The introductory pricing period for the 2nd-gen Echo Buds, which dropped their price down to $99.99, appears to have ended. At midnight this morning, the new wireless earbuds from Amazon increased to their regular list price of $119.99 to coincide with today’s release. A few hours later, the 1st-gen Echo Buds dropped from their list price of $129.99 to $79.99, which matches the lowest price they’ve ever been. Reviews for the new Echo Buds are fairly positive and generally conclude that they’re great for the price but you can do better if you’re willing to spend $50-$70 more. Chris Welch from The Verge scored the new Echo Buds an 8.5 out of 10, whereas he gave the old ones an 8.0. Engadget’s Billy Steele scored the new earbuds an 80 out of 100 and the old ones a 73.
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Got mine yesterday. For $99 they certainly don’t disappoint. They stay in place better than the old ones. You’d be crazy to think that spending 40% more will get you earbuds that are 40% better. More like 10%. For some people it might be worth it but I spent 5 hours listening to them while putting primer on the trim of my house and they did a great job of blocking out the outside world.
So these appear to be back to the $119.99 price, however I can’t tell right off the bat what is different about them, other than the more awkward looking case? I’m happy with the 1st gen bud I got for the $79 or whatever it was around Black Friday… and wouldn’t be looking to “upgrade” anyhow, but I was curious to see what was “improved” and I can’t tell based on the product pages at first glance…
Noise canceling is in-house now and not a Bose license and seems better. The big change and plus for me from 1st Gen to 2nd Gen is the smaller size and more comfortable fit. Shorter and vented entry into ear and a 20% smaller size overall makes for a vast improvement in comfort. Went for an hour run this morning and these were so much more comfortable from beginning to end of the hour. Barely felt them in my ear throughout. FYI. I am returning my original 1st Gen Echo Buds and if they agree with my assessment of the condition, I will get a $20 trade-in value credited to my account.
The first gen was good while they lasted. After 3 months there was a high pitched screech when no audio was playing. Amazon sent a new pair, but after looking online I saw this is a common issue. Bought a cheap pair of oneplus buds as a backup but I kinda prefer them to Amazon. It’s more compact. Sound is good and battery’s fine.
I didn’t have a high pitch screech with mine but it would somehow do a weird audio thing. After using them for some time one bud would shut off for a second or two then come back on and the same thing would happen on the other bud. I’m guessing it has to do something with the battery life as both buds were never close to being charged at the same amount when looking in the app. As one would die quicker than the other one if you completely drained them.
Doesn’t seem like a good move in such an oversaturated market.
There are other buds that have Alexa too like the ones from technics
and now they are closer in price and I really hate the stupid amazon smile logo on them.
Other than that they look good, I am considering them but I already have so many true wireless buds, but not with Alexa and Google assistant has been broken forever now so that is the only thing driving me toward another pair of buds.
Pricing them this high makes me more likely to consider other options though like
the technics which are not much more than this.
I think I am still going to wait before buying a pricy pair of buds,
I am good with my cheap pairs and will be especially if Google gets off their asses and finally fix their dumpster fire known as Google Assistant.
I really can’t see how they plan on releasing a new generation of pixel buds when they can’t even get their assistant to work on their own god damn phones and Google assistant integration is touted as the big selling feature of pixel buds.
“hey google” has been broken on ALL my Google phones for like a year now,
it hasn’t worked since they got rid of trusted voice , even when summoning it with touch controls on my buds it doesn’t work right 90% of the time now
it’s just hot garbage
I tried it on my nexus 6p, pixel 3A XL, pixel 5 , it doesn’t work on any of them.
I’m so glad I never bough the last gen pixel buds especially for that rip off price they were asking.
Hopefully they finally get around to fixing their POS assistant for the new pixel buds release or else they might as well not even bother because people are getting fed up now , even when the assistant was working when the last model came out all of the assistant features they promised like translations never worked, but that is Google for you promise the moon deliver a jawbreaker,
Now I just need then both to work at the same time, ugh…DOA