New Amazon Echo Buds Take on AirPods Pro With Improved Design and Better Noise Cancellation

[Morgenland]

I often work in noisy environments and sometimes wear AirPods Pro for 8 hours.
Good that they exist!
They are worth every penny to me.

 

[Cycom]

Blah! Still too expensive.

Any number of generic chinese ones might suit you, then.

 

[Morgenland]

Any number of generic chinese ones might suit you, then.

Right!
He who does not recognize value remains a sad person and always feels cheated.
I would imagine that this also has something to do with age, professional strength and maturity.

But of course not everyone at MacRumors will agree on that, there are a lot of ranting people here...

e.g. 'Herrpod'

 

[Herrpod]

Copied pretty much everything except Apples idiotic pricing.

 

[baconsandwich]

Amazon should go back to selling books online.

Sure, Amazon can undercut AirPods with the lower price because copying is much cheaper than R&D.

I'll be sure to let Jeff Bezos know where he's been going wrong all these years. He'll be so relieved.

 

[mateytate]

Amazon should go back to selling books online.

They have a market cap of $1.6tn, I think whatever they are doing is working...

 

[Stevez67]

Article Link: New Amazon Echo Buds Take on AirPods Pro With Improved Design and Better Noise Cancellation

What you can't assess from the pictures and the write-up, are build quality and likelihood of ongoing firmware updates. These really are the difference between many Apple products and less expensive competitor's products.

 

[cardfan]

Hard to imagine ever buying AirPods from apple again. Too much competition. Fraction of the price. Sorry apple.

 

[anthogag]

I'll be sure to let Jeff Bezos know where he's been going wrong all these years. He'll be so relieved.

I would guess the only thing that relieves Jeff Bezos is paying his employees even less or maybe replacing people with robots.

 

[anthogag]

They have a market cap of $1.6tn, I think whatever they are doing is working...

Building more enormous warehouses to ship junk all over the place

 

[Osxguy]

No one else is gonna say these look like ****?

 

[Ralfi]

These look fantastic & have a feature set that ticks all the boxes, & they come in black!!

The slick case with both internal & internal (individual) LEDs, many sized tips (colour-coded) & improvements in all sound aspects + Noise Cancellation say they’ve put a lot of work into these things.

Hope they review well & hint at what the AirPods Pro may be like (ie. Black!)

What is the appeal of those gummy things inside the ear other than sealing external sound?

I hate them, they are so uncomfortable, that's why I think the basic AirPods design is the best and I hope they continue to exist or any evolution do not have the silicone tips.

You get better seal/sound with the tips. Noise Cancellation is a HUGE feature & just wouldn’t work as well/at all with the original AirPods design.

In saying that, I also hope future basic AirPods don’t include the tips as there will always be people who don’t want Noise Cancellation, but for those who do, the AirPods Pro design is just about perfect.

 

[BaltimoreMediaBlog]

My experience with Amazon and supposedly Mac-compatible products is quite IFFY.
The Airpods I got were actual 2nd Generation Airpods. The Bluetooth/WIFI upgrades I ordered have all failed and will now need to be replaced to have current Mac Pro features. Many of their product descriptions from China are filled with technical errors.
I've bought several iPhone to TV adapters. One almost caught fire burning up. The other will not work with anything like Netflix or Amazon Prime. I mean, you would think they would sell something that actually works with their OWN service right? Nope.
So good luck with that.

 

[sparkinstx]

Why does it look like there's sockets for pins to fit into, inside the case? I'll see more pictures before thinking about buying these. Or maybe I'll keep watching for deals on the AirPods Pro.

 

[efp722]

Definitely tired of Amazon trying to be the jack of all trades master of none type of elephant in the room.

That said, my OG AirPods are on their last leg and will barely last during a 1 hour run. I considered the AirPod Pros but the price was just way to much to stomach, especially considering my AirPods only worked half the time it seemed (the auto pause/ear detection just never worked and I'd have to manually pair them most of the time). But Target had the Powerbeats Pro on sale for $160 and I figured why not, I'll give them ago. And holy **** are they awesome. They fit great, sound fine, and damn all the ear detection/auto connect stuff actually work and it's pretty sweet.

So yeah, Powerbeats Pro are pretty slick and should be a solid choice if you are looking for a good workout headphone.

 

[Internaut]

I recently got the gen 1 Buds, at a knock down price, to use with my none Apple devices. They’re big, ugly and, on a physical level, very much inferior in form and function to my AirPods. The sound, OTOH, is actually very good when noise cancelling is engaged.

 

[x-evil-x]

What is the appeal of those gummy things inside the ear other than sealing external sound?

I hate them, they are so uncomfortable, that's why I think the basic AirPods design is the best and I hope they continue to exist or any evolution do not have the silicone tips.

You don’t care about sound obviously

 

[Soreteal]

How could you say no to this face??

 

[AussieStu]

These tested against Apples old ones or the new ones probably due in a few days?

 

[ScooterComputer]

I'm most interested in how these newer third-party Bluetooth buds work, or don't, with the iOS "convenience" features like the AirPods do, things like auto sound-output-path switching when you remove them from your ear(s) and multi-device pairing. AirPods work pretty slick… and surely that's because Apple has kept the secret-sauce for themselves. Even battery level reporting is pretty rare from what I've been able to discern. And I've been using BT headsets since before the iPhone; I've had plenty of time to try alternatives… my AirPods Pro are the most convenient so far. (Though I would far prefer my Plantronics Voyager for loudness, battery life, and sound quality… if it only had the convenience features.)

 

[szw-mapple fan]

I feel like the headline is a bit misleading. It's implying that the Echo Buds are taking on AirPods with better design and NC than the AirPods when it's just an improvement from a previous version of the Buds. I was looking for a comparison with the AirPods but left disappointed.

 

[GeoStructural]

Apple didn't come up with the mouse and GUI

And a little known fact, in typical annoying "we-know-better-than-the-user" fashion, Apple removed the ARROW KEYS of the computer when it released it with a mouse to force adoption...

 

[incoherent_1]

It’s amazing to think about the progress made in wireless headphones over the last 4-5 years!

 

[317342]

Three (3) things...

a. They look...cheap, like something you'd get on eBay for $20 or $15 if you have a Groupon. Candidly, if that's all you can afford, knock yourself out but I don't see these things as much more than an also-ran of the AirPods Pro.

b. Alexa hasn't the greatest reputation for privacy so I'm wondering how much/little passive audio gets vacuumed into the AWS cloud.

c. Amazon wants to compete with Apple but Apple only competes with Apple. This also-ran looks like another "Fire Phone" belly flop they took a bath in 13mo after it launched; it was so embarrassingly low that they wouldn't even release sales number for it.

Hey, for fun, let's all visit: www.amazon.com/firephone and see what we find (spoiler: 404)

 

[boswald]

Not even as an "Apple fan", but as a regular consumer, I can honestly say those look cheap and I'd never buy them. They could be improved upon, for sure.