Everything comes with WiFi these days — your phone, your laptop, your camera. And now, your headphones can come packing WiFi, too, with the Koss Striva.
Instead of piping tunes over Bluetooth, all signals are passed over WiFi. That way, you can get your music straight from the internet with no middleman device needed, provided you’ve got an active WiFi connection within range. It can only play stations from Koss’ MyKoss online portal, though, although their offering should be as robust as most standard internet radio aggregators anyway.
Two models of the headphones are available: Striva TAP (in-ear) and Striva Pro (over-ear). Both come with built-in WiFi, along with a transmitter called CAP (contact access point) that plugs into a standard mini-jack. Using the CAP isn’t needed when streaming tunes from online, but you’ll need to use them to listen to audio from local sources, like your phone, laptop or CD player. The headphones feature a frequency range of 10 Hz and 20,000 Hz, with an operating range of 300 feet from the WiFi source or CAP plugging location. Unfortunately, the onboard battery is only good for up to 2 hours on a full charge, making the headphones a tad unusable for extended use on the road.
While directly connecting to your phone over WiFi is the ideal scenario, the CAP is small enough to make any hassles a minor one. Plus, with Koss’ badge, the output from here should sound plenty sweet, making this a pretty good choice of headphones for use at home or on your workstation.
Both models of the Koss Striva are available now, with the TAP retailing for $500 and the Pro for $450.
[Koss]