I absolutely love the marketing images for Skullcandy’s new earbuds. I hope they’re hilarious on purpose: The images are meant to promote the company’s three new sporty earbuds. Two of them feature earhooks in different designs for a secure fit, while the third fits in your ear.
The ear-hook designs are the Push Play Active and Push ANC Active, while the in-ears are called the Sesh ANC Active. All three are part of the company’s Active Collection, and all three are true wireless headphones ranging in price from $59.99 to $99.99, seeming like good candidates to compete for the best running headphones battle.
Push Play Active, Push ANC Active and Sesh ANC Active: key features and prices
The cheapest earbuds here are the Push Play Active, at $59.99. They’re IP55-rated for sweat and water resistance, and promise up to 34 hours of battery life, 10 with the buds alone and another 24 via the charging case. There’s fast charging – 2 hours of playtime from about 10 minutes of charging – and an adjustable stay-aware mode to ensure you can hear what’s going on around you. There’s noise cancellation on the built-in microphone, and the earbuds have multipoint connectivity for easy pairing. They have a narrow earhook design that fits around the top of the ear.
The Push ANC Active cost $99.99 and, as the name suggests, add ANC to the Push Play’s feature set. Battery life is still a very respectable 37 hours with ANC on (7 hours for the buds, 30 for the case), increasing to 58 with ANC off. They’re IP67 sweat and water-resistant, have wireless charging, and have adjustable 4-mic noise cancellation for calls. These have a larger earhook that goes all the way around the back of the ear.
The third set of earbuds is the $89.99 Sesh ANC Active. Once again, there’s multipoint pairing and IP67 water and sweat resistance, an adjustable stay-aware mode, and impressive battery life: expect up to 28 hours with ANC and 48 without.
All three models are available now from Skullcandy and the usual retailers, and while Skullcandy doesn’t take up many spots on our best earbuds list, the company generally offers good value for money, and these look like well-specced, strong earbuds. We’ll be putting them through their paces soon to find out for sure.