Our favorite wireless earbuds

Earbuds should be easy to review. Compared to the myriad other product categories we look at day in, day out, there aren’t that many variables. Do they sound good? How’s the battery life? What about the noise canceling? How do they fit?

That last bit is, of course, highly subjective — even more so than the others. And it points to one of the biggest issues with reviewing the products. Much like the music we listen to on them, preference is a deeply personal thing. These are products we often wear for hours at a time, intimately pressed against our ears while we work, travel, exercise and even sleep.

As I’ve often written, I’ve never seen a consumer electronics category develop as quickly as Bluetooth earbuds, going from novelty to commodity seemingly overnight. The truth is that most of them are pretty good.

As a rule, I often tell people to go with a pair from the company that made their phone. There’s something to be said for a pair of products that were effectively built to work together. That’s a good place to start, certainly. But there are plenty of other variables worth considering when buying a set of buds for yourself — or as gift this holiday season. Sound, price, comfort, design and size are all worth considering here.

Over the past year, I’ve reviewed more wireless earbuds than any other product category (by a fairly wide margin). There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution among them — and probably never will be in this space. What follows are some of my favorites in this burgeoning and booming category. You can’t go too wrong with any of them.

Apple AirPods Pro

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Price: $249
Review: Apple’s AirPods Pro set a pricey new standard for earbuds

Having just celebrated their third anniversary, Apple’s pro-level buds are a bit long in the tooth. But in terms of the overall package, they’re still the ones to beat. Sure, the company just introduced the third generation of the standard buds, with new features that blurred the line between models, but pricing aside, the Pros are still superior in most ways. That is, unless you’ve got an aversion to silicone tips.

They sound great, are comfortable, have excellent noise canceling and work seamlessly with iOS devices.

Beats Fit Pro

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Price: $199
Review: Ahead of the Pack

Until today, I would point to the Powerbeats Pro anytime someone asked me for a good pair of workout headphones. And while the Fit Pro don’t replace that product outright, they’ve moved to the top of my list for the category. As someone who recently took up running again, I’m impressed with what Beats was able to do in such a small category. I’ve had an aversion to stability wings after testing some rigid and painful models in the past, but the company got things right here.

OnePlus Buds Pro

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Price: $150
Review: Much Better

After striking out with their first pair of buds, OnePlus got a lot more things right with the Pros. They’re not setting the world on fire with any sort of tech innovation here, but they’re a solid and well-rounded pair that won’t require you to take out a second mortgage. The Pros have good noise canceling, are comfortable and, bonus, pump meditative white noise into your ears with a squeeze of the stems.

Samsung Galaxy Buds 2

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Price: $150
Review: Samsung Galaxy Buds 2

Unlike the rest of the Galaxy line, Samsung’s Buds aren’t flashy. And, honestly, that’s fine. They’re compact, solid and get the job done. Like the OnePlus Buds Pro, they’re not pushing any boundaries, but they’re an excellent pair of $150 buds, with adaptive noise canceling. They play particularly well with other Samsung devices, so if you’re in the Galaxy ecosystem, these are probably the ones to get.

Sony WF-1000XM4

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Price: $280
Review: Sony sets a new standard with the WF-1000XM4 earbuds

Not for the faint of heart — or wallet — Sony returned with another set of truly excellent audiophile earbuds this year. They tend toward the bigger and bulkier side of things, so I wouldn’t recommend going for a run in them, but if you’re looking for a pair of buds to, say, enjoy the hell out of a great live jazz record, these are truly tough to beat. Along with their predecessors, the WF-1000XM3 and confusingly similarly named WH-1000XM3/4 over-ear phones, Sony continues to be the gold standard for great-sounding headphones.

Wildcards:

Nothing Ear (1)

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Price: $100
Review: Something interesting

Honorable mentions for a pair of wildcards/underdogs for those looking outside of the big cos. Nothing made a well constructed pair of buds at a good price. They also look the part, with a clever, semi-transparent design language. I had some connectivity issues early on, though the company has largely addressed that with subsequent firmware upgrades. If you’re looking for something outside the Apple/Samsung/Sony world that won’t break the bank, give these a look.

