Along with adding plenty new products to their ecosystem today in their hardware keynote in Seattle, Washington, Amazon has announced the Echo Buds which is essentially a pair of truly wireless earphones similar to Apple’s AirPods. The Echo Buds are, of course, closely integrated with Alexa and offer active noise reduction which isn’t present on lots of truly wireless pairs of earphones.
The Echo Buds are in-ear style earphones which means they fit right into the ear canal. They have a small footprint which means they aren’t going to be that noticeable when worn. The Echo Buds come with dual armature drivers which promise deep bass and crisp audio. While the in-ear style should already result in noise cancellation to a certain extent, Amazon is using technology from well-known audio equipment manufacturer Bose to add noise reduction. Double tapping on the earbuds will toggle the noise reduction on and off. Truly wireless earphones generally don’t come with any sort of noise reduction, let alone Bose ANR or Active Noise Reduction, so looks like Amazon has indeed done a great job.
Tapping and Holding on the earbuds will trigger the in-built voice assistant on your phone be it Google Assistant or Siri. This is apart from the support for Alexa of course, which is triggered by the wake word “Alexa”. Alexa on the Echo Buds can answer all the queries that it generally would on a smart speaker and can also play and switch music tracks. The Echo Buds have a claimed battery life of up to 5 hours on a single charge with the case extending it to 20 hours.
The Echo Buds are one of the few pairs of earphones to provide so much functionality and the technology from Bose for ANC. Sony, for example, has truly wireless pairs of earphones starting at $200, and the Echo Buds are available for pre-order starting today at just $129.99 which sounds like a sweet deal. The Echo Buds should ship before the holidays. There is no word on availability in India or in other parts of the world yet.
