Technologies

Technics EAH-AZ80 Review: Are These the Best New Earbuds of 2023?

Technics’ new $300 flagship earbuds get almost everything right with an upgraded, more ergonomic design, plus excellent sound, noise canceling and voice-calling capabilities.

8.5

Technics EAH-AZ80

$300 at Amazon

Like

Stellar sound and very good noise canceling with improved fit
Good battery life
Can pair with three devices simultaneously
LDAC audio codec support for Android devices

Don’t like

Pricey
Voice-calling performance is decent but could be slightly better

At the time I’m writing this review, Sony is gearing up to release its rumored and much-anticipated WF-1000XM5 earbuds, the follow-up to its excellent XM4s that earned a CNET Editors’ Choice in 2021. Those upcoming Sony buds — presumably dubbed the WF-1000XM5s — are considered the odds-on-favorite to be the top earbuds for 2023. But wait! Another Japanese company, Panasonic, has released a surprise contender, the EAH-AZ80, under its flagship Technics brand. These are next-generation earbuds that not only sound terrific but feature very good noise canceling in a more ergonomic design. They’re available in two color options — black or silver — and carry a list price of $300.

Equipped with Bluetooth 5.3, the EAH-AZ80s have just about everything you’d want in a set of earbuds, including wireless charging, support for Sony’s higher-resolution LDAC audio codec for Android and other devices that support it and the ability to pair with up to three devices simultaneously (Panasonic says this is an «industry first» for multipoint pairing). But more on all that in a minute. Let me start with my one small gripe, which may not apply to you — and your ears — but could impact some people.

Read more: Best Wireless Earbuds for 2023

Improved fit (mostly)

Panasonic learned something from its previous earbuds, which included the EAH-AZ70W that I reviewed favorably back in 2020. Due to their shape, they didn’t quite nestle in my ears as well as they probably should have and some people complained that they put pressure on certain parts of their ears after using them, for a little while. That’s changed with this model as Panasonic has revised its design to betterconform to the natural shape of your ear, particularly that part of the ear called the concha.

The EAH-AZ80s now nestle in my ears better, fitting more comfortably and securely. My only issue was that I was sort of in between a large and extra-large ear tip — six sizes are included — and the shape of the ear tip wasn’t quite perfectly suited to my ears (I had the same issue with Sony’s WF-1000XM4 buds). I was able to get a tight seal, but the more compact AirPods Pro 2 and new Beats Studio Buds Plus fit a little more comfortably.

The Technics EAH-AZ80 earbuds offer all-around great performance — The EAH-AZ80s nestle better in your ears than their predecessors.

David Carnoy/CNET

Since I review so many earbuds, I’ve got a lot of extra ear tips, so I went in search of a better fit and eventually found a set of tips from my collection that worked a little better. The majority of people probably aren’t going to have my problem, but somewhat beefier buds like Sony’s WF-1000XM4 and Sennheiser’s Momentum True Wireless 3 can pose a fit challenge for some people. The EAH-AZ80 aren’t overly weighty for high-performance earbuds but they do weigh 7 grams per bud or just 0.3-gram less than the Sony WF-1000XM4s. They seem fairly sturdy — I dropped a bud onto the pavement as I was walking my dog — and are IPX4 splash-proof so you can run with them (they did stay in my ears while I ran with them, but that may not be the case for everybody).

I thought the touch controls were quite responsive and worked well. You can customize what your taps (or taps and holds) do in the Technics Audio Connect app for iOS and Android, which does offer a wealth of settings options, not so unlike Sony’s Headphones app.

Impressive sound

I praised Technics’ earlier earbuds for featuring very good sound quality. But the EAH-AZ80s take it up a notch on the sound front and are right up there with the very best-sounding earbuds, including the Bowers & Wilkins PI7 S2. These buds don’t feature dual drivers like the Bowers & Wilkins’ buds do, but Panasonic says they have a new 10mm driver with a «free-edge aluminum diaphragm that delivers the greatest sound quality ever from Technics’ true wireless earbuds, extending high and low frequency response while reducing unwanted resonance and distortion.»

