What is Earin A-3?

The headphone trend is clear. Apple, Sennheiser, Bose and Sony: they are all fighting to deliver the market’s best noise-canceling wireless in-ear headphones.

But the Swedish upstart Earin chooses another path.

About a week ago, Earin presented its first headphones in a couple of years. The model A-3 is a pair of wireless with an open design. This is not about headphones that are to be pushed into the ear canal. A-3 rests in the outer parts of the ear.

Earin claims that these are the market’s smallest earbuds and with a price tag of SEK 2,495, these will enter and tampas in the premium segment.

What does Earin A-3 have to offer?

You can ask yourself that. No one can take away from them that they are really small. Nor can anything take away from them that they are really pumping air. Thus, the speaker elements deliver and the base actually feels unexpectedly full, given that the headphones are of open design. Here I have nothing to complain about, crystal clear.

A challenge with open design is that you can not do much to get the headphones to adapt to your ears. One can simply hope for the best. Had the A-3 been of a closed design, the user in the package would have received a bunch of rubber pillows of different sizes and thus increase the chance that they fit in the ears.

In my case, I’m lucky, they sit comfortably and do not fall out. Which was a bit of a fear initially. That thing with the smallest headphones on the market, you know. In addition, lighter.

The pairing is painless. At the time of writing, there is a dedicated Ios app for the model. Android users are still waiting for their app. As an android user, I can simply pair via settings.

A good and ingenious detail with the headphones is that they sense whether they are in the right or left ear. It does this through an accelerometer and its coordinate system. The user thus does not have to keep track of which handset is right or left. A solution that Earin patented.

Any disadvantages of Earin A-3?

Earin is proud and pleased that the headphones are the smallest on the market. It’s fun and lively. But for me they are too small. Not in the ears. There they sit as they should and do not weigh the ear in the slightest. But the handling itself. When the headset is going from the charging box to the ear.

I – lose – them – all the time. My clumsy human hands can not handle those little plugs. The plastic cover is a little too smooth. The headphones are feather light and slip away. And vips, it’s me who’s down on the floor to pick them up – again.

The headphones are of the open model. That’s why the outside world comes in and sometimes eats up the podcast or the music. Usually I use in-ear headphones, so I can go in my own little bubble and not be disturbed by dishwashing, gym bumps or traffic noise. Therefore, I think these headphones work best in quieter environments, such as in the quiet home office or on the couch to enhance the Netflix experience.

The touch buttons on the outside of the headphones do not always respond to my “pins”. Here I have to try several times before the headphones perceive that I want to pause the music, for example.

Opinion

It is unusual to use headphones with an open design. But the sound quality is still really nice. The battery life of 5 hours, with another 30 hours with the charging box, is good.

However, I am a little questioning the price tag. Because precisely because it is an open design, I believe that the headphones will be limited. In too noisy environments, the nice sound the headphones can perform disappears.

They go for close to SEK 2,500. Are you willing to spend that money on a pair of earbuds, there are better ones on the market.

Speaking of sound quality. I look forward to following up on Earin’s promise of upcoming in-ear headphones with active noise reduction. Can they squeeze everything that is good with A-3 into a couple of such, well, then I think Earin really has a challenger.