Editorials

Everyone seems to be making this wireless earbud claim – look out

Hey all, this is a dual purpose post for me to inform you of a style of claim several wireless earbud manufacturers are making (and why it’s pretty much useless marketing hype,) and also for me to learn the new WordPress editor because, well, I clicked update and now I need to learn the new style.

I will point out I’m giving two examples below, but I have no ill will against these and am not attempting to shame them, I just saw these claims and, well, they’re slightly misleading. They’re not the first ones I saw today, however they’re the ones I can find at time of writing.

OK, following is the 100 hour playtime wireless earbuds by Surge, you can find them here if you so desire. I’m not putting them down, just going to pick on the 100 hours total play time claim (which is real, but may not be what you’re thinking).

100 hour playtime - for some reason we don't have an alt tag here

The next are some 70 hour earbuds, currently available on Amazon here. They claim 70+ hours.

61ozoq9eP3L. SL1500 1 - for some reason we don't have an alt tag here

I could keep going on, but the short end of it is the claims are high number of hours of use on a charge and that’s what I think needs addressed.

They’re technically correct. You can probably get 70, 100, probably 8,760 hours of playtime with today’s battery technology if you wanted. 

But, it’s not in a row.

These little earbuds generally have two tiny batteries. These batteries hold a few mAh worth of juice and generally have to recharge about every three to four hours.

Now, that’s not a huge dealbreaker, but remember that at the end of the four hours if you’re actually using them, you’re going to have to place the earbuds in the charging case and charge them. This can be as little as a 30 minute endeavor all the way up to two hours from what I’ve read.

So yeah, 3000mAh included battery charging case can give you 60 hours of life, 4 hours at a time with charge breaks up to two hours each time. It’s nto what I would call 60 hours of playtime however, it’s what I’d call 4 hours of playtime 15 times.

But I don’t think any manufacturer is going to pop out with their 3.5 hour actual playtime between charges when everyone is claiming 70+ hours. All you have to do is add another bit of weight to the charging case and you can claim all the hours you want, but it’s not actual playtime in a row.

Really what you want to know when it comes to playtime is how long can you play on one charge, then how many charges can you do, and how long do these charges take. Marketing targets that second question as big numbers there look good.

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Paul E King

Paul King started with GoodAndEVO in 2011, which merged with Pocketables, and as of 2018 he's evidently the owner. He lives in Nashville, works at a film production company, is married with two kids. Facebook | Twitter | Donate | More posts by Paul | Subscribe to Paul's posts

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