The clarity and depth to the sound is impressive, and I noticed a slight boost in sound quality when I paired them with a Pixel 7 Pro with LDAC support and a streaming service like Qobuz that serves up high-resolution audio tracks. They also sound excellent with an iPhone 14 Pro, which uses the AAC audio codec, though Qobuz does sound better than Spotify. Note that you have to activate LDAC in Technics Audio Connect app to use that audio codec on Android and other devices that support it.

They lack that extra bit of bass extension that high-end wired earbuds offer, including Panasonic’s own Technics EAH-TZ700 in-ear monitors ($1,200), but for wireless earbuds, they deliver a premium audio experience that measures up to pretty much everything that’s out there in this price range and even higher. You get a lot of earbuds that sound very good for their size, including the AirPods Pro 2, but fewer that feature the accurate sound with extra clarity and three-dimensionality that you expect from pricey headphones.

These are the type of earbuds that allow you to distinguish separate instruments, even in complicated tracks where instruments get mushed together when listening to lesser Bluetooth headphones. Singers’ voices sound natural, there’s good sparkle to the treble (with no sibilance), and the bass is tight. They don’t have quite as much bass energy as the Bowers & Wilkins PI7 but you can kick up the low-end a bit with the bass or superbass boost settings in the Technics Audio Connect app if bass is your thing. (I test bass with tracks like Spoon’s Knock Knock Knock, Athletes of God’s Don’t Want To Be Normal, Orbital’s Dirty Rat and sometimes throw in Taylor Swift’s Vigilante Shit for good measure, because my kids tell me she’s kind of popular.)

Beyond the handful of preset EQ modes in the app, you can also create your own custom equalizer setting. I mainly stuck with the default signature sound setting because it sounded just fine.

Note that Panasonic has also released a new step-down model to the EAH-AZ80 called the EAH-AX60M2. They feature the same features as the EAH-AZ80 but have smaller 8mm drivers and are missing the ergonomic design upgrade found on the step-up model. I have not tried them yet, but they list for $50 less and I suspect will be discounted to less than $200 in the not-so-distant future. I’d personally advise you to pay the extra money for the EAH-AZ80 buds.

technics-eah-az80-up-close-natural-background — The buds’ new design conforms to the natural shape of your ear.

David Carnoy/CNET

Upgraded noise canceling and improved voice-calling

When it comes to noise-canceling for earbuds, Bose and Sony are at the top, with Apple nipping at their heels. It’s always really hard to say which company’s noise canceling is better — or best — but the EAH-AZ80 features excellent noise canceling with a couple of ambient sound modes (Apple calls it a transparency mode) that lets ambient sound in and allows you to hear the outside world.

I spent a few days commuting on foot in the streets of New York and the buds reduced what seemed like about 85% of the noise around me. Some higher pitched frequencies leaked in (I could hear people’s muffled voices) but traffic noise was muted to a nice degree, as was the rumble of trains in the New York City subway. I don’t think these are quite on the level of the Bose QuietComfort 2 earbuds, the current gold standard for noise canceling, but they seemed right there with Sony WF-1000XM4 and AirPods Pro 2 in terms of their noise muffling capabilities. (I am assuming Sony will raise its noise-canceling game with the arrival of the XM5s, however.)

In the app for iOS and Android, you’ll find a noise-canceling optimizer option that you can engage (I ended up jacking it up to the Max setting whenever I was outside). There’s also an option in the app to run a test to hear how much background noise is being reduced while you’re making a call. Also, you can opt for a «normal» noise reduction setting and a «strong» noise-reduction setting (at the strong setting your voice quality suffers a bit).

The Technics EAH-AZ80 deliver top-notch sound and noise canceling — The Technics EAH-AZ80 is shown in black.

