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Huawei’s FreeBuds Studio arrive before Apple’s rumoured over-ear AirPods

We’ve been big fans of lots of Huawei’s audio products so far and with the launch of FreeBuds Studio it’s taking things up a notch.

Announced before Apple is expected to unveil a pair of ‘Studio’-labelled headphones, the FreeBuds Studio is Huawei’s first pair of over-ear cans and they come with high-end features and a sleek design.

While Huawei didn’t delve too much into these headphones during the big Mate 40 reveal, we did get a few bits of information. The FreeBuds Studio will come in a duo of colours (gold and black) and have a slim aluminium band connecting the two soft earcups. Those earcups also house the controls for skipping tracks, pausing tunes and so on. From the images Huawei showed, these look like a good looking pair of headphones.

Related: Best wireless headphones

Active noise cancellation (ANC) is onboard and Huawei said during the event these will cancel out up to 40db of noise. There are six microphones here, along with a dual-antenna system. Huawei’s ANC impressed with the FreeBuds Pro so it’ll be interesting to see how these compare to big-hitters from the likes of Sony and Bose.

Battery life is quoted at 24 hours, with a short 10 minute charge over USB C giving you 8 hours of juice. You can also have them connected to two devices at once, and this works across iOS, macOS and Windows – along with Huawei and other Android phones.

Huawei didn’t divulge any release information, however we do know these will retail for 299 euros which certainly like some aggressive pricing. The show also saw the Mate 40 Pro announced, with its huge camera sensor, massive curved OLED display and 5nm Kirin 9000 chipset with a built-in 5G modem. There’s a fancy Pro Plus version of the phone too, with an even more impressive zoom lens.

Apple is also said to be releasing a pair of over-ear headphones later this year and rumours are they will be called AirPods Studio.

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