RoseSelsa Ceramics MK2

A solid upgrade but maybe it’s time for an upgraded App

The Rose Technics Ceramics X made a quiet but solid impression when I reviewed it last year, and the MK2 promises to be a refined follow-up. At $32.99 — a price that barely buys you a decent cable in some corners of the audiophile world — you now get LDAC support, active noise cancellation, Bluetooth 6.0, a 45-hour battery system, and some clever tricks with its tuning include dynamically adjusting to the Equal Loudness Curve.

I have been living with the Ceramics MK2 for over a month, including taking them on a recent trip to the United States alongside the RoseSelsa Cambrian ANC headphone. The Ceramics MK2 is the kind of product that makes you wonder what exactly is justifying the price premium on anything above it at the budget end of the TWS market.

But before I get into the sound, let’s look at the unboxing:

Packaging and Unboxing

The packaging carries a premium feel that is considerably more polished than the price might suggest, though anyone familiar with Soundcore or EarFun’s retail presentation will find the format immediately recognisable — clean product imagery on the front, a concise feature breakdown on the rear. It does not feel cheap, but it is not trying to be an unboxing event either. There is an appropriate confidence to it.

Opening the box, the earbuds and case are presented neatly in the upper tray, with the documentation tucked underneath. In the box you’ll find the Ceramics MK2 earbuds in the charging case, a USB-C charging cable, and a generous selection of silicone eartips in multiple sizes.

Build Quality and Design

The charging case is one of the Ceramics MK2’s more quietly impressive features. Its profile is flat and almost pebble-like — slim enough to disappear into a jeans pocket without any awkward bulk, yet the interior cavity is deliberately wide. Wide enough, in fact, to accommodate noticeably larger third-party eartips than those included in the box. If you find the stock tips unsatisfying and prefer something like SpinFit CP145s or Final Type-E mediums, you are not locked out of your preferred ear seal by an undersized housing. The case lid snaps shut with a satisfying click, and the overall plastic construction feels solid without any flex or creaking.

USB-C charging is sensibly positioned on the underside of the case. The earbuds themselves feature a ceramic-accented shell with a faceplate texture that offers genuine visual identity — more interesting than the plain gloss or matte plastic that saturates this price category.

The design is polarising in the way that ceramic-finish products often are. It is bold, it is distinctive, and it will not be universally loved. I appreciate the attempt at visual ambition at $32.99 — it gives the Ceramics MK2 a premium character that the price alone would not imply.

Accessories and Eartips

The accessory spread is genuinely good for the money. The eartip range covers small through large with enough variation that most ear canals should be well served. Combined with the roomy case interior mentioned above, the practical flexibility around eartip choice is a real and underrated advantage over TWS products that ship with a skimpy three-pair set locked into a tight case.

Comfort and Fit

Comfort is one area where the Ceramics MK2 continues a clear strength of its predecessor. The earbuds sit securely and naturally in the ear without any sense of pressure or fatigue accumulating over extended sessions. Over more than a month of use — including long listening sessions at home, commuting, and a transatlantic trip — I never experienced the dull ache that can build with poorly contoured TWS designs. On long walks they remained stable without re-seating even with moderate movement. The ergonomic shell does its job quietly and consistently, which is exactly what you want from a daily-use earbud.

Features and App

The RoseSelsa companion app covers the functional essentials without fuss. From within it you can switch between ANC, Transparency, and Normal listening modes; enable or disable LDAC; configure dual-device multi-point pairing; select from the three available sound profiles; apply firmware updates; and remap the touch controls to taste. It is a clean, purposeful app that does what it needs to do without unnecessary complexity.

The three sound profiles — HiFi, Pop, and Rock — represent a progression of increasingly V-shaped signatures. HiFi sits closest to neutral with a measured bass shelf and honest midrange presence. Pop adds a gentle boost to the lows and upper frequencies, giving a slightly more energetic consumer presentation. Rock pushes further still, with more aggressive low-end authority and elevated upper-energy sculpt. For critical listening, HiFi is unambiguously the most technically honest of the three, and it is what I used for all subjective impressions in this review.

The app also offers an ELC mode — Equal Loudness Curve — which adjusts the frequency response to follow the Fletcher-Munson equal-loudness contours, theoretically preserving tonal balance at lower listening volumes by boosting bass and treble proportionally. In practice I found the ELC added a slightly scooped quality to the midrange that made the presentation feel less direct, particularly on vocal-forward recordings. It is an interesting engineering idea, but with no parametric EQ or graphic EQ to complement it, the ELC lands more as a curiosity than a practical tool for most listeners. RoseSelsa would do well to consider adding at minimum a 10-band graphic EQ — ideally full PEQ — in a future app update. The hardware is capable enough that it deserves finer user control, and the absence of any EQ capability is becoming increasingly difficult to justify as competitors at comparable prices begin to offer it.