Screenshot by David Carnoy/CNET

Panasonic says its improved JustMyVoice technology «uses eight high-sensitivity MEMS mics, a sensitive voice detection signal, and surrounding noise suppression to capture and transmit your voice clearly.» Callers told me they could hear my voice clearly at the «normal» noise reduction setting but also heard a fair amount of background noise, especially when I spoke. At the «strong» setting, background noise was greatly reduced but I sounded like I was in a tunnel, callers said (I could hear them just fine). I had two people tell me they thought the call quality was reasonably good but not up to what you get with new Beats Studio Buds Plus and AirPods Pro 2. (I did one firmware upgrade already but we may see more as Panasonic tweaks features and performance).

With the AirPods Pro 2, Apple’s transparency mode is on or off and automatically adjusts to the world around you. With these buds, you can manually adjust transparency levels in the app — I found the mode sounded most natural (most like not having earbuds in my ears) when I set it at around 50%. There’s also an Attention mode that you can toggle on, which emphasizes voices so you can hear people talking better in noisier environments.

As I said, the one unique feature is the enhanced multipoint pairing that allows you to pair three devices simultaneously — say a computer, smartphone and tablet. The one caveat is that if you use the LDAC audio codec, you can only connect two devices simultaneously, and it’s really best to have the buds paired to a single device if using LDAC for optimal bandwidth (you make your multipoint/LDAC selection in the app).

While battery life is rated for up to 7 hours playback with ANC on (at 50% volume), I got closer to 6 hours because I play my music at closer to 70% volume. You get a little more than three extra charges from the charging case, which, as noted, can be charged wirelessly or via USB-C. There’s also a quick charge feature that gives you 70 minutes of playback from a 10-minute charge.

Technics EAH-AZ80 final thoughts

One should expect a lot from earbuds that cost $300 — and yes, that’s still a lot to pay for headphones, even if plenty of people seem to be willing to pay upwards of $450 for the likes of Apple’s AirPods Max headphones. Overall, Panasonic has done a nice job of creating an all-around top-performing set of buds that offer an improved fit with excellent sound, very good noise-canceling and a robust feature set.

Voice-calling capabilities are decent but don’t quite live up to their billing (yet). Hopefully we’ll see some firmware upgrades that improve the voice-calling experience in noisier environments. Despite that caveat, as long as they fit your ears well, the Technics EAH-AZ80 are right up there with the best wireless earbuds on the market right now.

Technologies

Lemon8 and TikTok Could Be Banned. Here’s How the Apps Are Different

TikTok and Lemon8 are owned by the same parent company, but they offer different experiences.

TikTok faces another sale deadline Saturday, and unless a US buyer intervenes — or President Donald Trump extends the deadline again — the app could disappear for US users. If the ban goes into effect, TikTok wouldn’t be the only app to disappear: TikTok’s sister app, Lemon8, could be caught in the crossfire.

Read more: A VPN Alone Probably Won’t Bypass TikTok Bans. Here’s Why

Lemon8 is owned by ByteDance, the same parent company that owns TikTok. It’s one of the top Lifestyle apps in Apple’s App Store, and it has more than 10 million downloads in the Google Play store.

«Lemon8 is a lifestyle community focused app powered by TikTok, where you can discover and share authentic content on a variety of topics such as beauty, fashion, travel, food, and more,» the app’s description reads in both stores.

Here’s what you need to know about Lemon8.

Note: I reached out to ByteDance for this story, and the company did not respond for comment.

What is Lemon8?

Lemon8 is a video- and photo-sharing platform that eschews the vertical-scrolling format of TikTok in favor of a Pinterest board-style format. But what Lemon8 and TikTok do have in common is that both have Following and For You tabs to show you posts from creators you follow and posts the app thinks you will like.

Lemon8’s content is split into six topic tabs, plus a seventh tab called All. The other tabs are Fashion, Beauty, Food, Wellness, Travel and Home. These tabs can be found across the top of your screen, and tapping into these tabs shows you recommended and suggested posts.

Posts can be swipeable photo collections like in Instagram, or TikTok-style videos. Some creators add text to their photos to label clothing or a product. Some will also include the price of the item in the text.

How is Lemon8 different from TikTok and other apps?

Lemon8 is different from other apps in terms of what is posted and how it’s presented.

Lemon8 has a lot of influencer ads and product recommendations. It’s difficult to tell what is and isn’t sponsored content, and this appears to be the norm across the app. TikTok also has sponsored content, but usually these are marked as such in the bottom-left corner.

