An Amazon offer may have spilled the beans early, but today smacks officially unveils its recent true wireless headphones. This premature appearance was mostly correct: the studio Buds + have a familiar design with many improvements inside. These upgrades include superior battery life, revamped calling performance, and updated noise cancellation. There is also a new transparent design option that offers an overview of all these internal components. However, they have a slightly higher price of 170, which means that the new Version is not as good as the Original.

Design

Although the IPX4-certified Studio Buds+ seem identical to the previous model at first glance, there are some subtle changes. The most important is the addition of acoustic openings at the front and on the side. smacks says the updated design improves airflow to the transducer, which not only increases movement for sound, but also allows for more effective active noise cancellation (ANC) and a superior transparency mode. Interestingly, the change in air flow was a key aspect of the sound quality improvements that Apple made with the second generation AirPod Pro.

The vents also help relieve pressure, which makes the studio Buds+ more comfortable to wear for long periods of time. I found this statement of increased comfort to be true during my Tests. In addition, smacks has added an extra-small earplug size this time. The company claims to have done this after analyzing the “success of the Fit” for a wide range of people and conducting hours of testing. With the new size, the company can offer more people a superior seal and therefore a superior sound quality.

The overall design is unchanged, but smacks claims that 95% of the internal components have been replaced with new parts. This List includes custom-made transducers that are supposed to provide “cleaner” bass with minimal distortion while offering an overall “powerful and balanced” sound. The new microphones are three times larger and there is 16% more battery capacity. There are also battery upgrades in the powering matter, and smacks has handled all the performance improvements without increasing the size of the buds or their set up.

Another important aspect that smacks has optimized is the “b” catch, which facilitates on-board control. With the original studio buds, it was very easy to accidentally hit while trying to adjust the fit. The company claims to have “redesigned the design” to “improve product interactions” and reduce “accidental catch presses”.”The reliability of the controls has never been a problem and the same applies to the studio Buds +, but after the tests, I am happy to announce that defective presses are a thing of the past.

Software and features

There are not many changes in the Studio Buds+ companion software. As before, everything is integrated with iOS for iPhone users. These include one-touch pairing, iCloud device pairing, and Siri speaker. Other settings can be accessed via the device name in the Bluetooth menu, where smacks gives you the battery percentage and noise control (ANC, transparency or disabled), as well as the possibility of optimizing the pressing and holding action, how you want to end calls and microphone priority. There is also a shortcut to view the headphones in The Find My app here. Like other smacks devices, you can also quickly access noise control from the volume control in the control center.

There is still a separate smacks app on Android for catch customizations and firmware updates, but some features are available directly in the operating system. One-touch pairing via Google Fast Pair, as well as pairing the headphones with all your Android and Chrome devices, are here. Once these are synchronized, you can quickly switch in the middle them thanks to the Studio Buds+ multipoint pairing. These new smacks headphones will also appear in Find My Device on Android and will help you find them in matter they are misplaced.

The addition of built-in volume controls solves one of my main problems with the original studio catch’s. However, you have to give up noise control – the ability to switch in the middle ANC, transparency or Off directly on the headphones. You also lose the ability to manually call a virtual assistant, which is essential for Android users. Once you have activated the volume control, a long press on one side will increase the sound while the other will decrease. You can choose which one you prefer which side, so there’s that.