Samsung's fitness-tracking wireless earbuds are completely cable-free
It was only a matter of time before Samsung made its own pair of wire-free wireless earbuds.
As previously leaked, the Gear IconX are a pair of fitness-based earbuds. And again, they have no wires.
Whereas the newly announced Gear Fit 2 is designed more for the health enthusiast -- the type of person who will wear it 24/7 -- according to Samsung, the IconX are aimed at "casual exercisers." That is, people who make a deliberate decision when they want to be active and when they want activity data.
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Priced at $199, the IconX are cheaper than other wire-free wireless earbuds like the $299 Erato Apollo 7's I recently reviewed. They'll be available in white, blue and black in Q3 of this year.
As with the Gear Fit 2, I only got to try the earbuds for a couple of minutes. The earbuds are really light and fit snug in my ears, and I have small ears. Mashable chief correspondent Lance Ulanoff didn't have quite the same experience; he didn't find them comfortable. The earbuds will be several sizes of ear tips and ear gels for different ear sizes.
Similar to the Bragi Dash wire-free wireless earbuds, the IconX has a built-in heart rate sensor and sensors to track your distance and speed. 4GB of internal storage lets you store your own music for smartphone-free workouts. Connectivity with the S Health app lets you see all of your tracked health data in one place.
Using the earbuds are straightforward and intuitive as far as I could tell. Each earbud has a touchpad on it. Tap once and to play/pause music and twice to skip the next track and three times to go back a track. Swipe up and down to adjust volume and hold down on it access the menu system and cycle through options.
I listened to music stored on the earbuds and streamed from a phone and they sounded good in my opinion. I obviously can't tell you how well the connection and audio quality hold up during a workout yet, but the IconX look promising.
One neat feature on the IconX is the ambient sound mode. Activate it and you'll still be able to listen to music, but you'll also be able to hear what's happening around you. Samsung says it's a safety feature for letting users hear traffic around them. It worked pretty well in my hands on.
Like almost all wire-free wireless earbuds, losing them is a real concern. The IconX come with a case for storage, but it also doubles as a way to charge them. The case provides up to two additional charges for the earbuds, and it's used to transfer music files to the earbuds.
Battery life varies. The IconX will last 3.5 hours if you're listening to music stored on the earbuds themselves, but it drops dramatically to only 1.5 hours if you're streaming music from your phone.
The IconX earbuds look and sound good, but I'll have to put them to a more rigorous test (and workout) when they become available before I can say if they're worth it or not.
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Raymond Wong is Mashable's Senior Tech Correspondent. He reviews gadgets and tech toys and analyzes the tech industry. Raymond's also a bit of a camera geek, gamer, and fine chocolate lover. Before arriving at Mashable, he was the Deputy Editor of NBC Universal's tech publication DVICE. His writing has appeared on G4TV, BGR, Yahoo and Ubergizmo, to name a few. You can follow Raymond on Twitter @raywongy or Instagram @sourlemons.