Nura NuraTrue

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Price: $200
Review: The hardware startup adapts its innovative sound tech for truly wireless earbuds

Nura adapted its clever sound-adapting technology into a pair of portable buds. They lack some of the immersive depth of their over-ear counterparts, but the company is able to create a truly impressive musical experience with its custom profiles.

from blogger-2 https://ift.tt/3nMiFAb
via IFTTT

Logicbroker taps into $135M to advance cloud-based drop ship software

Logicbroker, a Connecticut-based e-commerce company focused on cloud fulfillment, secured a $135 million growth round from K1 Investment Management.

Its software provides drop ship and marketplace automation capabilities to brands, retailers, suppliers and third-party logistics providers. As CEO Peyman Zamani explained it, “drop ship” is a way that packages get from the seller to the buyer.

For example, Walgreens is one of the Logicbroker’s customers, and if you purchased a bottle of Walgreens brand vitamins from the website, it might get to you from a company warehouse, shipped directly from the provider or from a third-party, but the item you receive will be branded Walgreens. Drop ship can also happen in-store: say you see a dress you like, but the retailer only has the blue one available and you want it in red. The store can order it and send it to you or you can pick it up in the store.

Zamani, who was previously an executive at Office Depot, says this kind of technology started about 30 years ago when the concept of electronic data interchange — businesses communicating information, like purchase orders and invoices, electronically versus on paper — began to become mainstream.

“Electronic data interchange is now at the heart of e-commerce,” he added. “The concept today is the same, but what I envisioned was this taking place in the cloud, but no one was focusing on the connectivity and automation in a scalable way.”

Logicbroker portal

He founded Logicbroker in 2010, his third startup, and hadn’t raised much in the way of venture capital since 2013, just under $2 million, to get to profitability, Zamani said. Logicbroker hit that milestone about six years ago, and is growing about 80% year over year in revenue. It expanded into five global regions and works with over 4,000 companies, including Mars Wrigley and Samsung, to manage more than $5 billion in gross merchandise value annually.

Over the years, investors were knocking on the door, and Zamani was always “respectfully declining,” that is, until this year. The company closed out last year with approximately $2 billion in GMV and is on target to do close to $6 billion this year. In order to be a powerhouse and global leader in drop ship, Logicbroker wanted to accelerate product features, which meant going after some capital.

“We had eight offers, but picked K1 because they only invest in SaaS companies and look for category leader,” Zamani said. “We were already there in the U.S and want to repeat that globally. We could have gotten there ourselves, but it would have taken five to 10 years. Now we can get there in a couple of years.”

6 tips for establishing your startup’s global supply chain

The new funding will go toward adding to its 65-person employee base, the global expansion and continued product development. Logicbroker launched its curated marketplace this year with half a dozen customers and intends to make it one of the company’s leading offerings over the next four quarters.

Simon Yu, senior vice president at K1, said via email he reached out to Zamani a few years ago when the firm saw that Logicbroker “was building something unique in the e-commerce space.” In speaking with the company’s customers, Yu said they told K1 how much “they loved the products and thought the team was building an innovative platform that had a direct positive impact on revenue.”

He believes digitalization of global e-commerce is still in the early stages, and behavior, like drop shipping, will become more prevalent over time.

“COVID-19 definitely accelerated some of that,” he added. “Logicbroker is fueling this transformation and we’re excited to work with Peyman and the Logicbroker team on building a category leader.”

5 ways AI can help mitigate the global shipping crisis

 

from blogger-2 https://ift.tt/3vTeaHN
via IFTTT

Deci snaps up $21M for tech to build better AI models based on available data and compute power

Building usable models to run AI algorithms requires not just adequate data to train systems, but also the right hardware subsequently to run them. But because the theoretical and practical are often not the same thing, there is often a gap between what data scientists may hope to do and what they practically do. Today, a startup called Deci that has built a deep learning platform to help bridge that gap — by building models that can work with the data and hardware that are available to use — is announcing some funding after finding strong traction for its products with Fortune 500 tech companies running mass-market, AI-based products based on video and other computer vision-based services.

