but it's a reliable app and it allows you to tailor the FWD-02 Sport to your specific needs.
When the earbuds aren't in use, you can place them in the charging case, which has the same grip texture as the earbuds, as well as a softer material on the lid. The cover is held in place magnetically, which means it can pop off when you open the case.
Inside, the earbuds latch securely and there's a single button with some LED lights letting you know when they're in pairing mode. On the outside, there's a battery status indicator just above the USB-C charging port. The case also comes with an IPX4 rating, which means it's weather resistant; it's good to see that the buttons and case provide some protection from the elements.
audio performance
- 6mm drivers
- Powerful audio performance
- Mids may sound retarded
True wireless sports earphones at this price can deliver excellent audio performance; Jabra Elite 4 Active and JBL Reflect Flow Pro are just a few similarly priced options that can give you that. The Adidas FWD-02 Sport can certainly compete with these rivals on this front.
The 6mm drivers boost audio performance and provide a fairly typical frequency response range of 20Hz to 20kHz, which is well within the range of human hearing, although some headphones extend further down for bass sound than they hit the chest.
The FWD-02 Sport produces a loud, punchy sound that definitely veers more towards the bass side, though it never felt overwhelming in our tests. The sound is nice and punchy, although the mids are a bit muffled and the highs a bit harsh when we crank up the volume. That doesn't spoil the overall sound of these buttons, but if you're expecting a crisp, detailed sound, you might want to look elsewhere.
Adidas' new in-ear headphones fall firmly into the category of headphones that prioritize power and bass over a balanced sound profile, but still offer solid sound overall that lends itself well to more music, fast and rich in bass. They also work well for listening to podcasts.
Adidas also lets you adjust the EQ settings, giving you editable preset profiles like rock, pop, hip hop, electronic drive, and vocal. There's also a fully adjustable custom mode, and they're all pretty good at getting the sound to best suit the genre of music you're listening to.
There's no active noise cancellation here, but Adidas does offer an awareness mode to bring the outside world even closer. From the companion app, you can adjust how much of that sound is let in, though we've found that if you're listening at a high volume, the awareness mode isn't all that good at letting you hear your surroundings.
The FWD-02 Sport contains two microphones on each button and a remote control to help you manage phone calls. We'd say call quality is generally good, although the buds struggle in windy conditions. If you're using them indoors for things like video calls, they're more than up to the task.
Battery duration
- Six hours of headphones
- 19 hours from the charging case
- Listening at a high volume can decrease battery life
The FWD-02 provides six hours of listening time on a single charge, and with a fully charged case you'll get an additional 19 hours. So that's 25 hours in total.
In our tests, one hour of running the FWD-02 at a fairly high volume caused the battery to drop by 20%. That would suggest the onboard battery life is closer to five hours.
If you compare that to Adidas's (albeit more expensive) ZNE 01 ANC buttons, these offer 4.5 hours on a single charge. The non-ANC version of the ZNE 01 shoots sees that figure drop to five hours. Therefore, in Adidas' line of headphones, the FWD-02 Sport offers the longest battery life.
Compared to similarly priced sports earphones, the Jabra Elite 4 Active offers up to seven hours of reduction on a single charge and the JBL Reflect Flow Pro racks up between eight and 10 hours.
It's not the best battery life you'll find for this price, but it's not bad. We'd say it's good for a week of listening, especially when you factor in fast-charging support, which gives you an hour of battery life on a 15-minute charge.
Should I buy the Adidas FWD-02 Sport?
