- The charging case can charge your phone too
- Distinctive hinged design
- £179.99 (about $227 / AU$365)
HMD’s new Amped Buds are very different from your average earbuds: the buds themselves have a very distinctive hinged design instead of the AirPods style of so many headphones. And their charging case looks more like a power bank than an earbuds case – because that’s exactly what it is.
The charging case is also a Qi2 wireless power bank with a 1,600mAh battery, and that’s a very beefy battery for a case – so beefy in fact that if you only use it for charging your earbuds, you can expect nearly 100 hours of playback time before you need to hunt for a USB-C charger.
To clarify, 1,600mAh isn’t as big the battery you’ll get in a dedicated power bank – they tend to come in multiples of 10,000mAh – but it’s enough to charge an iPhone 16 Pro to about 20%, so still pretty useful if you’re running dangerously low on juice.
HMD Amped Buds: key features and pricing
The quoted battery life is 95 hours, although as ever that’s with ANC off: put the noise cancelling on and you can expect a still impressive 58 hours. The buds by themselves will run for 8.1 hours without ANC and 4.9 hours with.
Of course it doesn’t matter how long the battery lasts if your earbuds don’t sound good. But the drivers here are 10mm so they should be pretty punchy, and the buds support Snapdragon Sound; there are also three mics for clear voice calling and for yelling at your chosen virtual assistant.
Bluetooth is 5.4 with fast pairing, and on Android there’s support for Find My Device. They’re IP54 rated for dust and water resistance and you can choose from black, cyan or pink.
We don’t have news of a US launch or pricing as yet, but the HMD Amped Buds will be £179.99 in the UK and €199.99 in Europe. The UK launch will be “VERY soon”, HMD says.
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