Bang and Olfusen has introduced the third-generation version of its Beoplay E8, a pair of true wireless earbuds offering longer battery life over the previous generation. Depending on how often they're used, the company says that some users can go up to 'several' weeks recharging the earbuds with the battery case before they'll need to recharge the case itself.
In February we'll get our first official look at the newest round of Samsung products, one of which will quite likely be the Samsung Galaxy Buds+. This newest pair of wireless earbuds from the Galaxy-centric brand will be the most visible opponent of the latest wireless earbuds from Apple, the AirPods Pro. For those users looking for feature-by-feature parity, today's leak might be sorta bad news.
Once in a while, one company stumbles onto a new technology that pulls the rug out from under their industry - and sparks plenty of competitors trying to do the same. For Nura, that innovation centered on how it could create truly personalized hearing profiles simply by having people sit through a series of beeps and boops while wearing their headphones. Headphones offering personalized audio has since then popped up left and right, pushing the company to step up its game. That next level comes in the form of the NuraLoop, a pair of around the neck earbuds that brings Nura's technology to a more discreet and more personal wearable device.
There are times when you want or even need to take in all the sights and sounds around you, like the CES 2020 showroom floor in Las Vegas. Other times, you'd want to just listen silently to your music and podcasts no matter where you are. Jabra has got your ears covered, both figuratively and literally, with two new audio accessories that block out the noise when you want to immerse yourself in sound whether you're out for a jog or sitting at your desk.
With AirPods, Apple has the largest presence in the wearables market today, by a long shot. Unit shipment tracking in the wearables market for Q3 of 2019 showed Apple ahead of the pack, by a long shot. According to the IDC, Apple had 35% of the entire world's wearables market, with the closest competitor coming in with just 14.6% (that's Xiaomi, Samsung was 3rd with 9.8%). It's like Apple created the product to which all other products are compared - which should seem familiar if you've been watching tech news for the past decade.
Sony has pushed out an update to its WF-1000XM3 noise cancelling earbuds, addressing two of our small but lingering frustrations with the otherwise excellent headphones. Launched earlier this year, the in-ear sibling to the WH-1000XM3 headphones was early to the table with active noise cancellation.
This afternoon Microsoft Chief Product officer Panos Panay announced a release delay for Surface Earbuds. Earlier this year, Microsoft's Surface Earbuds weren't given a definite release date - but were generally assumed to be coming to market by the end of 2020. As it turns out, and confirmed this afternoon, these earbuds needed a little more work than originally expected.
Apple AirPod users found themselves on the wrong side of the prank this week as art director Pablo Rochat struck! According to Rochat, he simply "made life-size AirPod stickers and stuck them on the ground, all over the city." He made his project known on November 17, 2019, and already 5-figure amounts of likes and retweets and shares have pushed him into the realm of viral prank hit.
A pair of AirPod Pro earbuds were customized by the same folks who brought you several diamond-encrusted iPhones. They've suggested that the "Caviar AirPods Pro Gold Edition" is an extravagant package the likes of which only one person will ever own. They've suggested that the body of each of the AirPod Pro buds is "one-piece 750-content gold."
If the AirPods' convenience was enough to make Apple's fully-wireless earbuds a runaway hit, adding active noise cancellation could send them stratospheric. That's the theory behind the Apple AirPods Pro, anyway, instantly familiar at first glance but packing the sort of sound isolation that city dwellers, office workers, and frequent fliers dream of. At $249 they may not be cheap, but can the AirPods Pro make up for that in the ears?
They're the Apple product many have been waiting for: AirPods Pro bring active noise cancellation to the instantly-recognizable white earbuds. Joining, rather than replacing, the existing AirPods range, they're not exactly cheap at $249, but for frequent travelers or urban commuters deep in the Apple ecosystem they could be a godsend. I've been wearing AirPods Pro this week: read on for what already stands out.
With Apple's new AirPods Pro on the market, it's time to see if they can be easily repaired by end-users. For that we turn to iFixit, which didn't have very many encouraging things to say about the original AirPods. In fact, iFixit gave the AirPods a dismal repairability score of 0/10, indicating that they were in no way repairable by the DIYers of the world.