GLIDiC, a Japanese brand backed by Softbank selection, is introducing new wireless earbuds in the U.S.A with the GLIDiC Sound Air TW-5000s.
In a very competitive market, GLIDiC is counting on the Sound Air TW-5000s’ design and relative performance to differentiate itself.
From the outside, this product looks very much like the previous model TW-5000 (no “s”) predecessor, which won a Chicago Good Design award, a Red Dot Design Award (2018) and a Japan Audio Visual Awards Gold (2019).
This design makes the earbud protrude less than others and is quite compact, but there’s still plenty of competition from brands like Sennheiser or Creative. To make it possibly even less noticeable when worn, the black version is supplemented with White and Beige colors.
Each earbud has a control button that can be used for various purposes such as volume control or voice assistant.
Among the upgrades seen in this new TW-5000s model, the manufacturer points out a 60 days battery standby time, which is 4x the standby time of TW-5000. That’s extremely long since it’s not uncommon to find wireless earbuds with less than 2-4 days of standby time.
That could be a big deal if you often forget to charge your earbuds and don’t actually use them that much. I think that a lot of people fall in that category, and it’s infuriating when “the one time” you need earbuds, their battery is dead. TW-5000s solves that to a point.
The storage/charging box is also very compact (32 x 42 x 42 mm), which is always a good thing, and the earbuds turn “on” automatically when you take them out. If not yet paired to a device, they will also put themselves into “pairing mode” using Bluetooth 5.0.
I wish the charging port was a USB-C, but for now, it’s micro-USB. The manufacturer says that it can play music for about three hours, and the case internal battery gives an additional 7 hours of battery, for a total of roughly 10 hours, according to the specifications.
You can check them out in Sprint stores, and that’s not a surprise since Softbank owns Sprint, which is soon to merge with T-Mobile, after it was approved by the FCC this November.
Filed in . Read more about Earbuds, Japan, Softbank and Sprint.