The Tel Aviv-based startup has picked up a Series A of $21 million, money that it will be using to continue expanding its product and customer base. Insight Partners is leading the round, with previous backers Square Peg, Emerge and Jibe Ventures, alongside some new backers: Samsung Next, Vintage Investment Partners, and Fort Ross Ventures. Square Peg and Emerge led Deci’s seed round of $9.1 million a year ago. It also works very closely with others who are not strategic or financial investors (but may well be down the line?). Intel collaborated with it on MLPerf, where Deci’s technology accelerates the inference speed of the ResNet-50 neural network when run on Intel CPUs.

Up to now, Deci has been focusing its attention on models for computer vision-based products, where its platform — built on its own proprietary AutoNAC (Automated Neural Architecture Construction) technology — is able to build, and continuously update, models quickly for services that might have otherwise taken longer, and a lot of trail and error, to devise.

One key client, for example, is one of the world’s biggest and well-known videoconferencing platforms (unfortunately, name undisclosed) that is using Deci to build AI modeling so that users can blur their backgrounds in video calls. Here, all of the computing needed to execute that blurring is happening at “the edge”, on users’ own CPU-based devices (that is, not typically optimized for AI workloads).

Yonatan Geifman, the CEO who co-founded Deci with Ran El-Yaniv and Jonathan Elial (a trio of AI specialists), said that the plan is now to start expanding from computer vision applications to another challenge, building better NLP (natural language) models, which you might need to run any kind of service with a voice interface, from personal assistants on phones or smart speakers through to audio-based search or any kind of customer service interface, for example.

Although Deci has picked up a lot of business by helping companies address the challenge of running AI services in a landscape of devices that are not necessarily optimized for AI, it has also found a lot of interest from organizations to use Deci to build better models for their own internal computing, even when they theoretically have the GPUs and compute power on hand to run anything. This taps into an interesting power balance that has long existed in enterprise IT and is very much getting played out in AI today, where enterprises will try to do more with the assets they have to hand, while at the same time they are regularly getting pushed to invest more in newer and more expensive and powerful equipment.

“There is a race to larger models all the time,” Geifman said in an interview, citing the new language model announced earlier this month by Nvidia and Microsoft as one example of that evolution. “So the hardware is just not enough. In one sense, maybe that race and drive to invest in new hardware is being pushed by the hardware makers themselves, but the models are getting larger. There is a gap, between the algorithm and the supply of the hardware. So, we need to have some convergence based on what hardware we have. Deci is bridging or even closing that gap.”

With adequate training data being another perennial problem in AI, Deci is also working to give a boost on the data side of the equation. Geifman said that Deci essentially builds synthetic data sets to supplement data when more is needed to build the models. In all cases, the product works within organizations’ developer environments, data stays where it is and does not go to Deci or anywhere else in the process of building the models.

Alongside that Deci is also using AutoNAC to build more products. The most recent of these is DeciNets, which Deci describes as “a family of computer vision models” that essentially skip some of the work of building models from the ground up and therefore using less compute power to run.

“Deci is at the forefront of AI and deep learning acceleration, with highly differentiated technology that lets customers optimize blazingly fast deep learning models for inference tuned to any hardware platform,” said Lonne Jaffe, MD at Insight Partners, in a statement. “We are delighted to be part of Deci’s ScaleUp journey and look forward to supporting the company’s rapid growth.” Jaffe is joining the board with this round.

from blogger-2 https://ift.tt/3jDz9JZ
via IFTTT

YouTube plans week-long live shopping event, following tests of livestream shopping with creators

YouTube announced earlier this year it would begin pilot testing livestream shopping with a handful of select creators. Now, the company is ready for a larger test of its live shopping platform with plans to host a week-long live shopping event, “YouTube Holiday Stream and Shop,” starting on November 15. The event will allow viewers to shop new products, unlock limited-time offers, and engage with creators and other viewers via Q&As and polls, the company says.

The company first unveiled its plans to invest in live shopping at the beginning of 2021, as part of a larger initiative around integrated shopping on YouTube. The initial tests had been focused on videos on demand before the livestream pilot kicked off this summer.

Since then, a number of YouTube creators have tried out livestream shopping with their fans, including Simply Nailogical, who launched her nail polish collection to 2.8 million fans on her Simply Not Logical channel; Hyram, who launched his ‘Selfless’ skincare line to his 4.5 million fans; and Raven Elyse who ran a livestream shopping session where she sold products in partnership with Walmart. (Walmart had earlier experimented with live shopping on TikTok across multiple events.)

