Amazon partnered with Bose to include the audio company's Active Noise Reduction (ANR) technology into the Echo Buds, and to my ears, it works quite well. I also found it easier to ask Alexa to change playback controls than to change ANR/Passthrough. After messing around with the various alternatives, I ended up just going back to the ANR/Passthrough defaults, as I found them most useful for my runs/walks.
Even though those settings are the default, you are able to change what these tap gestures do.įrom the Echo Buds settings inside the Alexa app, you can decide which earbud you want to control things like media playback and play/pause, mute the microphone, or skip tracks. When you do a double tap to change between these modes, there is an audible voiceover that tells you the buds are switching modes, which helps to reassure you that the device picked up on your request. The default settings for tapping the buds will alternate between Active Noise Reduction (which, BTW, they partnered with Bose to achieve) and Passthrough mode (which is their way of letting outside ambient noise in). The touch controls are a pleasure to use, and thankfully you don't have to tap that hard to change states. But now, with products like the Echo Buds, Echo Auto, and Day One devices like the Echo Loop and Echo Frames, Alexa has starting to take her first fragile steps out into the world with us.
With the Fire Phone DOA in 2014 and the Tap not really going anywhere, Amazon was forced to partner with third parties like Bose and Fitbit to get Alexa out into the world.
After the initial Echo speaker launched in late 2014, the next batch of products to come out included the now-defunct Amazon Tap, which was a portable Bluetooth speaker with Alexa built-in. The more complicated answer is that they're part of the company's larger efforts to make their smart assistant even more ubiquitous in the wider world.įrom the smart assistant's earliest days, Amazon recognized the need to remove Alexa from her black cylindrical prison and push her out the front door. You could say that leading up to that announcement, perhaps no device was as widely anticipated as the Echo Buds.īut what are the Echo Buds, you might ask? The simple answer is that they're Amazon's first real attempt at truly wireless smart earbuds. At a jam-packed 2019 fall product launch, Amazon announced over a dozen new Echo and Alexa products to a gathering of tech reporters and enthusiasts, and I, for one, was keen to get my hands on the Echo Buds for review.