Philips Reveals New Fidelio TWS and ANC Headphones

There’s no shortage of TWS headphones in the market these days, but Philips latest addition, the Fidelio T1’s are standing out from the crowd, least not thanks to its claimed 9 hour battery life with ANC on, or 13 hours with it off, which to our knowledge is class leading. Philips also announced a pair of over-ear ANC headphones in the shape of the Fidelio L3 which claims to have a 32 hour battery life with ANC on, which increases slightly to 38 hours with it off.

The T1’s come in black or white/silver colour options and feature a 10 mm dynamic driver, as well as a balanced armature, something that is still quite rare in the TWS marketspace. The L3’s use typical 40 mm drivers that most headphones in this class seem to use some variant of. Philips has incorporated its Noise Cancelling Pro+ technology, which is said to be a combination of state-of-the-art hardware and advanced audio processing and it’s used across both sets of headphones. Both also have no less than four microphones for ANC, with the T1’s getting no less than three mics for phone calls, whereas the L3’s only gets two, with both supporting echo noise cancellation during calls.

The T1’s support Bluetooth 5.2 and are “limited” to SBC, AAC and LDAC support, whereas the L3’s use the slightly older Bluetooth 5.1 standard, but gets support for aptX and aptX-HD, although there’s no LDAC support here. Both headphones support Google’s Fast Pair technology and have IR sensors for auto pause. Other common features include touch control, automatic power off and multipoint connection, as well as support for Apple Siri and the Google Assistant.

The charging case of the T1’s offers up to an additional 35 hours of battery life, or 25 hours with ANC enabled. The T1’s support fast charging, where 15 minutes of charging gives you the typical one hour of usable battery life, although a full charge takes two hours. The L3’s on the other hand gives you a whole six hours of usable battery life on a 15 minute charge, but likewise here, it takes two hours to fully charge the batteries. The L3’s retail for around US$350, with no price on the T1’s as yet.