Surface Headphones 2 get new black color, better battery life, and Bluetooth 5
There’s a whole lot more here than just a new coat of paint.
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What you need to know
After months of rumors, Microsoft’s new Surface Headphones 2 are finally here. The company unveiled the followup to the original Surface Headphones alongside a number of new Surface devices today, including the newSurface Book 3andSurface Go 2.
The Surface Headphones 2 look very much like the original Surface Headphones, but Microsoft has made a number of improvements that make them a more attractive buy. Most notably, there’s now a matte black color option, which joins the original light gray color. This has been a major request from Surface fans for a while, particularly as Microsoft has adopted matte black across the rest of the Surface lineup.
Beyond the new color option, Microsoft has amped up just about every other aspect of the original Surface Headphones. The company says you’ll now get up to 20 hours of battery life on a single charge, and you’ll be able to get a full charge in under two hours. The Surface Headphones 2 can also give you nearly an hour of playback with just five minutes of charging.
The noise cancellation, which Microsoft has tuned to work especially well for office settings by focusing on blocking human voices, is back. It’s adjustable as well, with 13 levels of noise cancellation that can be tweaked, along with the volume, by the adjustable on-ear dials.
There are touch controls on the side, allowing you to skip tracks, answer and end calls, and access your digital assistant with a tap. Music will also pause when the headphones sense that you’ve taken them off, and will resume once you put them back on. Surface Headphones 2 also support dictation in Office apps, live captions and subtitles (with translation) in PowerPoint, and the “Play My Emails” feature in the Outlook mobile app on iOS.
Lastly, Microsoft included some important updates in terms of connectivity. Bluetooth 5 should allow the headphones to obtain a stronger and quicker connection to other devices, particularly when you use Swift Pair on Windows 10. Additionally, support for theaptX protocolcan reduce latency and give a boost to sound quality.
Surface Headphones 2 also come with a new, lower price: $250 compared to the $350 that the original Surface Headphones launched at. Surface Headphones 2 are available to preorder today, and are expected to become available on May 12 in the U.S. and Canada with other markets to follow.
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Back in black
Microsoft’s Surface Headphones are back, and they’re available in black. The Surface Headphones 2 also bring Bluetooth 5, up to 20 hours of battery life, aptX support, and more.
Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter@DthorpLand Instagram@heyitsdtl.