There aren’t a lot of memes or jokes on Lemon8 compared to other apps, either. You can find memes on Lemon8, but various hashtags associated with «memes,» like «funnymemes» and «catmemes,» have fewer than 1 million views (as opposed to hundreds of millions on Instagram). This could be because Lemon8 is still catching on in the US, but my suspicion is Lemon8 isn’t meant for memes. It’s meant to be more of a guidebook to help you achieve a certain lifestyle or aesthetic.

There’s also a lot of writing in Lemon8. For example, post captions might include instructions for a recipe or a deeper breakdown of an outfit. TikTok captions can have useful information, but those captions are more about connecting posts to hashtags to get more views and don’t necessarily add new information to the TikTok post. Lemon8 uses captions in a similar way to Instagram posts, but Lemon8 captions have one key difference from Instagram: templates.

Lemon8 lets you use templates for your posts to help you quickly format and to give you an idea of what to caption your post. There are caption templates for fashion, shopping finds, beauty, food and travel.

Lemon8 reminds me of a mashup between the magazines Martha Stewart Living, Muscle & Fitness and Travel + Leisure. You can find some useful tips in Lemon8 to help you achieve a desired aesthetic or find some vacation inspiration, but it’s not clear what is and isn’t an ad.

What are people saying about Lemon8?

People’s reaction to Lemon8 is seemingly positive so far. One TikTok creator posted a video calling Lemon8 «Pinterest, but interactive.» Another said Lemon8 is a combination of Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok.

However, this positivity could be artificially inflated. ZDNet reports that many TikTok posts about Lemon8 have described the app with similar language, making some believe ByteDance paid these creators.

And some Lemon8 creators’ claims make this theory sound more viable. One Lemon8 creator told Insider that ByteDance paid them to post on the app. Two other Lemon8 creators showed Insider emails that outlined the app’s payment structure.

Who owns Lemon8?

ByteDance, the Chinese tech company that owns TikTok, also owns Lemon8. According to ZDNet, ByteDance is positioning Lemon8 to be an Instagram rival as more users stop using, or abandon, Meta’s app.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a leaked internal memo from Meta showed that Instagram engagement was declining. ByteDance executives could be hoping to capitalize on this by giving Instagram users an alternative app in the form of Lemon8. And while Lemon8 was released globally in 2020, the app’s recent growth might show ByteDance’s gamble is paying off.

Will Lemon8 be banned alongside TikTok?

Since Lemon8 is owned by ByteDance, which also owns TikTok, it’s possible that the app will be banned alongside TikTok on April 5.

The law requiring the sale of TikTok could be applied generally to other apps that are owned and operated by ByteDance and its subsidiaries. When TikTok shutdown operations in the US in January, Lemon8 was shutdown alongside the app. If TikTok shuts down again, Lemon8 likely will as well.

Should you download Lemon8?

Even with a shutdown looming, Lemon8 is free, so you can download and try the app now before the sale deadline. Just know the app’s posts resemble instructional guides more than memes to share, and many posts feel like advertisements.

What’s Lemon8’s privacy policy?

Most of Lemon8’s privacy policy seems standard for social media apps. It states Lemon8 collects personal and location information to provide you with a better app experience. Some collected information includes your IP address and browsing history. But part of the app’s privacy policy might raise eyebrows.

«The personal information we collect from you may be stored on a server located outside of the country where you live,» the policy reads. The company has servers around the world, according to the policy, so your information could be stored in any of them.

This is different from how Lemon8’s sister app TikTok stores some user’s data. The company stores US-based user data in Oracle servers. TikTok CEO Shou Chew said ByteDance employees in China can access this data, but with «robust cybersecurity controls and authorization approval» overseen by a US-based security team.

For more on the TikTok ban, here’s what to know about the Supreme Court’s decision, here’s what could happen next and here are other apps users are flocking to.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for April 4, #193

Three of the four categories are especially tough today. Here are hints and the answers, for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, No. 193, for April 4.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

I only solved one of the four categories for today’s Connections: Sports Edition on my own, so if you need help, you’re not alone.

