A very crowded market, and one more player… But not just any player: Amazon is launching its Echo Buds in France on February 24th. Earphones true-wireless marketed for a long time already in the Anglo-Saxon countries, with which the American giant hopes to nibble some market share from Apple.
Amazon has a strong argument for this: the price. The Echo Buds are marketed at 120 euros, and even at an even lower launch price, at 80 euros. A low price for a product that benefits from active noise reduction and certain refinements, such as Alexa support.
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Alexa at the controls
Because, obviously, Amazon’s voice assistant is at the heart of this product’s promise. Once the headphones are in your ears, you can invoke it with the keyword “Alexa” to launch a playlist, call a contact, start playing an audio book, etc. You must of course install the Alexa application on your phone to take advantage of all this.
We will have to test the device to take the measure of its audio performance and its noise reduction technology, which can be activated or deactivated with a long press on one of the headphones.
Amazon promises five hours of battery life per charge with noise canceling turned on, and two additional charges when storing the earbuds in their case. Here again. We will have to verify this promise. The case charges via a USB-C cable; a version compatible with wireless charging is also available, but is a little more expensive: 140 euros. Pre-orders are open at this address.