Bang & Olufsen today unveiled a pair of $299 truly wireless earbuds called Beoplay E8, the Danish company's pricier luxury alternative to Apple's $159 AirPods.
The E8 Bluetooth in-ear headphones are a mixture of aluminum and polymer, making them splash and dust-proof, while each earpiece features a touch surface that supports fingertip gestures to play/pause music, take calls (a mic is integrated into the buds), and change volume.
There's also voice recognition support for activating virtual assistants like Siri, as well as a Transparency Mode that lets environmental sounds in for safer commuting. There's also a built-in digital signal processor that enables custom output tuning with equalization and gain.
The buds provide up to 4 hours of play time at a moderate sound level, while the included leather charging case supplies two additional charges to give users up to 12 hours of listening time on the go. For reference, AirPods offer up to 5 hours' play time and Apple's charging case carries up to 24 hours' charge.
Four pairs of different-sized silicon tips are included along with a USB charging cable (USB-A to MicroUSB). The Beoplay E8 wireless buds are available in black and charcoal sand colors, and will be available from the company's website from October.
Top Rated Comments
1. The connection, so far, had been rock solid. Need to do a bit more traveling to see if it holds up when surrounded by dozens of other wireless signals. Range is reasonable allowing me to go one room from the source but it’s not as good as the AirPods. The E8s communicate via a form of NFC so when you take the right earbud out, music stops in the left. No where near as cool as the AirPods which pause the music but kind of similar if you need to take one out to hear someone/something. Does mean that you can’t share the E8s between two people like you vs. with the AirPods. Btw. The transparency mode on th E8s is pretty cool and really does work quite well and means you can hear things without having to take them out of the ear.
2. Siri works fine but needs a triple tap. IMHO neither the AirPods or E8s are perfect for tap gestures. I have had problems with both.
3. The AirPods microphone is definitely better with better cancellation of background noise. The E8s is still perfectly usable just not as good as the AirPods.
The most important thing is sound isolation and sound quality which are both vastly superior on th E8s and out weigh all the negatives.