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If You Don’t Want to Pay AirPod Prices, I Found Great Noise Canceling Earbuds That Are Only $53 for Black Friday

You don’t need to spend a fortune to get a great pair of earbuds.

Black Friday deal alert: If you’re looking for a new pair of noise-canceling earbuds, there are some good deals on Apple AirPods right now, but you might be able to spend half as much to get similar performance. I’ve found that the Air Pro 4 earbuds from Earfun are legitimate contenders to the AirPods, at a much lower price. Right now at Amazon for Black Friday, you can get the Air Pro 4s for a steal — they’re 34% off, which drops their price down to $53.

In short, they’re great, and the black ones are currently available on Amazon for $53, near the lowest price we’ve ever seen them sell for. The other colors are also on sale; the glossy white and royal blue are both $68.

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How these earbuds silence the noise around you

I prefer in-ear headphones because they offer active, electronic and passive noise cancellation. Passive noise cancellation basically consists of plugging your ears with the rubbery tips included with the earbuds.

The Earfuns fit well for me when I use the second-largest of the five swappable ear tip sizes, and they stay sealed and comfortable for hours. Sometimes I have to reseal one after I yawn or something, but that’s the case with other in-ear headphones, too.

For reading, I prefer Earfun’s «Strong ANC» noise-canceling mode, which makes a big difference when blocking out the noise around you, but there are a bunch of other noise-cancellation options. The Ambient Sound function is good for when I want to pay attention to my surroundings.

Overall, I found the app easier to use than Sony’s and just as capable. The main difference is that Sony’s app has a variable slider for ambient sound.

The Earfun app also includes a white noise section in the app. Normally, I prefer Spotify for white noise (and I download my favorite playlists for offline listening) but this feature is useful for people who don’t have another music service. It includes birdsong, waves and rainfall, all of which are short clips that repeat automatically.

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Why I chose these earbuds over AirPods

These headphones have every other feature I’d expect, including the ability to connect to two devices simultaneously and programmable touch-sensitive controls on the buds. Plus, battery life has been more than ample for me, even after a marathon reading session. 

There’s also a finder function if you misplace either earbud (unlike Apple FindMy, however, they have to be connected and in Bluetooth range). For actual music and voice calling quality, they sound fine, albeit not as good as my big Sonys.

I have an iPhone and briefly thought about buying Apple AirPods, but I didn’t want to spend the money. The AirPods 4 with noise cancellation cost $115 more than these Earfuns and have an open-ear design, so they rely entirely on the electronic (not passive) method. The AirPods Pro 2 are in-ear and superb, but I didn’t want to spend $250 on a pair of secondary headphones. 

Yes, I could probably save some money on an even less expensive pair of in-ear noise-cancelling headphones, but I’m not sure I’d be as happy with their fit, long-term comfort, battery life and noise-cancellation performance. The Earfun Pro 4 buds help me relax and concentrate on my book, and for me that’s priceless.

For more headphone savings, check out our roundup of all the best deals on headphones, or find bargains of all kinds in our roundup of the best Amazon Prime Day deals going on now. 

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Ultrahuman Ring Pro Brings Better Battery Life, More Action and Analysis

The company’s new flagship smart ring stores more data, too. But that doesn’t really help Americans.

Sick of your smart ring’s battery not holding up? Ultrahuman’s new $479 Ring Pro smart ring, unveiled on Friday, offers up to 15 days of battery life on a single charge. The Ring Pro joins the company’s $349 Ring Air, which boosts health tracking, thanks to longer battery life, increased data storage, improved speed and accuracy and a new heart-rate sensing architecture. The ring works in conjunction with the latest Pro charging case. 

Ultrahuman also launched its Jade AI, which can act as an agent based on analysis of current and historical health data. Jade can synthesize data from across the company’s products and is compatible with its Rings.

«With industry-leading hardware paired with Jade biointelligence AI, users can now take real-time actionable interventions towards their health than ever before,» said Mohit Kumar, CEO of Ultrahuman.

No US sales

That hardware isn’t available in the US, though, thanks to the ongoing ban on Ultrahuman’s Rings sales here, stemming from a patent dispute with its competitor, Oura Ring. It’s available for preorder now everywhere else and is slated to ship in March. Jade’s available globally.

Ultrahuman says the Ring Pro boosts battery life to about 15 days in Chill mode — up to 12 days in Turbo — compared to a maximum of six days for the Air. The Pro charger’s battery stores enough for another 45 days, which you top off with Qi-compatible wireless charging. In addition, the case incorporates locator technology via the app and a speaker, as well as usability features such as haptic notifications and a power LED.

The ring can also retain up to 250 days of data versus less than a week for the cheaper model. Ultrahuman redesigned the heart-rate sensor for better signal quality. An upgraded processor improves the accuracy of the local machine learning and overall speed. 

It’s offered in gold, silver, black and titanium finishes, with available sizes ranging from 5 to 14.

Jade’s Deep Research Mode is the cross-ecosystem analysis feature, which aggregates data from Ring and Blood Vision and the company’s subscription services, Home and M1 CGM, to provide historical trends, offer current recommendations and flag potential issues, as well as trigger activities such as A-fib detection. Ultrahuman plans to expand its capabilities to include health-adjacent activities, such as ordering food.

Some new apps are also available for the company’s PowerPlug add-on platform, including capabilities such as tracking GLP-1 effects, snoring and respiratory analysis and migraine management tools.

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Spotify Expands Into Audiobook Rankings With Weekly Charts

The feature is available to both free users and Premium subscribers. Wuthering Heights is reaching the heights on both the US and UK charts.

If you’re a Spotify user, you may be familiar with features like the year-end summary Wrapped, as well as your daily usage stats. Now, the service has a new popularity chart tracking audiobooks.  

Spotify’s audiobook charts are now available to free and Premium users within the service’s Audiobooks hub. While only Premium users receive 15 hours of audiobook listening per month, the company offers a larger selection of titles you can buy.

US charts and UK charts are both available now.

Read more: Best Music Streaming Services for 2026

Spotify says that the audiobook charts will help customers discover new and popular titles in real time.

«As we’ve proven with Music and Podcasts Charts, when content is easier to access, discover, and enjoy, the demand grows,» said Duncan Bruce, Spotify’s director of audiobook partnerships and licensing, in a statement on Friday.

Spotify launched audiobooks in 2022, and has since added features such as the AI catchup tool Recaps and PageMatch, which lets you swap more easily between a printed book and the audio version. 

Spotify Premium currently costs $13 a month and includes more than 100 million songs, as well as audiobooks. Spotify Premium is currently CNET’s Editors’ Choice for best music streaming service.

The current US audiobooks chart lists Emily Brontë’s romantic classic Wuthering Heights as the top listen, followed by James Clear’s self-help book Atomic Habits and Freida McFadden’s psychological thriller The Housemaid. Audiobook popularity is also broken down by genre, with charts for romance, mystery and thriller books, self-help, science fiction and fantasy, biography and memoir, business and careers, teen and young adult, religion and spirituality, history, and parenting and relationships.

Powered by its blockbuster movie adaptation starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, Wuthering Heights also leads the overall chart for the UK.

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