Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

Microsoft Surface Earbuds will launch May 6, according to reports

By

It’s unofficially official. The Microsoft Surface Earbuds are on their way to the open market.

According to German site WinFuture, Microsoft’s new, $250 true wireless earbuds are set to launch May 6 across many European countries. Microsoft hasn’t confirmed this release date, but it falls in line with an announcement from Microsoft Chief Product Officer Panos Panay that the buds were to be delayed until spring 2020.

Recommended Videos

Recently, the manual for the new buds went through the Federal Communications Commission, which only feeds the belief that the Surface Earbuds are almost here. The manual details such things as the touch gestures for the buds, as well as the different-sized eartips.

Related

The Surface Earbuds were originally unveiled at the company’s annual October Surface hardware event in 2019, and we spent some time testing them out. Beyond what they can do as traditional earbuds, the Surface Earbuds had some interesting capabilities when paired with a Windows laptop.

Dual, directional microphones in the earbuds can record your voice and upload it into the cloud, with the ability to translate the audio into 60 different languages. If it works as proposed, a presentation in a foreign country could be narrated so foreign speakers could understand it.

The buds have several other features, including a responsive touch surface that allows you to skip tracks, adjust volume, or make phone calls among other things. Microsoft says they’ll pack eight hours of run time in a single charge, with three additional charges in the included case to total an entire day’s worth of listening.

The Surface Earbuds will have an IPX4 waterproof rating, giving them protection against splashes and sweat. They support audio codecs SBC and aptX, and in our limited time listening to them, we noted that they sounded surprisingly good.

The buds will come with their own charging case, three pairs of silicone ear tips, a USB-C charging cable, and the standard quick start guide and warranty documents. Speaking of which, Microsoft says they’ll come with a 1-year limited hardware warranty.

Updated on May 1, 2020: Added news that the manual has gone through the FCC. 

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Nick Woodard
Nick Woodard
Former Digital Trends Contributor
  As an A/V Staff Writer at Digital Trends, Nick Woodard covers topics that include 4K HDR TVs, headphones…
AMD may soon launch a new GPU, but it’s probably not the one you think
AMD Radeon RX 6500XT graphics cards stacked on top of each other.

After months of silence, it seems that AMD might be readying a new graphics card -- but it's not the one most of us expected to see.

Instead of following the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT with an RX 7800 XT, AMD appears to be moving down a couple of notches. Rumor has it that its next GPU will be the RX 7600.

Read more
Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Studio 2 might get a massive performance boost
The new Bing preview screen appears on a Surface Laptop Studio.

A mysterious laptop was spotted in an impressive Geekbench 5 benchmark, and many signs point to it being the next-gen Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2.

The test gives us the first bits of insight into the laptop's specifications. If everything checks out, we're going to see a huge performance jump in this upcoming generation.

Read more
Nothing might launch new hi-res earbuds at CES under the XO brand
Particles by XO leaked render.

With two models under its belt -- the Ear 1 and the Ear Stick -- Carl Pei's Nothing brand is no stranger to wireless earbuds. But the maverick smartphone company might be planning something a little different for 2023. It seems as though it's readying its third model of wireless earbuds, according to a tweet from developer Kuba Wojciechowski that was reported by 91mobiles.com. Wojciechowski claims to have found references within Nothing's firmware and also managed to unearth what are claimed to be renders of the as-yet-unannounced product.

Known as "Particles by XO," the wireless earbuds have a unique, peanut-like shape reminiscent of the Sony LinkBuds. Though unlike the LinkBuds, which use a doughnut-shaped driver that allows external sounds to be heard clearly, the Particles use a traditional ear canal-sealing design. The report suggests that these will be active noise-canceling buds, which is consistent with the silicone-tipped design.

Read more