They're finally here.

(upbeat music)

New buds who this?

(laughs)

So back in October, Microsoft announced

these tiny pop socket looking satellite dishes,

for your ears.

They're the Surface earbuds,

and they're the companies first attempt

at a fully wireless in ear bud.

And seven months later, they're finally available

for an asking price of 200 dollars.

But in the time that they announced them

to the time they finally shipped them,

we have seen so much happen in the wireless earbud world.

And, these little guys, they might be too little, too late.

So let's get into it.

The Surface earbuds come in a large plastic pill shaped case

that looks a lot like a giant Tic Tac.

It has a USB-C port, a pairing button,

and on the inside, an indicator light.

Currently there is one color option

that Microsoft calls light gray or glacier,

but, these are bright white.

They come in white.

With dark gray coming later.

Because there's no wireless charging,

the case is really light.

And, the click feels more like a slap of two plastics

than it does a click.

(pop)

(click)

(pop)

(click)

(click)

(click)

(click)

(click)

(click)

It's also a little hard to get the buds out of the case,

because there's no grooves to get your finger under

when you attempt to detach the buds

from the magnets that are holding them in.

You have to be able to get leverage

on like a really slim piece of the bud

that actually sticks out of the case.

I was able to get the hang of it,

but I could see people actually having trouble with this.

Now, the buds themselves are, unique.

Overall the design just looks like, a pop socket.

A flat, satellite looking exterior,

and a bike seat-esque ear piece.

They're IPX4 water resistant,

so you should be good in some light rain,

should definitely be fine working out in them.

And you have three size option for tips.

Small, medium, and large.

And, y'all I gotta be honest, I rock the medium size tip,

and these fit really well

and they're actually super comfortable.

I went hours upon hours of wearing these things

and never really felt them in my ears,

or experienced any discomfort.

No one ear is the same.

And there are gonna be people that these are simply

not gonna work for.

But, I started slack lining recently

and I've been wearing these while doing that.

And since I'm very new to the sport,

my arms are going everywhere,

I'm constantly falling off the line.

And these never fell out once.

So from dancing to chewing to running,

these stayed in my ears.

But, since they stick so far out of my ears,

go to put a backpack on, go to take a sweatshirt off,

and these come off too.

And when you pay a lot of money for a piece of tech,

it is quite horrifying to see them tumble down the sidewalk.

I just overall wish that they didn't

stick out of my ear, quite as far.

But with how far these stick out of your ear,

there's one thing that they should definitely be good at,

and that's picking up your voice.

It's time for the mic test, and this time, kitchen edition.

All right, so friends today we have,

the Microsoft Surface buds.

Samsung Buds Plus.

We got the Google Pixel buds.

And then I gotta be honest guys,

I still take calls on wired Apple headphones,

because, (sighs) I think this

is the gold standard of microphones.

All right, so first with no noise in the background,

these are the Surface earbuds.

These are the Pixel Buds that were also recently released.

With these, it was all about them

not being super comfortable to wear for a long time,

but god I love that Google Assistant.

Man, whenever I put the Galaxy Bud Pluses back on

I'm like, "yeah these are pretty comfortable,

"these feel right in my ears."

I know it's a weird addition to this competition,

but, I have to admit friends, like when I wanna take a call

and I need to know that someone can hear me,

I just pull these out.

The reason I chose the kitchen to do this mic test

is because there's one thing I do a lot of

while talking on the phone,

and just do a lot of in general,

and that's washing my hands.

(water rushing)

You know I'm just out here, trying to be clean,

trying to follow that 20 second life.

H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P.

Q, R, S--

You know you really gotta get under the fingernails.

That was something that I always overlook.

I hope that this hand washing continues after COVID,

I hope that everyone keeps up on it.

Oh my hands are gonna be really dry

at the end of this test.

Everyone's always got a lot of opinions about the mic test

and, T-B-H I love this about you guys,

so I'll see ya down there.

Let me know what you thought,

and what you would use if you could use any of these,

for just the microphone alone.

Which one would you pick?

A can big feature of these buds though

is their integration with Microsoft Office.

So in Outlook you can read, reply and delete emails.

And then in PowerPoint you can use your left bud

to swipe to the next slide, and also play videos.

You can also utilize the mic inside of these

for live translations in PowerPoint,

but that is not unique to these buds.

Any mic can do that within PowerPoint.

Unfortunately though, you have to run Windows 10

in order to use these with PowerPoint.

And, in quarantine

I don't have a device that runs Windows 10.

So I didn't get to make the killer PowerPoint

that I wanted to make for y'all to test these out with.

But, maybe in the next generation of these

because, not gonna lie my PowerPoints are incredible.

(laughs)

I did find the touch controls to be a bit finicky.

Double tap on either bud for play pause

and to answer end calls.

Tap and hold on either bud to activate a digital assistant.

And then on the right bud, swipe up to turn up the volume,

and down to turn down the volume.

And then on the left bud

you swipe forward to go to the next track

and swipe back for the previous.

These controls just weren't really intuitive to me.

I wanted to be able to swipe up and down and side to side

on both buds.

And then I also wished it was a single tap

for play pause rather than a double tap.

And then within the app

there's no way to customize these either.

So you'll just have to get used to them.

And lastly when you're swiping on them

it's really easy to catch the edge of the bud

since it's so far out of your ear.

And then, send it flying out of your ear.

Yo, but let's talk audio quality.

Now these buds have 13.6 millimeter drivers.

And, they sound good.

I've been jammin' to a whole bunch of summer pop hits

that I'm a total sucker for.