These crazy new headphones turn into a wireless speaker – and cost less than you might think

If you're a cash strapped audio lover, you might struggle to decide between a decent pair of headphones or a portable wireless speaker. It's a tough choice – do you want to keep your music in or share it with the world?

Fortunately, that choice may soon be a thing of the past, with a novel new product launched at CES 2026. The TDM Neo is a cross between a portable speaker and a pair of headphones, which can morph between both states at any time.

Simply twisting the cans turns them from an over-ear design into a small, almost spherical speaker. It's a natty idea, and one which should allow users to take one device for all of their listening needs.

Judging by the specs, it's not going to be a slouch when it comes to performance, either. A whopping 200+ hour battery life is suggested for headphone usage, though bizarrely, that drops to just 10 hours of speaker usage. Still, that should be more than enough for most use cases.

The design makes use of a quartet of 40mm drivers – two facing inwards, for use when using them as headphones, and two pointing outwards for driving sound in speaker format.

Elsewhere, you'll find a USB-C port, which offers fast charging. Just five minutes of top up time gives eight hours of use, though it'll take three hours for a full charge. There's a microphone for calls, and the device is compatible popular voice assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google. There's even a 3.5mm aux jack.

Available in both black and white colourways, the TDM Neo will cost US$249 (approx. £185 / €210 / AU$370). That's certainly not too expensive for decent audio equipment, and is especially impressive given the unique design on offer.

We'll have to retain any further judgement for a later date after we've given them a go.