Bang & Olufsen’s new wireless earbuds are improved in every way that matters

Bang & Olufsen is known as a manufacturer of fancy, well-designed hi-fi products, but the company’s latest pair of earbuds seem to have been created with a very pragmatic reasoning: fix all the pain points of today’s earbuds. 

First, the B&O Beoplay E8 3rd generation (the company kept the same name for the product since its original launch in 2017) are 17 percent lighter than their predecessor and weigh only 5.8 grams per piece. Don’t worry, they still sport the B&O logo.

Battery life’s been improved as well. The earbuds now last for seven hours on a single charge, and the charging case offers four additional chargers for a total of 35 hours of playtime. Pretty darn good, considering Apple’s AirPods Pro have an advertised total of 24 hours. The charging case itself is leather-clad and charges in two hours, and it can also be charged wirelessly (though the $125 B&O-branded charging pad is optional). 

The E8 now have four microphones (as opposed to just two on the previous generation) which should improve sound clarity during phone conversations as well as suppress ambient noise. 

I can’t vouch for the sound as I haven’t tried them out, but previous generations of the E8 sounded pretty good. The earbuds support both ACC and aptX codecs for high-quality audio, and play nice with both iOS and Android devices. 

B&O’s Beoplay E8 earbuds are available in Black and Grey Mist for $350.