Sometimes, a product name will tell you everything you need to know. Kenwood’s new Glass Core and Glass Core Pro in-ear headphones don’t have their title for no reason. The ANC-featuring buds utilise glass diaphragms. According to the company, it’s an industry first that “suppresses unwanted vibrations and reproduces all the information from low to high frequencies without loss” (translated using Google Translate).
That makes them noteworthy on their own, but actually procuring a pair might be difficult. The in-ears are announced only for the Japanese market, with no indication of when (or if) they’ll arrive elsewhere. Still, we’d love to give them a test-listen.
Glass Core or glass cannon?
Both pairs of Kenwood’s new in-ears support LDAC, SBC, and AAC Bluetooth codecs, and both include a 10mm glass diaphragm. The Pro model also sports a MEMS driver to help justify the title (and price increase). Active noise cancelling is present, with the Core Pro model also offering adaptive ANC.
Kenwood’s higher-end buds include something the company calls K2 Technology. This is an upscaling tech that takes CD and streaming audio and tweaks it “to near-high resolution [sic] equivalent, bringing it closer to the original sound” (again, Google Translate). The Glass Core Pro also incorporates Exofield spatial audio.
They do sound rather premium (in concept — we’ve yet to discover how literal that is). The pricing for the to-be-released in-ears reflects that. The base Core in-ears will cost R2,850 (¥28,500) and the Core Pro R5,000 or so (¥49,900) when they launch in Japan later this month.
