A year after launching its first set of premium wireless headphones, Microsoft has introduced the new Surface Earbuds.
These truly-wireless earbuds will be available in time for the the 2019 holiday season for $249 and the company says they offer up to 8 hours of battery life on a charge, plus another 16 if you use the included charging case to top off the battery.
Update: Microsoft has pushed back the release date until spring, 2020.Â
That’d be a pretty big step up from the 5 hours of battery life you get from a pair of Apple AirPods… but maybe that’s not surprising when you look at just how, well, big these things are.
There’s a large touch-sensitive exterior that you can use to control music playback or other functions without removing your phone from your pocket or purse… and they make the Surface Earbuds look enormous.
Microsoft says the earbuds offer “rich, immersive Omnisonic sound,” plus support for voice recognition thanks to dual microphones.
There’s also “screen-free integration with Office,” allowing you to use your voice to interact with your Outlook calendar or email messages.
See the all-new Surface Earbuds. #MicrosoftEvent @rmseiler pic.twitter.com/4RO1lDCZHt
— Microsoft Surface (@surface) October 2, 2019
I don’t typically swear, but these are fucking stupid. If you need some crap like this jammed in your ear while out in public then you are an absolute loser. Can’t escape work? So important are your communications that you require a pop-socket for your ear? You’re an idiot.
Curious what BT chip microsoft is using here. Will be interesting to see a teardown of these once they go on sale.
It was hard to come up with something uglier than airpods, but walking around looking like you got a railroad spike in your ear is next level
Seems high quality dictation and real time captioning is the name of the game with these, which puts them in a different category altogether from most wireless earbuds (and incredibly competitive at $250 if they can deliver on their promises and demos in real life). Means you can caption a PowerPoint on a presentation screen thereby removing the need for someone to sign, which could be a huge boon for small businesses and state and local governments that often struggle to provide real world accessibility due to resource constraints.
Yeah, but you could do that with a lapel mic and not look like you’ve got some comically oversized earplugs crammed in your ears.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/translator/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2018/09/How-To-Use-Live-Transcription-in-the-Classroom.pdf
It’s not like the earbuds actually house any processing hardware.
I can see a big smiley face sticker on each one!
Does it have support for satellite TV and radio channels ?