Irresistibly beautiful wireless headphones
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
In January, I featured Apple’s extraordinary “true wireless” AirPods Pro. Remarkable they are, but with their silly little tails poking downwards, I still feel self-conscious in them. And they continue to fall out of my ears – I produced a quite brilliant slip-catch in the loo on a BA flight a while back to prevent the right AirPod Pro disappearing irretrievably. And as I predicted – and this, of course, is not Apple’s fault – cases have occurred of thieves coming up behind wearers and appropriating their AirPods with ease.
No such issues, I suspect, with my favourite true-wireless earbuds of last year, the quietly inconspicuous and hyper-retentive-in-the-ear MW07s from New York’s Master & Dynamic. These have now been updated in the MW07 Plus, with enhanced battery life, noise cancelling and an ambient listening mode not unlike Apple’s terrific transparency setting, with which you can be aware of the sounds around you while still listening to music. I also believe the Plus version sounds even better, although M&D doesn’t claim such an improvement – perhaps to avoid irritating people who have only just bought the non-Plus version.
And for those wanting a further enhancement of the already enhanced MW07s, there are these Horizon phones by Louis Vuitton. These custom MW07 Pluses come in a beautiful Vuitton-designed form, with an equally stylish new charger box based on a Vuitton watch case. I don’t normally hold with style-heavy versions of tech, but these are so beautifully executed as to be irresistible.
Horizon headphones come, LV logo-resplendent, in red, white, black, pink and fluorescent yellow variations. Now, admittedly, this makes them quite the opposite of inconspicuous, but you weren’t really going to wear them on the Tube, were you? Great fun and, with the warm Master & Dynamic sound from 10mm beryllium drivers, a terrific listen too.
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