Quick Summary
Forget dual-driver earbuds, the Noble FoKus Rex5 headphones have five in each ear.
That promises to be very impressive audio for wireless earbuds.
Noble, the high end audio firm, has launched its best earbuds yet – and they have more drivers than a golfing weekend at Silverstone.
Where many headphone firms consider dual-driver earbuds to be pretty fancy, the Noble FoKus Rex5 pair have five drivers in each bud. Noble says they're the firm's most advanced product ever.
Each Rex5 bud is configured with 1 dynamic driver, 1 planar driver and three balanced armature drivers that Noble claims "deliver remarkable depth and clarity of sound". They also have impressive audio support and active noise cancellation.
I love the look of these earbuds and their charging case. The jade green of the case and stems is a change from the pastels, black and beige of so many rivals, and the gold-coloured highlights make them look like little jewels.
Noble FoKus Rex5 headphones: specs, price and availability
The Rex5 have a frequency response of 20Hz to an airy 40kHz and support all the key codecs, including aptX Adaptive and Sony's LDAC for high quality streaming.
They also integrate the sound personalisation system from Audiodo, which calibrates the headphones' output based on the sensitivity of each of your ears.
That calibration is then stored in the headphones' internal memory so is consistent across sound sources without requiring you to use the Noble app. Noble says it's particularly good for people with uneven hearing as it delivers a balanced audio experience.
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Battery life is five hours with ANC and seven without. The charging case adds another 40 hours of listening time. Fast charging takes the buds from flat to two hours of play time in just 15 minutes.
The ANC has the obligatory transparency mode and the Bluetooth version here is 5.4 with multipoint connectivity.
The Noble FoKus Rex5 wireless earbuds are available to order now and will start shipping on 29 November.
Pricing is £419 / $449 / €499 – about AU$813.
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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