Worth noting for measurement enthusiasts: the ELC implementation does create a complication when it comes to comparison graphs. Because the curve deliberately tilts the response — boosting bass and treble to compensate for reduced loudness sensitivity at lower SPLs — any IEM or TWS implementing ELC will naturally appear dramatically V-shaped on a standard frequency response plot. The flip side is that measuring without ELC engaged, and then attempting to compare at matched loudness, can make the tuning look deceptively dull. Neither picture is quite honest. In the measurements section later in this review I have attempted to normalise where possible, but it is worth keeping in mind that what you see on the graphs is partly a measurement artefact of ELC doing its job rather than any flaw in the underlying tuning — the Ceramics MK2 sounds considerably more balanced in use than a raw ELC-engaged graph might suggest.

Sound Impressions

All listening was conducted using the HiFi profile, sourced primarily via LDAC from a FiiO JM21 DAP and via AAC from a MacBook Pro and an iPhone 17 Pro Max, with the stock medium silicone eartips providing a consistent seal.

Bass

The bass performance is a genuine highlight, and a meaningful step forward from the Ceramics X. Sub-bass extension reaches with authority into the lower registers — there is a confident physicality to kick drums and synthesised bass lines that avoids the one-note quality common in budget TWS tunings. Mid-bass is controlled and does not exhibit the kind of bloom that can make a warm-sounding earbud feel muddy under pressure. Jennifer Warnes’ “Way Down Deep” is a precise test here: the opening bass note carries both texture and low-end authority, and the Ceramics MK2 handles it with composure genuinely surprising at this price. The bass overall feels tuned with purpose rather than simply elevated for consumer appeal.

Midrange

The midrange sits in a gently recessed position relative to the bass shelf and the upper frequencies, a common and largely acceptable tuning choice for a consumer-facing TWS. In practice this means vocals sit slightly behind the mix rather than front-and-centre, which suits electronic and rock material well while making more intimate recordings feel marginally distant. Tonal density is solid and harmonic texture is preserved convincingly enough that acoustic instruments retain character rather than flattening into the mix. Dire Straits’ “Brothers in Arms” rewards careful listening — Knopfler’s guitar and vocal are present, textured, and tonally convincing, even if they do not quite command the immediacy that a more midrange-forward tuning might deliver. The ELC mode further recesses the midrange, reinforcing my recommendation to leave it switched off for critical use.

Treble

The treble on the HiFi profile is safe in the best sense of the word — it avoids sibilance and harshness while still offering genuine air and sparkle in the upper registers. Cymbal shimmer has a natural sheen, transient leading edges are resolved cleanly without any etch or glassiness, and upper-harmonic extension is respectable for the TWS category. Nils Lofgren’s live recording of “Keith Don’t Go” is a rewarding test: the acoustic guitar shimmer and the fine high-harmonic detail in the audience ambience demonstrate the Ceramics MK2’s upper-frequency capability pleasingly. If there is any refinement to be wished for, it would be a subtle presence-region lift to bring slightly more definition to leading edges — but this is a refinement rather than a correction.

Soundstage and Imaging

For a sealed TWS at this price, the soundstage and imaging performance is one of the Ceramics MK2’s most impressive attributes. The 10mm titanium-coated driver configuration delivers a more spatially accurate picture than I typically expect from true-wireless earbuds in this bracket. Width is above average for the category, depth layering is convincing enough to give orchestral passages a genuine sense of dimensionality, and instrument positioning is notably more precise and stable than many comparably priced rivals. Supertramp’s “Crime of the Century” is a rewarding test here — the reverb tails, wide stereo panning, and spatial complexity of the mix are rendered with enough coherence to make you appreciate the engineering underneath.

Specifications and Measurements

The Ceramics X was a credible budget TWS especially at that price, but the MK2 improves on it in every meaningful dimension.

Measurements

The frequency response comparison tells the story directly: the MK2 delivers better sub-bass extension, a more coherent midrange, and a slight vocal presence lift that brings the overall tuning considerably closer to what a neutral-leaning listener actually wants. These are not incremental tweaks — taken together they represent a meaningfully more accomplished signature, and the upgrade is worth the small additional outlay if you own the original.

