Audio-Technica has announced its latest set of true wireless earphones, with the ATH-CKS50TW boasting a lightweight design and “market-leading” battery life.
The new ATH-CKS50TW design comes in at almost twice the price of the ATH-SQ1TW earphones we saw the company release late last year – dropping at £149, compared to £79 for the older (and notably squarer) design – but it does look like you’ll be getting considerably more bang for your buck, with a deeper and more powerful bass performance plus up to 20 hours playback on a single charge.
As mentioned, the ATH-CKS50 earphones can deliver up to 20 hours when fully juiced – though that drops to 15 if you have noise cancelling enabled, with their overall capacity jumping up to 50 hours if you’re able to carry the charging case around with you. We’re also promised that just a 10-minute charge will give you 90 minutes of playback (with noise-cancelling turned off), so you don’t have to plan too far ahead if you fancy taking some music with you on a walk to the park. A full charge is likely to take around three hours.
A Closer Look at the Audio-Technica ATH-CKS50TW Earphones
The simple, yet stylish, design is designed to be lightweight (though at around 8g they’re heavier than their 5.2g cheaper siblings), while ensuring a secure fit that’s comfortable and unlikely to fall out. The earphones come with feed-forward active noise-cancelling to minimise external interference and keep you immersed in the audio. Conversely, you can also make use of the quick hear-through function to drop the levels to focus on ambient sounds, which can also work in sync with the Sidetone function if you need to break off to answer your phone without inadvertently shouting at the caller.
The ATH-CKS50 buds use Bluetooth 5.2 technology and come with large diameter 9mm HD TWS drivers. They have an impedance of 20 ohms and a (line of sight) range of up to 10 metres. The CKS50 earphones also have an IPX4-equivalent rating which means they should be fine in the rain, but it’s probably best not to try them out in the bath.
They also come with Sony 360 Reality Audio certified, which is a good sign of their capacity for handling 360-degree spatial sounds to help deliver an accurate and authentic audio experience. Other features include a Low Latency Mode, to keep things crisp if you’re watching a movie or playing a videogame, along with Fast Pair connection with Android devices and the ability to seamlessly swap between two input sources, for example to take a call while watching YouTube videos on your laptop, without needing to re-pair the earphones.
The ATH-CKS50 true wireless earphones are available now, priced at £149 (or €169 in Europe). You can find out more on the Audio-Technica website.
SOURCE: Audio-Technica (via press release)
IMAGE: Audio-Technica