The yellow category was pretty simple, but after that I couldn’t make any connections. It might help if you know a lot about a certain NBA player’s resume. Read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 9. That’s a sign that the game has earned enough loyal players that The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by the Times, will continue to publish it. It doesn’t show up in the NYT Games app but now appears in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can continue to play it free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Do better.

Green group hint: March Madness.

Blue group hint: Six-time all-star.

Purple group hint: Think Wimbledon.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Not meeting expectations.

Green group: Teams in the Women’s Final Four.

Blue group: Teams Kawhi Leonard has played for.

Purple group: Ends in a piece of tennis equipment.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is not meeting expectations. The four answers are bust, disappointment, dud and failure.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is teams in the Women’s Final Four. The four answers are Bruins, Gamecocks, Huskies and Longhorns.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is teams Kawhi Leonard has played for. The four answers are Aztecs, Clippers, Raptors and Spurs.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ends in a piece of tennis equipment. The four answers are bracket, eyeball, horseshoes and internet.

Quick tips for Connections: Sports Edition

#1: Don’t grab for the easiest group. For each word, think about other sports categories it might fit in – is this a word that can be used in football, or to describe scoring options?

#2: Second meanings are important. The puzzle loves to use last names and even college names that mean other things, to fool you into thinking they are words, not names.

#3: And the opposite is also true. Words like HURTS might seem like a regular word, but it’s also the last name of at least one pro athlete.

Technologies

Skip Your iPhone’s Lockscreen: Here’s the Hidden Flashlight Trick You Need to Know

A couple of taps can really make a difference on your iPhone.

Not long ago, your iPhone’s lockscreen would only allow two app shortcuts that you couldn’t change: camera controls and a flashlight toggle. However, iOS 18.2 allows you to customize these shortcuts to almost anything you might want. This small but impactful change is one of many ways iOS 18 supercharges customization for iPhone and iPad users. But what if you still want an easy-to-access way to toggle your flashlight without unlocking your phone?

Apple introduced an accessibility feature in iOS 14 that, once enabled, allows you to perform actions by just tapping on the back of your phone. The feature is called Tap Back and it remains a sleeper feature that’s sneakily hidden away in your settings menu. Enabling Tap Back essentially allows you to create a button on the back of your iPhone to perform an action without needing to take up any space.

Once you have Tap Back enabled, it doesn’t take long to see how much of a game-changer it can be with its added convenience. Below, we’ll show you how to set it up so a couple of taps on the back of your iPhone will let you launch just about anything you want.

For more, check out what’s in the latest iOS 18.4 release.

How to set up Back Tap on iPhone

Whether you want to link Back Tap with your flashlight, camera or launch a different iPhone app, the path through your iPhone settings begins the same way.

On your compatible iPhone (iPhone 8 or later), launch the Settings application and go to Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap. Now you have the option to launch your action (in this case, your flashlight) with either two or three taps. Although two taps is obviously faster, I would suggest three taps because if you fidget with your phone, it’s easy to accidentally trigger the accessibility feature.

Once you choose a tap option, select the Flashlight option — or a different action if you prefer. You’ll see over 30 options to choose from, including system options like Siri or taking a screenshot, to accessibility-specific functions like opening a magnifier or turning on real-time live captions. You can also set up Back Tap to open the Control Center, go back home, mute your audio, turn the volume up and down and run any shortcuts you’ve downloaded or created.

You’ll know you’ve successfully selected your choice when a blue checkmark appears to the right of the action. You could actually set up two shortcuts this way — one that’s triggered by two taps and one that’s triggered by three taps to the iPhone’s back cover.

Once you exit the Settings application, you can try out the newly enabled Back Tap feature by tapping the back of your iPhone — in my case, to turn on the flashlight. To turn off the flashlight, you can tap on the back of your iPhone as well, but you can also just turn it off from your lock screen if that’s easier.

For more great iPhone tips, here’s how to keep your iPhone screen from dimming all the time and canceling all those subscriptions you don’t want or need.