The best true wireless earbuds just got some serious competition. The new Orbit earbuds come from a firm famous for its high-end in-ear monitors, Campfire Audio, and they promise to deliver seriously impressive audio performance for a surprisingly low price: just $249 / £249. When you consider that IEMs from Campfire can cost thousands, that's pretty much Poundland prices.
These new earbuds feature 10mm full-range drivers with a liquid crystal polymer diaphragm, something Campfire Audio says provides real depth and low-end power without sacrificing clarity – and with Bluetooth 5.2 including aptX Adaptive it can make the most of your smartphone's audio app.
Serious specification for a surprisingly low price
Early reviews suggest that the Orbits deliver an impressively three-dimensional sound stage with tight, powerful bass, strong mids and a slightly reserved high end, although you can adjust that with the Orbit's companion app if you want a bit more air up top. Campfire has clearly been sending its review units to audiophile sites first, and the consensus is that these are very impressive earbuds: according to HiFiHeadphones.co.uk "the sound is massive. It slams [with] bass that drops low and punches high."
In addition to the impressive audio performance there's 8.5 hours between charges, plus another 30 hours via the Qi-enabled charging case, and the Orbits have a design that's noticeably different from most other premium in-ears.
The Campfire Audio Orbit earbuds are available now from Campfire Audio and retailers including Amazon.
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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).
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