Palm’s Next Comeback Starts With Its New Wireless Earbuds

Palm’s Next Comeback Starts With Its New Wireless Earbuds

Whether you’re launching a brand new company or trying to revive an iconic brand, it seems like the easiest way to quickly get the first product out the door now is to release a pair of wireless earbuds — and that’s exactly what the startup behind the Palm brand is doing with the new Palm Buds Pro.

The last we’d heard from the Palm brand (whose name is revered for creating some of the first PDAs and smartphones well over a decade ago) was back in 2018 with the Palm Palm: a tiny smartphone billed as both a companion and alternative to a smartphone, which is probably why you don’t hear much about it anymore. It was designed to fill a need that really didn’t exist.

This time around, Palm is delivering a product that consumers are currently ravenous for. The number of wireless earbud options available has exploded in recent years, and Palm took one look at an overcrowded market and figured it would toss its hat into the ring too. Like the Ear (1) earbuds released by Carl Pei’s Nothing a few months ago, the Palm Buds Pro feature active noise cancelling, similarly-sized 10-millimetre drivers, IPX4 water resistance so they’ll shrug off sweat, 5.5 hours of battery life on buds alone, or 24 hours in total when paired with a charging case.

Unlike the Nothing Ear (1), however, the Palm Buds Pro doesn’t appear to feature an entirely original design. As The Verge pointed out, a quick search on Amazon is all it takes to find wireless earbuds that look exactly like the Palm Buds Pro do, right down to the charging case. The company does claim to have customised the functionality and internals of its wireless earbuds, but there don’t appear to be any reviews of how they sound or perform just yet.

Available for pre-order now for $US99 (A$132) through the company’s website, the Palm Buds Pro are expected to ship sometime in early November (a timeline that could potentially slip given the supply chain challenges we’ve been seeing with electronics as well as shipping delays) and will also be available through Amazon starting on November 9, but for $US129 (A$172) instead.


Editor’s Note: Release dates within this article are based in the U.S., but will be updated with local Australian dates as soon as we know more.


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