CES 2023 is the first in-person Consumer Electronics Show since 2020, and we are seeing all the same kinds of wild and whacky tech devices we have come to love from the show. This year there are a bunch of new companies and concepts as well, which we will comb through over the next couple of weeks Bandwidth Blog. The Poly Voyager Free 60+ earbuds is one of those quirky entries at CES 2023, and comes with several innovative features.
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It is really difficult to stand out in the wireless earbuds market these days, with entries from almost every major tech company. However, the Voyager Free 60+ earbuds from Poly has a true wireless charging case with a display on it for adjusting playback and other settings and is able to broadcast audio from the case to the earbuds while jacked into a traditional wired audio device.
Broadcast mode allows you to use the included 3.5mm to USB-C cable to connect the case to an older device with a headphone jack. The major use case the company highlighted for broadcast mode is when you’re on a flight – you simply use the 3.5mm to USB-C cable to plug the case into the plane’s headphone jack and then use your wireless earbuds to listen to the content displayed on the screen. There is therefore no use to carry an additional wired headset or use the (usually) cheap and uncomfortable headset provided by the airline.
The display on the charging case also gives you some interesting features not available on other wireless earbuds. By tapping and swiping on the display, you can quickly do things like adjust volume, toggle ANC, check battery status, switch between paired devices and more. The battery status will show the how much charge each separate earbud has remaining, as well as the charging case (a very useful feature for those that don’t necessarily use both earbuds at the same time).
The Poly Voyager Free 60+ is also capable of remembering up to eight different devices (with two being paired at the same time), which makes multi-device management is a cinch.
