I'm absolutely in love with the marketing images for Skullcandy's new earbuds, which I hope are deliberately hilarious: the images are here to promote the firm's three new sporty earbuds, two of which feature earhooks in different designs for secure fit, while the third is just an in-ear fit.
The ear-hook designs are the Push Play Active and Push ANC Active, and the in-ears are called the Sesh ANC Active. All three are in the firm's Active Collection and all three are true wireless headphones with prices ranging from $59.99 to $99.99, and look like good candidates to battle the best running headphones.
Push Play Active, Push ANC Active and Sesh ANC Active: key features and prices
The cheapest buds here are the Push Play Active, at $59.99. They're IP55 rated for sweat and water resistance and promise up to 34 hours battery life, 10 with the buds alone and a further 24 via the charging case. There's fast charging – 2 hours of play time from about 10 minutes charging – and an adjustable stay-aware mode to ensure you can hear what's going on around you. The built-in mic has noise cancelation and the buds have multipoint for easy pairing. They have a narrow ear-hook shape that fits around the top of the ear.
The Push ANC Active are $99.99 and as the name suggests add ANC to the Push Play features. Battery life is a still very respectable 37 hours with ANC on (7 hours for the buds, 30 for the case) rising to 58 with the ANC off. They're IP67 rated for sweat and water, charge wirelessly and have adjustable 4-mic noise cancelation for calls. These have a larger ear hook that goes all around the back of the ear.
The third set of buds are the $89.99 Sesh ANC Active. Once again there's multipoint pairing and IP67 water and sweat resistance, adjustable stay-aware mode and impressive battery life: expect up to 28 hours with ANC and 48 without.
All three models are available now from Skullcandy and the usual retailers, and while Skullcandy doesn't take many spots in our list of the best earbuds, the company usually offers good bang for your buck, and these look like well-specced, strong-value buds. We'll give them a test before long to find out for sure.
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