Other retailers also participated more directly, YouTube notes. Sephora hosted a live Q&A and Target ran a live style haul using the new features, for example. 

The upcoming Stream and Shop event, which kicks off with the Merrell Twins, will also feature products from top retailers including Walmart, Samsung, and Verizon.

As part of its panel at Advertising Week, the company shared a few details from the research it has invested in to better understand the live shopping journey and how YouTube plays a role. In partnership with Publicis and TalkShoppe, YouTube study’s found that 75% of viewers used YouTube for shopping inspiration — for instance, by watching creators’ #ShopWithMe videos. It also found that 85% of viewers trust creators’ recommendations and that viewers valued information quality and quantity over the production value of the videos.

Despite the steps it’s been making towards live stream shopping, YouTube hasn’t yet made the feature broadly available. Instead, it’s continuing to test live shopping with individual creators.

In the meantime, however, rival TikTok has moved forward with live shopping features of its own.

Earlier this year, TikTok began piloting TikTok Shopping in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, in partnership with Shopify. At an event last month, the company said it was expanding shopping with new partners Square, Ecwid, PrestaShop, Wix, SHOPLINE, OpenCart and BASE. It also introduced a suite of solutions and features under the brand TikTok Shopping, which includes ways to integrate products into videos, ads, and LIVE shopping support.

Facebook also ran its own series of live shopping events this spring and summer, and now offers dedicated live shopping sections inside both its Facebook and Instagram apps’ Shop sections.

YouTube plans to share more about its upcoming live shopping event as the date grows closer.

from blogger-2 https://ift.tt/3nbWbIA
via IFTTT

Equity Monday: Welcome to bigtech hardware week

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet.

• This week, the week of October 18, 2021, kicked off with a mixed markets picture. Asian stocks were mixed, down in Europe, and set to fall in the United States. China remains a concern.
• There are hardware events this week from Apple, Samsung and Google. Along with earnings from Netflix, IBM, and Qualtrics.
• Amazon is in hot water with American regulators, China may force its tech giants to allow for cross-platform search, and Facebook wants to hire lots of Europeans.
• From startup-land, Enpal landed a huge dollop of cash for its solar work, while OfficeRnD made bets on a hybrid working future. Notes to come shortly on the Expensify IPO filing.

The show is back on Wednesday! Chat then!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 a.m. PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts!

from blogger-2 https://ift.tt/3aLkXJQ
via IFTTT

What to expect from Apple, Google and Samsung’s big events

Hardware season is heading for a dramatic finale next week, with three events from three major companies, three days in a row. Apple, Google and Samsung (in that order) are all hosting big events next week, getting their last big announcements (hopefully) out of the way ahead of the upcoming holiday season.

That means your friendly neighborhood hardware editor — and much of the TechCrunch staff — is set to be busy for the next few weeks, writing about and reviewing all manner of gadgets. Meantime, we’ve got some information to go off, in terms of what we can expect next week, through a combination of rumors, leaks and process of elimination.

That last bit holds especially true in the case of Apple and Samsung. Both companies are following recent big product unveils, and barring brand new product lines, we can triangulate what’s likely next on the docket for each. Google, meanwhile, has essentially announced what it’s got brewing for Tuesday.

Let’s work chronologically here.

Apple MacBook Pro silver keyboard. close up Mac on the blue background

Apple’s kicking things off Monday at 10AM PT/1PM ET. It’s been just over a month since the company’s latest event, which brought new iPhones, Apple Watches and iPads. One big missing product line was absent, however. We didn’t see any new Macs. With macOS Monterey dropping any day now, and the company’s already announced plans to upgrade its entire line to first-party silicon, the absence was felt at the event.