Against the Moondrop Space Travel 2, the calculus is more nuanced. The Space Travel 2 brings full parametric EQ via the Moondrop app — a genuine and significant feature advantage for listeners who enjoy sculpting their own signature. However, the Ceramics MK2 counters with 40dB wideband ANC (the Space Travel 2 has a single feedforward solution), a substantially larger battery, LDAC on the same Bluetooth 6.0 platform, and — in my direct experience — superior soundstage width and imaging precision. At $32.99 versus the Space Travel 2’s $29.99, the price difference is negligible, but the Ceramics MK2 represents a considerably more feature-complete daily-use package for listeners who spend time in noisy environments and value spatial accuracy. The Space Travel 2 wins for those who want to dial in their own tuning precisely; the Ceramics MK2 wins for almost everything else.

Specifications and Measurements

The HiFi profile frequency response is the graph worth focusing on, and it is an encouraging picture. The bass shelf is present and well-controlled, rolling off cleanly through the midbass without the bloom that plagues many budget TWS tunings. The midrange sits in a modest recession — visible on the graph but not dramatically so — with the pinna gain and upper-midrange energy handled with considerably more restraint than many budget competitors who overcook this region into harshness. Treble extension is respectable, with the upper harmonics present and airy rather than rolled off prematurely.

The three-profile comparison shows the progression clearly: HiFi is the most linear presentation, Pop adds a modest V-shape, and Rock pushes the low-end authority and upper-frequency energy considerably further. For critical listening, HiFi is the unambiguous choice. The raw measurements confirm that the smoothed graphs are not flattering the tuning — the underlying response is genuinely well-behaved.

One of the more impressive measurement findings concerns the ANC implementation. Switching between ANC active, Transparency, and Normal modes produces essentially no measurable difference to the frequency response — a meaningful engineering achievement. Many budget ANC implementations introduce tonal coloration when noise cancellation is engaged, often creating a hollow or pressure-heavy character. The Ceramics MK2 avoids this entirely.

Distortion figures are appropriate for a 10mm dynamic driver TWS at this price point, with no concerning spikes in the midbass or upper midrange that would manifest as audible coloration under demanding conditions.

Since the app currently offers no graphic or parametric EQ, the practical recommendation is simple: use the HiFi profile. For listeners who want fractionally more treble definition and upper-harmonic clarity, the hardware has the headroom for a gentle shelf lift around 8–12kHz — but this is an optional refinement rather than a correction of any meaningful flaw.

Rating Explanation

The Ceramics MK2 earns its four-star pragmatic rating by delivering genuine competence across every dimension a daily-use TWS should address. The HiFi profile tuning is honest and accomplished — it does not paper over measurement weaknesses with a mid-bass excess or an artificially boosted presence peak. The ANC is effective, is largely transparent to the frequency response, and the battery life is exceptional. LDAC at $32.99 on Bluetooth 6.0 is remarkable regardless of what else comes with it — that it comes with a well-tuned sound signature, reliable fit, and a case designed for practical daily use makes the full package genuinely impressive.

The limitations are real but clearly priced in. Three fixed profiles with no user-accessible EQ is a constraint that feels increasingly uncomfortable as competitors at comparable or modestly higher prices begin to offer parametric control. The microphone performs well for indoor voice calls and online meetings, but the absence of meaningful wind noise cancellation makes outdoor calls frustrating in any kind of exposed weather — a real-world limitation if you commute outdoors through winter. The ANC quality is good overall but is directly dependent on achieving a consistent seal with the eartips; listeners whose ear geometry makes a deep seal difficult may find its noise rejection less effective than advertised.

The five-star price rating reflects an objective reality: at $32.99, the Ceramics MK2 offers a feature set and tuning quality that should cost significantly more. That is precisely what a five-star price score is for.

Conclusion

A year on from the Ceramics X, RoseSelsa has done what a good follow-up should: kept what worked, addressed what didn’t, and resisted any temptation to inflate the price along the way. The Ceramics MK2 is a better-tuned, better-featured, and more technically accomplished TWS than its predecessor in every meaningful way — and at $32.99 it asks very little in return.

The ideal buyer is someone who wants a genuinely competent everyday TWS that sounds right without requiring any app configuration, handles noisy environments with workable ANC, fits comfortably for long sessions, and can be tossed into a pocket on a travel day without a second thought. If precise PEQ curve dialling is your priority, the Moondrop Space Travel 2 will serve you better. But if you want something that simply sounds good from the moment it goes in your ear, takes on a transatlantic flight without complaint, and still has battery life left at the end of a long day — the Ceramics MK2 is worth every cent of its asking price.