Worried that your child may suffer from noise-induced hearing loss from using headphones? The myFirst CareBuds true wireless earbuds tackles this issue head-on with a volume limiter feature. It also has an automatic transparency mode to ensure your child remains aware of his or her surroundings. While these features work as advertised, the rest of the earbuds are middling, at best.

The myFirst CareBuds come in four youthful colours. They look attractive enough, though the all-plastic build do feel a bit cheap. These earbuds are IPX4 water resistant, and will survive light rain, but not a dip in the pool. You can control media playback, and accept/reject calls by tapping either earbud. Press and hold a earbud to toggle between noise cancellation and transparency mode. A nice touch: The earbuds' voice prompts appear to be voiced by a child. Six different sizes of eartips are included, so you should be able to find the best fit for your kids' ears. I ended up using the biggest pair of eartips myself. Besides the USB-C charging cable, myFirst also bundles a lanyard that attaches to the case.

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The main selling point of the CareBuds is the volume limiter that caps these earbuds to 85 decibels. Hence, there's no chance that your kid will increase the volume to damaging levels by accident (or choice). Personally, I found the maximum volume to be adequate for music listening in a mostly-quiet environment. I did find myself maxing out the volume while using the CareBuds on the bus or at a busy cafe. Although myFirst says these earbuds have noise cancellation, I found this feature to be rather ineffective at blocking out noise. I could still hear plenty of ambient noise, even the lower frequencies. And since the maximum volume is limited, this meant that in noisier environments, I could barely hear my music or video using the CareBuds.

The other kid-friendly feature is a smart transparency mode that automatically turns on when the CareBuds detects body movement. The idea here is that it's safer for your kid to hear the surroundings clearly when he or she is walking on the road. And this feature does work, albeit it usually kicks in after I have gotten up, and walked 10 metres or more. But there's no way to disable it. A companion app that lets you adjust this feature (and add others such as a equaliser) would have been useful. In addition, the CareBuds offer mediocre sound. The bass is pretty weak, while the vocals sound muffled in certain tracks.

At S$80, the myFirst CareBuds are more expensive than your typical S$30 budget earbuds that probably offer equal or better sound quality. The CareBuds' noise cancellation, in particular, is terrible. In other words, you're mostly paying for its kid-friendly features (volume limiter and smart transparency mode). You can buy the CareBuds from Lazada, Shopee, and Synced (cheapest at time of review).

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Note: Review unit provided by Oaxis.