Surface Earbuds finally arrive on May 12th for $199
Microsoft is finally ready to sell these odd-looking buds.
Microsoft unveiled a pair of unique-looking truly wireless earbuds in October, and the company is finally ready to start selling them. The Surface Earbuds will go on sale on May 12th for $199, and you can pre-order them today. That’s $50 less than the $249 that Microsoft said the buds would cost at its launch event, which is a pleasant surprise. The company also promised the device would be available last holiday season, though, so perhaps the lower price makes up for the delay.
As a refresher, the Surface Earbuds are Microsoft’s entrant to the popular true wireless earphones space. They’re larger than the likes of the Pixel Buds, Echo Buds or AirPods Pro, looking like gages you stuff into your ear canal. Microsoft designed a sort of “key-into-lock” system here that has you turn the buds into your ear cavities to lock them in place.
Of course, being a Microsoft product, the Surface Earbuds feature integration with Office 365 software. You can use them to live caption your PowerPoint slides, dictate documents and emails in Word or Outlook, as well as have your incoming messages read to you from Outlook. When paired with an Android device, the Surface Earbuds offer deeper Spotify controls, so you can instantly play songs from the app with a triple tap on either bud. You can use these headphones with Windows, Android and iOS.
Microsoft promises “all-day battery” with the included charging case, with the device itself lasting up to eight hours per charge. At $199, the Surface Earbuds are priced much closer to the Pixel Buds and AirPods, and appears to offer more smart features than the competition. But we’ll need to wait for a full review to assess just how well those tools work.
