As much as I love the best wireless earbuds, I'm consistently reminded of the restrictions of a Bluetooth connection when I go to listen to a top-quality stream on a service like Tidal or Qobuz. The wireless standard simply isn't good enough to carry those high-resolution lossless streams, and there are times when I start to notice.
My concerns can, however, be put to rest in some form. Qualcomm and its XPAN technology look to be coming to a pair of earbuds near me (and probably you) soon, according to Android Authority. But there does look to be one, glaring problem that has me sighing, and hanging my head in a mixture of disappointment and exasperation.
WiFi earbuds?
So what about the technology that's going to make these wonder earbuds work? It's called XPAN, and it was first announced by Qualcomm in 2023. As with all new developments, it's taken a hot second for it to be tested and implemented into new products, but it looks like it's going to see some form of release very soon. How soon? Qualcomm is more tight-lipped on that front.
The idea is that a WiFi signal will be able to transmit a 24-bit 96kHz signal to your earbuds, as opposed to Bluetooth which can only do lossy tracks. Apparently, you won't have to choose between low latency and high quality either — exciting.
There is just one bugbear that looks to put a fly in the ointment. In order for the WiFi standard to work, the headphones understandably have to have a Qualcomm chip inside — notably the XPAN-rated S7 Pro chip. But so too does your phone, and that'll leave a load of people WiFi earbud free; myself included. You'll also need to be connected to the same WiFi network, so this is going to be an at-home-only use case.
Thankfully, it looks like the buds will also use Bluetooth, but doesn't that kind of defeat the point? Either way, I'm interested to see what benefit the buds bring when they come out, and whether they rank alongside the likes of the Sony WH-1000XM5 and the Bose QuietComfort UItra earbuds.
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