Back in January, Sennheiser issued a press release about its new product: a completely wireless earphone system. And it’s about to be a reality. In May 2008, the MX W1 will be officially released.
The system consists of 2 earpieces, a small transmitter roughly the size of a lighter, which connects to your digital music player via a stereo jack; and a carrying case which doubles as the on-the-go charging station. This means that if your earphones run out of juice, you can plug it into the portable charging stations and recharge it up to 3 times without it being connected to any power source.
Since wireless connectivity consumes a lot of power, I wouldn’t expect this system to last very long on the move. And right I am – the earphones only last 3 hours per charge while the transmitter will endure 10 hours. And they will recharge from nil to full in about 2 hours.
There is a cool feature although slightly confusing, I must say. The transmitter has the option to transmit to up to 2 pairs of earphones at the same time, sharing the same sound source. And since this whole system works on a Plug-and-Play basis, how does it accomplish this feat? Does this even mean that there will be interference when 2 separate systems are nearby each other? I haven’t figured this one out yet.
And like most wireless headphones/earphones, this system works over a 2.4Ghz link. So, I won’t expect the sound to be brilliant. But then again, what would you normally be doing with wireless earphones? Jogging? I doubt that most people will hear the difference anyway.
I do know one thing, though. It looks sexy.