It’s been a big day for Huawei as the company held a substantial press conference to unveil the new range of Mate 40 phones. While those took centre stage for most of the presentation, there were some neat little accessories that were shown off as well that we just thought deserved some attention because even the less important child deserves a cake on its birthday, right?
Huawei, never one to be left out of potential market spaces, also unveiled the FreeBuds Studio, a new set of over-ear headphones. It’s the next logical space to progress to given that the in-ear Freebuds have often been hailed as one of the best affordable wireless earbuds. While the FreeBuds Studio looks fairly generic, there are some key features that actually sound really cool so let’s dive into those.
I’m FreeBud as a bird
The FreeBuds Studio are equipped with a range of expected features as well as some fresh takes on the concept. It comes equipped with 48kHz spacious sound to really give you a feeling of being surrounded by whatever podcaster you’re listening to that day. It features what is apparently the “Best Noise Cancellation” technology and can output up to 40dB of ANC performance. What this all amounts to is a set of headphones that should offer some remarkably crispy audio.
They also come with a 6-mic matrix embedded into the ear cup meaning that your call quality should be super clear as well. They also just look very comfortable; that’s the risk with over-ear headphones, they often tend to squash ears and that gets very uncomfortable after a while. Those cups look nice and wide, meaning you’ll hopefully be able to wear them for extended periods of time.
Speaking of extended periods of time…
According to Huawei, the FreeBuds Studio will be able to last for 24 hours off a single charge, which is more than enough for at least a week of walking around the neighbourhood or to the office. Okay, I suppose that depends on how long you walk for, but for us, that’s a long time. Oh, and you’ll be able to get 8 hours of life out of the headphones after just 10 minutes of charging. Which is pretty phenomenal, honestly.
Yet the coolest feature, we think, is the Smart Touch Controls. These have been a staple feature for in-ear wireless earbuds for some time but for headphones, it’s a fresh idea. You’ll be able to control the playback of audio coming through the FreeBuds Studio by simply swiping on one of the ear cups. A swipe up or down can alter volume, left or right can skip songs and a tap can pause the music. It’s a standard control scheme but using it for over-ears is pretty cool.
We don’t know how much the FreeBuds Studio will set you back in South Africa but we do know they’ll cost €300 so we’ll be sure to let you know as soon as we find out about local pricing!