Microsoft Surface Earbuds comfort at a cost-gadgets info 180

 Surface Earbuds

They're the Surface earbuds, and they're the company's first attempt at a fully wireless in an earbud. And seven months later, they're finally available for an asking price of 200 dollars. But in the time that they announced them to the time they finally shipped them, we have seen so much happen in the wireless earbud world. And, these little guys, they might be too little, too late.

 Surface earbuds also have USB-C port:

So let's get into it. The Surface earbuds come in a large plastic pill-shaped case that looks a lot like a giant Tic Tac. It has a USB-C port, a pairing button, and on the inside, an indicator light. Currently, there is one color option that Microsoft calls light gray or glacier, but, these are bright white. They come in white. With dark gray coming later. Because there's no wireless charging, the case is really light. And, the click feels more like a slap of two plastics than it does a click. 

It's also a little hard to get the buds out of the case because there are no grooves to get your finger under when you attempt to detach the buds from the magnets that are holding them in. You have to be able to get leverage on like a really slim piece of the bud that actually sticks out of the case. I was able to get the hang of it, but I could see people actually having trouble with this. Now, the buds themselves are, unique. Overall the design just looks like, a pop socket. A flat, satellite looking exterior, and a bike seat-Esque earpiece. 

They're IPX4 water-resistant, so you should be good in some light rain, should definitely be fine working out in them. And you have three size option for tips. Small, medium, and large. And, y'all I gotta be honest, I rock the medium size tip, and these fit really well and they're actually super comfortable. I went hours upon hours of wearing these things and never really felt them in my ears, or experienced any discomfort. No one ear is the same. And there are gonna be people that these are simply not gonna work for. But, I started slacklining recently and I've been wearing these while doing that. And since I'm very new to the sport, my arms are going everywhere, I'm constantly falling off the line. And these never fell out once. 

So from dancing to chewing to running, these stayed in my ears. But, since they stick so far out of my ears, go to put a backpack on, goto take a sweatshirt off, and these come off too. And when you pay a lot of money for a piece of tech, it is quite horrifying to see them tumble down the sidewalk. I just overall wish that they didn't stick out of my ear, quite as far. But with how far these stick out of your ear, there's one thing that they should definitely be good at, and that's picking up your voice. 

Surface Earbuds noise cancelation:

It's time for the mic test, and this time, kitchen edition. All right, so friends today we have, the Microsoft Surface buds. Samsung Buds Plus. We got the Google Pixel buds. And then I gotta be honest guys, I still take calls wired Apple headphones, because, I think this is the gold standard of microphones. All right, so first with no noise in the background, these are the Surface earbuds. These are the Pixel Buds that were also recently released. With these, it was all about them not being super comfortable to wear for a long time, but god I love that Google Assistant. Man, whenever I put the galaxy Bud Pluses back on I'm like,  these are pretty comfortable, "these feel right in my ears." I know it's a weird addiction to this competition, but, I have to admit friends, like when I wanna take a call and I need to know that someone can hear me, I just pull these out. 

The reason I chose the kitchen to do this mic test is that there's one thing I do a lot of while talking on the phone, and just do a lot of in general, and that's washing my hands. (water rushing) You know I'm just out here, trying to be clean, trying to follow that 20-second life. That was something that I always overlook. I hope that this handwashing continues after COVID, I hope that everyone keeps up on it. Oh, my hands are gonna be really dry at the end of this test.
 Everyone's always got a lot of opinions about the mic test and, so I'll see ya down there. Let me know what you thought, and what you would use if you could use any of these, for just the microphone alone. 

Which one would you pick? 

A can big feature of these buds though is their integration with Microsoft Office. So in Outlook you can read, reply, and delete emails. And then in PowerPointyou can use your left bud to swipe to the next slide, and also play videos. You can also utilize the mic inside of these for live translations in PowerPoint, but that is not unique to these buds. Any mic can do that within PowerPoint. Unfortunately, though, you have to run Windows 10 in order to use these with PowerPoint. And, in quarantine, I don't have a device that runs Windows 10.

 So I didn't get to make the killer PowerPoint that I wanted to make for all to test these out with. But, maybe in the next generation of these because, not gonna lie my powerpoints are incredible. I did find the touch controls to be a bit finicky. Double-tap on either bud for play pause and to answer end calls. Tap and hold on either bud to activate a digital assistant. And then on the right bud, swipe up to turn up the volume, and down to turn down the volume. And then on the left bud, you swipe forward to go to the next track and swipe back for the previous.

 These controls just weren't really intuitive to me. I wanted to be able to swipe up and down and side to side on both buds. And then I also wished it was a single tap for play pause rather than a double-tap. And then within the app, there's no way to customize these either. So you'll just have to get used to them. And lastly, when you're swiping on them it's really easy to catch the edge of the bud since it's so far out of your ear.

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 And then, send it flying out of your ear. Yo, but let's talk audio quality. Now, these buds have 13.6-millimeter drivers. And, they sound good. I've been jammin' to a whole bunch of summer pop hits that I'm a total sucker for. And a lot of Motown. And then, of course, there always some acoustic stuff there too. And I'll link that playlist down below like I did on the buds review. These can handle all of that. And the bass is definitely more there than say on the Pixel Buds. 

But, overall it just sounds like it's coming from a smaller speaker. It didn't feel as full. And there wasn't as much separation in the highs and the lows as I was looking for. But within the app, there are fully customizable EQ settings which I super appreciate. Because there's no in-ear detection, sometimes it starts saying directions to you before you have them in your ears. 

That lack of in-ear detection also means that when you take your buds out, whatever you're listening to won't stop. And there's also active noise cancellation. And, because of their design, they just let a lot of sounds through. From the headphones I have available to me, it most closely resembles the amount of sound that my wired Apple headphones let through. I really don't think it was Microsoft's intention to block all outside noise with these.

 I mean if you're giving a presentation and you're using these as your clicker, you don't wanna be blocking all of the noise around you. But, if you're using these in an open office or you're on a commute, that same quality is much less ideal. And I really can't imagine choosing these to fly with. I was really impressed with this Bluetooth connection though. You can use either headphone independently and I never experienced Bluetooth dropout like I usually do with buds and my Android device. And there's no noticeable lag when watching movies or playing games either.

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 The Surface audio app shows the battery life of your buds, but not the case, and houses device settings, along with updates and video tutorials. There's a notification that pops up once you've connected your buds to your phone and you open the app. This notification says that it's helping keep your buds connected to your device, but, I super hate having notifications. So I disabled them for this app on my phone, and I didn't experience any problems with my headphones dropping out or EQ settings changing for that matter.

Surface Earbuds Price:

Microsoft claims that the Surface earbuds have around eight hours of continuous listening time on a single charge with two additional charges in the case. A 10-minute quick charge can provide up to one hour of additional battery life. In my test, I found that the battery life was really good. But when taking a lot of calls with them, the battery drained much quicker. And I'm really confused as to why there isn't wireless charging in this case. Especially for 200 dollars.

 But that's kinda the story of these headphones for me. Since October 2019 a lot of new earbuds have come out. I mean we've seen earbuds from Sony, Samsung, Apple, I mean even Amazon and Google have put out wireless earbuds. So, by the time these actually got to market, well, we've seen a lot of great competition come in. And for 200 dollars, while these headphones can definitely compete audio-wise, they're just missing some features. 

Like wireless charging. And on top of that, these are really big earbuds.  

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