Tech-N-Things

I’ve been discussing this all of 2024. Companies like Cambridge Audio, Earfun, and others have been posting record-breaking tech for battery life results. They have stepped up their sound quality and feature set to the point that the lack of efforts by Sony, Sennheiser, and other high-cost earphones wasn’t acceptable anymore. Tech that was previously tied into license agreements was being released to the masses, and lower-cost brand companies’ earphones were getting these features in their products month by month. It was getting to the point that these companies were flat out embarrassing the results that the brands like Sony’s and others were putting out. It made no sense that a company that charged $100 for their products were putting out better battery life numbers and matching features while others charged double or triple for less.

I celebrated these brands because they were going to lead the way to great change and challenge the big brand mindset of just giving us the basics and expecting us to pay more for it. Even brands like Bose, which was the first of the big brands to correct their direction and add more, yet charge less, had to make changes. Their move put a lot of pressure on others to make corrections to their path as well. And now we have Sony’s first dive into their new earphones, the WF-C710N. This contains better looks, better features, and way better price than even I expected from Sony, at $119. Way to go, Sony! But more importantly, thank you to brands like Cambridge, Earfun, and Bose for jumping in and changing the narrative of earphones prices and battery life specs. It’s about time we get more for our money.

This leaves Sennheiser on the waiting table and, of course, the Sony WF lineup for earphones. We typically get a more expensive set from the Sony WF lineup, but one thing’s for sure, they better not reverse their efforts and give us 5-7 hours of battery life again. Signs point to a very competitive space for Bluetooth devices. Personally, I think we have gotten to the point that Sound is no longer the biggest thing that separates choices anymore. You can very easily be just as happy with Earfun as you are with Sony at this stage. I think the bigger things like features, battery life, and cost are going to play more of part to people’s choices more than ever. I think more and more people are starting to ask the big brands the question, “WHY are they able to do this and you can’t?”