The field of truly wireless Bluetooth earbuds is heating up on the CES showroom floor, and Ashley Chloe Inc’s new FUSE headphones have been judged as one of the most innovative products on site, netting themselves a spot among this year’s CES Innovation Award Honorees. While modular earbuds aren’t an entirely new idea, fusing that idea with super-premium design and features and then including a strong lineup of launch accessories is more than enough to cause a stir. The idea is original, useful, and will sell well, and in this case, the execution is absolutely spot-on. These are definitely the ingredients that go into almost any product that manages to get on the honoree list for this year.
While FUSE is not the only set of headphones on the honoree list this year, being joined by the likes of the OSSIC X 3D headphone set, they are the only set of truly wireless earbuds on the list, and on a fairly short list of honorees who have secured their spot at least in part by embracing the modularity trend that seems to be making a slow sweep of the mobile world in the wake of Project Ara’s unceremonious death at the hands of Alphabet’s new budget-conscious mindset. While a pair of wireless earbuds with some smart features, good design, and modularity may have turned heads at the show, it took a bit more for FUSE to make that coveted short list.
For starters, the FUSE earbud set’s design lends itself to a number of different carrying approaches, while being extremely premium and compact. The sound quality is a cut above the rest, partially due to the same ceramic body that makes some of the smart features, such as a touch-sensitive control button and seamless charging, possible. A strong launch accessory lineup can’t hurt, of course; from the minute these hit the streets, priced at a cool $199, you’ll be able to carry them in a necklace or a slick wristband, or charge them in either a pocket pack or a more bold and in your face wristband that leaves them poking out a bit for easy access. With yet another proud inductee, this year’s list of CES Innovation Awards honorees is looking more and more varied and chock full of super high quality products by the hour.