Why these $160 earbuds are my new favorite for work and travel over the AirPods

ZDNET's key takeaways

• The Epos Adapt E1 earbuds are on sale now for $166 at Amazon.
• Designed for the office, the Adapt E1 come with a host of features tailored for videoconferencing, as well as great battery life.
• The mic quality is variable and I found myself wishing some calls were louder.

There are a large number of earbuds on the market right now at every price point, so it makes sense that brands are starting to specialize in specific use cases. 

Danish audio brand Epos (formerly known as Sennheiser Communications) just released a pair of professional-looking earbuds specifically designed for the workplace, with compatibility in mind and built-in integrations for videoconferencing software, their own connectivity dongle, and multi-point connectivity. 

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The buds' default gestures correlate with common videocall actions: pressing the left earbud launches Microsoft Teams, where pressing and holding will raise your hand in the meeting. The right earbud mutes the mic, accepts a phone call, or skips tracks.

Aside from gestures, the buds have multi-point connectivity so you can seamlessly swap from calls on your phone to calls on your laptop without having to re-pair, a game-changer if you take different calls throughout the day on different devices. They also support solo use, meaning you can keep one earbud in at a time (left for videoconferencing, right for phone calls). 

Also, the Adapt E1 are designed to be as compatible as possible, and come with their own USB-C dongle, which minimizes connectivity issues by pairing with the earbuds directly instead of relying solely on your laptop's Bluetooth. 

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The dongle will also allow you to download firmware updates to the earbuds without installing anything on your computer, something plenty of people are prohibited from doing on work-issued devices. If you are able to download and install the accompanying Epos app, you'll be able to make a few adjustments, but overall, the app is on the slim side, and I wouldn't call it a necessity. 

Kyle Kucharski/ZDNET

Regarding audio quality, you likely won't run into connectivity issues, but you will want to experiment with the settings depending on how loud your environment is. I tried the Adapt E1 in an office with an average amount of ambient noise, and was told my vocal quality was a little muffled. 

This was likely because, in attempting to suppress background noise, it was also cutting into my own voice. If you have ANC on, it also significantly blocks out the sound of your own voice, which can make communication awkward. 

The Adapt E1 mitigates this effect with support for Sidetone, which opens up the noise cancellation to a hybrid format, allowing for some ambient noise and, most importantly, your voice to come through. 

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In terms of comfort, Epos touts the Adapt E1's design as being informed by over 500 thousand ear scans, and includes four different bud sizes in the box. They are certainly comfortable and light, and wearing them for extended periods didn't result in any particular soreness. 

After taking them to the gym, running, and moving around in them, I found that the Large size eartips worked best for me and resulted in a more snug fit. For whatever reason, it's always the left bud that tends to come loose when I wear earbuds of any brand, but these stayed put. 

Kyle Kucharski/ZDNET

The ANC on the Adapt E1 is good, but it isn't going to match the deep silence you'd get in over-ear headphones like the Bose QuietComfort Ultra.That being said, they perform acceptably in ultra-loud environments, like on the subway where I live in New York or on a busy street in Midtown. 

On that note, the audio quality of music is also quite good on the Adapt E1. It's got a hefty helping of bass, well-defined mids, and an overall crisp and clean audio profile. The only thing I would say is that these aren't buds with particularly ear-splitting volume. I frequently find myself cranking it up to max when listening to music. 

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On phone calls, audio quality was also variable. After a handful of calls in various scenarios, my consensus is that the audio quality in the earbuds is better than the mic. I could hear others very well, but I was told my voice wasn't coming in clearly on a few occasions. 

Granted, there are a lot of factors here: signal strength, ambient noise, etc., but in very noisy environments, you'll want to make sure your settings are optimized (and the volume is turned up). Luckily, I've found the gestures on the buds to be very responsive. 

I also found battery life to be very good. Epos claims up to 150 hours of battery life in one fully-charged case and intermittent use. With continual use, it claims 10 hours of music listening time with ANC on and six hours of talk time. During my testing, I easily made it through the workweek with intermittent use each day. When you do need to charge them, they power up fast: just five minutes of charging gives you an hour of battery life. 

Kyle Kucharski/ZDNET

Touching on some concerns I had, some users won't be thrilled to learn that the gestures are hard-coded to the earbuds and can't be changed. For example, the videoconferencing controls are relegated to the left earbud, while call accept/reject, track skip, and mute are locked to the right. That being said, the actions are logically assigned, and I had no issues with them. 

Second, I wouldn't recommend these earbuds for users who just need a solid pair of all-around earbuds. The Adapt E1 veer toward the specialized side, with an extensive amount of customization options that might get in the way of everyday users who just want to listen to music on their commute. 

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Last, I had no connectivity issues, but I found the call quality to be variable. Epos is a leading brand in business headsets, so I'm hoping newer versions of the Adapt earbuds have improved mic quality across the board that doesn't rely on fine-tuning the optimal sequence of settings. 

ZDNET's buying advice

Epos' Adapt E1 are slick and professional with excellent battery life, multi-point connectivity, solo wear, and are very comfortable. I'd recommend them to anyone who uses Microsoft Teams extensively and wants a pair of earbuds that can seamlessly jump from a laptop to a smartphone and back again throughout the course of the day. 

The ANC is good, but you'll want to configure noise cancellation for calls if you're tripped up by not hearing your own voice when you speak. Audio quality is very good for a pair of office earbuds, and rounds out the premium package here. The regular price of $170 is quite reasonable for these earbuds, especially if you plan on keeping them in the office, where they work best.