Listening to music has become easier than ever in the past five year, with the likes of Spotify, Google Play Music and YouTube becoming big, big parts of the overall industry. 3G and 4G networks have become easier more prevalent and it’s now easier than ever to get your hands on the music you want to listen to and when. For a lot of people, listening to music at the gym, while on a run or a cycle is essential which has led to sports-focused earphones and headphones flooding the market over the past few years. Jaybird might have cornered the market with their X-series of wireless earbuds, but Panasonic is no less giving things a try with their new BTS line.
The BTS30 and BTS50, known as the Wings line of products, will be available in white or black for the BTS50 or white, black, yellow and red for the BTS30. Both of them will be completely wireless (save a cable connecting the left and right channels together, of course. Both pairs of headphones will last for around six hours on a single charge and charge in around an hour and a half. The BTS50 will feature 12mm drivers, while the BTS30 will feature smaller 9mm drivers. With an IPX5 rating on the BTS50 and an IPX4 rating for the BTS30, both of these can get wet and should shrug off dust or sand from cycling or spending time at the beach. An interesting inclusion for the BTS50 is that they feature LEDs on the edge of the earbuds to be seen at night, a pretty nice addition for cyclists and midnight runners.
There’s no word on when these will be released, but we can’t imagine Panasonic looking to drag out such a launch too much. The headphone and earphone market is something that’s becoming quite crowded these days, and CES has already seen the announcement of the new Jaybird X3 wireless earphones and the more audiophile-grade Optoma NuForce HEM series. Whether Panasonic will enjoy widespread success with these remains to be seen, but there’s definitely a market out there for these, that’s for sure.