It seemed reasonable to expect the company might go the press release route, but instead, it looks like Apple’s opted to give Mac its moment in the spotlight. As I’ve noted before, companies are generally less obligated to cram everything into a single event now that they’re not asking attendees to fly from around the world to be there. Some have taken liberties with this notion — though I don’t anticipate that to be the case here. At the very least, we expect some big Mac news, including:

• A new MacBook Pro in 13 and 16-inch versions
• A new Mac Mini
• A 27-inch iMac

Image Credits: Brian Heater

The first two essentially replace last year’s M1 models, which effectively had the same guts. A new, even faster M1X chip is said to be arriving, along with potential hardware redesigns. The 27-inch iMac, meanwhile, would augment the 24-inch model, serving as a more pro-focused system.

An overdue update to the entry-level AirPods are said to be in the works, as well, featuring improved sound quality and design more inline with the Pros — but without active noise canceling.

Image Credits: Google

Speaking of new chips, Google already announced its plan to unveil its in-house Tensor chip, becoming the latest company to buck Qualcomm for first-party silicon. That will be used to power the new Pixel 6 and a Pro model. The handsets feature a radical redesign for a line that’s been stumbling to stay afloat in the smartphone wars.

Google has gone as far as putting up a product page for the pair ahead of the event. Cribbing from Greg’s writeup of the initial announcement here:

• The base 6 will have a matte aluminum finish with a 6.4″ display, while the Pro has a shinier polished aluminum finish with a 6.7″ display.
• Pixel 6 has two cameras (wide and ultrawide), while the 6 Pro adds a telephoto zoom lens.
• If you were hoping the increasingly common “camera bump” trend was on the way out… not quite. The bump has now evolved into the “camera bar,” with Google’s Rick Osterloh noting that better sensors and lenses just won’t fit in a smaller package.

A recent leak has offered up a bit more info on their camera system — two rear-facing on the 6 and three on the Pro. They’ll both feature a 50-megapixel wide-angle and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide, while the Pro adds a 48-megapixel telephoto. That event is going down Tuesday at 10AM PT/1PM ET.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Samsung’s Wednesday event is the biggest question mark of the three — which, given how Samsung products tend to leak, is not something we get to say much. The new foldables were recently announced and we don’t expect another Galaxy S device until around MWC in February/March of next year. A PC or tablet seems to be a reasonable guess. Though the bright colors in the invite could offer another clue. That event kicks off at 7AM PT/10AM ET on Wednesday.

from blogger-2 https://ift.tt/3DOkH9y
via IFTTT

Smartphone sales down 6% as chip shortages begin to impact market

Canalys reported this morning that global smartphone sales are off 6% this quarter, and it’s not because of lack of demand. It’s due to the worldwide chip shortage.

The pandemic has had a negative impact across supply chains, and chips have been particularly hard hit. Canalys principal analyst Ben Stanton says that manufacturers are trying to keep up as best they can, but the chip shortage is a legitimate roadblock right now. “On the supply side, chipset manufacturers are increasing prices to disincentivize over-ordering in an attempt to close the gap between demand and supply. But despite this, shortages will not ease until well into 2022,” he said in a statement.

What did the market look like this past quarter as a result of these supply chain issues? Well, the usual suspects maintained their market share positions with Samsung holding steady year over year at 23%. Meanwhile Apple saw YoY sales increase 3% to 15% this quarter. Xiaomi held steady in third place at 10% with no change YoY.

Image Credits: Canalys

Manufacturers have to be concerned at this turn of events, especially as we head into the crucial holiday shopping season. Apple released the new iPhone 13 at the end of September, too late for this quarterly report, but no doubt timed for the shopping season. The chip shortage issues could put a damper on its plans. Even though both Samsung and Apple make their own chipsets for their mobile devices, each company is still feeling the impact of the chip component shortage.

As a result, Stanton says it will be unlikely consumers will see any cost cutting this year, as manufacturing costs continue to spiral upward. Instead, he anticipates that we may see more bundling of phones with other devices as a buying incentive. “Customers should expect smartphone discounting this year to be less aggressive. But to avoid customer disappointment, smartphone brands which are constrained on margin should look to bundle other devices, such as wearables and IoT to create good incentives for customers.”

CNBC reported just yesterday that the consumer chip shortage could persist even longer than Stanton is predicting, perhaps as long as two to three years, according to president of Hisense, Jia Shaoqian, whose company makes devices like home appliances and consumer goods.

from blogger-2 https://ift.tt/3BMXTWW
via IFTTT