True wireless earbuds have made it truly convenient to keep your earphones on all day. The lack of cables makes them impossible to catch on to anything. They’re so small, they’re unintrusive. And most now offer transparency mode, so you can hear everything around you clearly with a single tap. And if you’re going to wear your true wireless earbuds all day, you’ll probably want them to look as normal as possible. That’s exactly the idea behind the Nova H1 Audio Earrings.
Unlike your standard true wireless earbuds, these things don’t pop into your ears and dangle out of it while you go about your day. Instead, they wear on your ears like a pair of pearl earrings, allowing them to blend into your outfit like everyday jewelry.
The Nova H1 Audio Earrings wear like a pair of clip-on earrings, so you simply snap them onto your ears to securely mount them. While it is fitted with actual freshwater pearl, those pearls also serve as speaker housings containing the built-in drivers and electronic components that direct the sound they produce towards your ear canal. That’s right, it’s like those Bose Frames, which come with built-in speakers on the temple that deliver sound to your ears, albeit in earring form, which should make them a good option for folks who don’t like wearing sunglasses.
Truth be told, we love this as a solution for all-day earbuds. The proximity of the drivers to the ear canal means it should be able to direct sound really well, all while looking like a standard part of most attires. We imagine it’s a lot more comfortable than Sony’s equally open Linkbuds, too, since you don’t actually put anything directly in your ear canals, making it an even more suitable option for all-day wear.
The Nova H1 Audio Earrings are also available with actual studs, in case you want use them with your piercings. Both clip and stud versions are available in either silver- or gold-plated hardware, so this looks like proper jewelry, rather than an audio gadget. Each earring, by the way, is also fitted with two ultra-sensitive microphones with MEMS technology, so you can use this to take phone calls and bark voice commands at your phone assistant. Since it’s not going inside your ears, there’s no point in ANC, so you’re not going to tune out any kind of noise when using this to listen to your favorite playlists.
Apparently, there’s an integrated somewhere there for the user to interact with the earbuds, allowing you to take calls, control playback, and call on your digital assistant with a single press. The onboard battery, on the other hand, is rated at 3.5 hours of music playback, with the charging case holding another 10.5 hours’ worth. Of course, having only 3.5 hours means you’ll probably need to take this off at some point during the day to recharge, which, we guess, kind of ruins the whole all-day selling point. According to the outfit, the battery is replaceable, too, allowing you to keep using it down the line even when it can no longer hold a charge.
The Nova H1 Audio Earrings are slated to come out later in the year, priced at €695 for the gold variants and €595 for the silver.