Sony’s PlayStation wireless earbuds will cost a whopping $199.99
By Chris Welch, a reviewer specializing in personal audio and home theater. Since 2011, he has published nearly 6,000 articles, from breaking news and reviews to useful how-tos.
In addition to announcing the price of its upcoming PlayStation Portal remote gaming gadget, Sony also shared new details today on the PlayStation-branded wireless earbuds that it first revealed several months ago. They’re officially called the Pulse Explore and will be priced at $199.99, though the company isn’t yet sharing exactly when they’ll be available (or even up for preorder). That’s as much as the Portal device itself and substantially more than any of Microsoft’s first-party Xbox audio peripherals.
The Pulse Explore buds come at a premium, but Sony is positioning them as a unique offering for their combination of lossless audio quality and low-latency performance. Sony will also be releasing a new Pulse Elite headset for $149.99, which looks like an evolution of the PS5’s original Pulse 3D headset.
Both products “are the first PlayStation audio devices to use custom-designed planar magnetic drivers for an audiophile-level listening experience normally found in premium headphones for professional sound engineers,” Sony’s Hideaki Nishino wrote in a blog post today. “We’re pleased to be one of the first companies to provide wireless earbuds to the mass consumer market using planar magnetic driver technology.”
To communicate with the PS5 and PlayStation Portal, the audio devices utilize a new technology that Sony calls PlayStation Link. Link is built directly into the Portal remote player, but you’ll still need a dongle for the PS5: one has to wonder whether it’ll be natively integrated with the rumored PS5 “Slim” with a removable disc
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