These beautiful wireless earbuds are a worthy alternative to Apple's AirPods

A significant advantage of Skybuds is the ability to control them without using your phone. Both buds have buttons on the outside that let you play or pause music, skip a track, or answer a call — tapping AirPods can let you play/pause music or use Siri, but not both, and you can't skip tracks.

While all of these buttons are useful features, I found them difficult to press at first without dislodging the buds from my ears. Using them definitely takes practice.

Skybuds come with a carrying case that also serves as the charger, much like AirPods and other competitors. The case itself requires wired charging, but not often. I found a single charge of the case lasted me up to a week. You can check the battery level of both the case and the individual buds on the the Skybuds app. You'll also get regular softare updates through the app, but otherwise you probably won't need to open it often — the only time I used it was to check how much juice I had.

Overall, Skybuds were easy to set up and pair with your phone, and the Bluetooth connectivity was nearly seamless.

Average battery life

Battery life was a shortcoming of Skybuds, but not a surprising one. To maintain their small size, the battery can only be so large, meaning you're not going to get more than a few hours of listening time out of them.

I was never able to get much more than three hours of life out of the buds on a single charge, but I didn't really mind. Unless I'm traveling, I'm rarely wearing headphones for more than a few minutes at a time, and maybe two hours maximum. And since they charge back up once they're back in their case, they're constantly charging when you're not wearing them.

One thing to note: The right earbud typically ran out of juice much more quickly than the left one. That's because the right bud houses Skybuds' Bluetooth technology, so it runs out of juice much faster. Most times when my buds ran out of battery, the left one still had about 50% battery left. Again, this didn't particularly affect my usage of the Skybuds, but for those who like to wear headphones all day at work, for instance, this could be problematic.

As someone who struggles to find earbuds that work for me, I was most concerned about the fit of Skybuds. But I didn't need to be — the buds fit great. I had no issues with them staying in while sitting or walking and they sealed my ears easily. Shaking my head and even flipping my head upside down didn't budge them loose.

The buds come with three sizes of rubberized tips and founder Jamie Seltzer advises that you may need to mix and match the tips — both your ears may not wear the same size. He said the buds have a 93% to 95% fit rate.

But I was most looking forward to testing Skybuds on a run outside.

I should say upfront that I've never had good luck using earbuds to exercise. This is complicated by the fact that I have an inner-ear piercing known as a daith piercing, which frequently gets in the way of most types of earbuds, particularly those made by Apple. But even before the piercing, I had problems getting earbuds to stay in while exercising.

Whenever I typically wear earbuds on a run, I spend most of my jog jamming them in my ears and waiting for them to fall out again a few minutes later. This has been the case since my first pair of earbuds and, unfortunately, remained true after testing Skybuds.

Things started off great. Skybuds are sweatproof, so I didn't have to worry about damaging them while exercising. And because they're sealed, they blocked out the noise of car horns and construction that's a fact of life in Manhattan.

For the first few minutes, I happily jogged wire-free, thinking I had finally solved my earbuds dilemma. But about 10 minutes in, I started to feel the buds loosening. A few minutes later, one bud popped out of my ear completely and landed on the sidewalk. I gave the Skybuds another shot, making sure I'd fit it into my ear properly before starting up my run again, but the same thing happened again a few minutes later.

Frustrated, I took both buds out and resigned myself to a run with no music. But I was faced with a second problem: Since I was outside, I didn't bring along the buds' carrying case and I didn't have any pockets to put them in.

This is, theoretically, a problem with any pair of wireless buds, including AirPods. One enterprising inventor came up with a magnetic brooch for your AirPods, but something like that wouldn't work for Skybuds since they're made almost entirely of plastic. Losing buds is a real concern, and there doesn't seem to be an easy solution just yet.

For such tiny buds, I wasn't expecting much in terms of sound quality, but Skybuds pleasantly surprised me.

Alpha Audiotronics has been working on the buds since 2014, and their attention to sound quality impressed me. The buds provided a rich sound that surpassed any other earbuds I've ever tried. In fact, they sounded so good that I quickly began ditching my over-ear headphones for the Skybuds for casual listening.

The fantastic sound quality was easily the best feature of the buds. I soon felt as though I'd happily pay the same price for wired buds if they sounded this good. The sound was warm and balanced with a strong bass and none of the tinny notes I'm accustomed to with earbuds. They also successfully canceled out both the noise of my coworkers and street noise, which almost feels like a requirement of any good pair of headphones at this point.

When I used them for phone calls, I was equally impressed with how clearly I could hear the person on the other end of the line. Calls were crisp and clear without any of the hollowness I've come to expect from talking to someone through headphones.

On the other end of the line, call quality persisted. People could hear me clearly and didn't even know I was calling them using wireless earbuds until I told them. This was doubly impressive given that I tested them while walking home from work — a 25-minute walk through midtown Manhattan at rush hour.

The only issue that arose during calls was that the microphone lives on the outside of the buds. While it picked up my voice with no problems, that also meant it picked up other people's voices, too. When walking through crowds, it sounded to the person on the other end of the line like someone else was talking directly into the phone — which, if they were standing close enough to me, they essentially were.

The biggest advantage Skybuds have over other wireless buds on the market is their look. They're small, unobtrusive, and sleek, and they fit almost entirely within your ear — the edge of the bud is only raised outside your ear a few centimeters.

Compared to AirPods, Skybuds are far and away a better-looking product. They're also smaller than the Here One, which has to be larger to fit more technology within the bud.

More than half of the Alpha Audiotronics team is made up of women, and it was quickly apparent to me that this product was designed with women in mind. The buds are unisex, but they look much more subtle and less like a "tech product" than other types of wireless buds I've tried. Seltzer said he considered the athleisure trend when designing the buds, and that shows through in the stylish but minimalist design. This is a pair of earbuds than can go from traveling to work to the gym.

That said, I consider a $220 pair of earbuds to be a luxury product, and the Skybuds don't exactly feel luxury. They're mostly plastic and the charging case they come in is plastic, too. The buds and the case are super lightweight, which is a plus, but they look and feel as if they could easily break of come apart. To me, the clever design didn't quite make up for the fact that they felt more like a toy than high-end audio.

For anyone looking to buy wireless buds, Skybuds are a good contender — as long as you know what you're getting. The buds sound fantastic, fit well (for most occasions, likely with the exception of running), and are a great entry point into wireless earbuds for the non-techie.

But you're paying a lot of money for a plastic pair of earbuds, and the battery life is inconsistent at best, especially since one bud will always die before the other.

If you're in it for a great pair of commuting or travel earbuds — and you hate the look of AirPods — Skybuds are a solid choice. If you're in the market for a luxury product with a long battery life, keep looking.