The best noise cancelling earbuds come in all shapes and sizes, but how many of them come with a free tree? UK audio firm Majority's new Bluetooth earbuds do, sort of: the firm will plant a new tree for every pair of buds you buy.
With a price tag of just £49.95 and a marketing focus on sustainability rather than sonic fidelity I don't think these buds are going to be giving Apple's AirPods Pro 2 or Sony's WF-1000XM4 any sleepless nights. But with Bluetooth 5.2, low latency (55-70ms), IPX7 waterproofing and up to 30 hours of audio between charges they pack in a decent amount of tech for the price, and at 3.6g they should be comfortable for long commutes too.
They're also considerably cheaper than the competition: our current pick of budget noise cancelling earbuds, the Huawei Freebuds 4i, are nearly twice the price.
Why Majority wants to plant a tree
Majority has been around for a while now; the firm was founded in 2013 in Cambridge and makes a range of audio products including soundbars and radios. And it wants to be the first carbon-neutral audio brand, although there's a bit of competition for that particular title.
Majority's previous launches included TruBio wireless earbuds, which are made from biodegradable plastic that won't melt in your ears but that won't hang around for centuries when you've replaced them. This time around the Tru 2 promise to use less energy than rival buds – hence the long play time – and every pair bought means a new tree in the Majority Forest. To date, the firm has paid to plant 435,735 trees and says that's the equivalent of removing 485.55 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
The Tru 2 noise cancelling earbuds are available now from Amazon and direct from Majority.
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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).
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