Wireless earbuds are a must-have in an era where the headphone jack no longer exists on most phones. Besides offering pure tetherless convenience, top-of-the-line buds will get you pretty good audio quality, a case that supports wireless charging, and maybe a few other flourishes. On-device playback and settings controls have always been lacking on these personal audio products, though, and that, to us, has been a shame. HP and subsidiary Poly, an enterprise audio vendor, seem keen to do better on this front at CES 2023 with their Voyager Free 60 series.
The earbuds themselves aren't anything too special if we're to go by the press release alone — further official details have yet to be posted as of time of publication. They feature active noise cancellation with enhanced wind detection and battery life rated at five hours of talk time.
What distinguishes the Voyager Free 60 from the Voyager Free 60 Plus is solely the charging case and the Plus packs in a whole lot. While the regular charging case will let you power up your earbuds for two extra cycles, the Voyger Free 60+'s case comes with an OLED touch display that lets you check battery levels, adjust volume, and more. There's also a USB Bluetooth beacon and a USB-C to 3.5mm audio jack adapter to provide flexibility in how you cast from source to earbuds, making the case an integral medium. Users can also make adjustments to their earbuds through the Poly Lens app.
This isn't the first time we've seen a touchscreen on a charging case as JBL included one on the case with its Tour 2 Pros this past summer. There's some hassle when it comes to having the case around all the time in order to take advantage of its key features — some of them are pretty nifty, indeed — but when you consider that these Voyager earbuds are being targeted towards enterprise customers, there may be a bit more sense in bringing on this sort of paradigm of usage.
You'll find the Voyager Free 60 Series from the sites of HP and Poly starting in March from $299. A Microsoft Teams-certified version is also expected to be released.
If you're looking for something a bit spicier from HP at CES this year, you might be interested in its new Dragonfly Chromebook that's not for gaming, but is totally for gaming.