LG never really abandoned the best feature of its smartphone lineup – audio. The new Xboom Buds Plus and Buds Lite are the newest audio products from the South Korean company, aiming to spread the sonic love between premium and casual listeners alike.
The announcement follows the launch earlier this year of the LG Xboom Buds, the ‘stock’ version of the new in-ears. It’s just a pity that, despite carrying a range of Xboom audio gear, LG hasn’t made these available locally yet. We can probably expect a similar wait for the new stuff.
Buds Plus benefits
The naming convention should clue you in to LG’s hierarchy here — the Xboom Buds Plus occupy the top of the ladder, with the Buds and Buds Lite standing on lower rungs. The Buds Plus are the most feature-packed, sporting Adaptive EQ that “monitors earbud fit and automatically adjusts the sound profile in real time.” All three earbuds feature active noise cancellation in one form or another, but the Plus model boasts three microphones per bud for enhanced performance in this line.
Graphene drivers transmit audio for all of LG’s Xboom in-ears, though we’d expect better performance from the Buds Plus. There are certainly more features, including an optimisation function in the Xboom app for selecting the best seals and UV cleaning inside the case. LG has done this before, but the tech — called UVnano2 — claims to destroy 99.9% of the bacteria that can cling to your audio equipment. The case supports two other features: wireless charging and the ability to connect to non-wireless devices and act as a Bluetooth transmitter so you can continue to live without wires draped over your shoulders.
Lite in the darkness
By contrast, the Xboom Buds Lite are… less premium. The graphene drivers are identical to the other models, but LG has focused on battery life — expect up to 11.5 hours on a charge and a total of 35 hours if you include the charging case. ANC is present, but less robust than the Lite’s pricier counterparts, and you’ll have to make do with four customisable EQ modes instead of the adaptive type found in the Plus.
Pricing for both of these new in-ears isn’t known, and the launch date isn’t firm yet, either. According to the company, they’ll hit “major markets worldwide” sometime this month. Two weeks isn’t that long to find out whether South Africa is considered a ‘major market’ by the South Korean company. As for pricing, international costs for the Xboom Buds put them at around the R2,000 mark. If that’s an accurate benchmark, the Plus and Lite versions should live on either side of that number. How far on either side isn’t something we can confirm right now.
