There are basically two camps when it comes to headphones: some prefer large, mostly black over-ears that make the wearers look like Mickey Mouse’s sisters and brothers. The others squeeze little white bumps into their ears with chopsticks. They should show maximum hipness, especially when they are Apple Airpods.
The Munich start-up Nova Products is now taking a completely different approach. Its founder, Judith Gampe, found all the earphones and headsets available on the market to be ugly, but it should be better and, above all, more beautiful. After a year of development, the first results that follow from these considerations are now available.
The Nova H1 Audio earrings look like regular pearl earrings, they are worn on the earlobe, either as a clip or with a stud earring. But they’re not just jewelry. The nine-millimeter white cultured pearl has two small holes in which two microphones and technology are hidden, which are intended to send a cell phone call or the songs on the Spotify playlist directly into the ear canal. The battery is built into the back of the earring and lasts about three hours with continuous use.
In fact, the sound transmission of a prototype worked well, especially for calls – speech and sound reached the ear, but anyone standing next to it couldn’t overhear it. Music, however, sounded a bit tinny and not particularly rich. But if you like booming bass, you might not like the dignified look of the tech pearl earrings anyway.
They are intended primarily for – according to the company – the “working moms”, i.e. women who, in addition to working from home, also do home schooling and housework, i.e. work, take calls and look after children at the same time.
The audio earrings are available in silver or gold-plated silver. As with any good start-up, they are financed via a crowdfunding campaign. The tech pearls quickly reached their funding goal, despite the comparatively high price of currently around 360 euros for the gold version and 330 euros for the silver version.
