If you fancy a trip to Tokyo, you could fly from New York to Tokyo in a premium economy seat for around $1,300. Or, you could spend that money on a pair of Bang & Olufsen’s brand new earbuds, the Grace, which will set you back a more rounded $1,500. That’s… a lot of money.
You do get a stunning pair of buds for the price, though. Metal build, Dolby Atmos, a “pearl blasted aluminum” case. But that price is still a lot — especially when you remember that you could get six pairs of AirPods Pro 3 for the same price. Fun for all the extended family.
Premium earbuds, massive price
So what do you get for your $1,500? First up is their premium build and classy style. B&O’s audio gear always looks pretty special, and the Grace buds are no different. There’s that silver accent of the stem, with the logo slammed down the side. The earbud portion itself is black, so it should just blend into your ear.
They look a bit like a pair of really fancy AirPods — and there’s nothing wrong with that at all.
The other AirPods-like feature is the touch controls. Rather than the tapping and swiping you’ll usually find on earbuds, the Grace controls feature haptic feedback, much like the AirPods Pro and AirPods 4. Those are some of the best earbuds controls around, so if these are similar, I’m looking forward to seeing how they pan out.
You’ll be putting the buds into a metal charging case, made out of “pearl blasted aluminum.” That means that the case has a textured finish, a bit like sand blasting, only much more upscale. It looks lovely.
There’s a reason the guy above looks so pleased with himself — and it’s almost certainly down to the sound stuff that B&O has packed into the buds.
There’s a 12mm driver inside the buds, for what Bang & Olufsen tells us is the brand’s best and most open sound ever. We’ll have to wait and see before we can pass final judgment, but given the brand’s marvelous track record, I’m not too worried.
Dolby Atmos is here for the surround sound spatial audio fans, and is more likely to be similar to Apple’s version rather than Bose’s third-party approach. B&O says it’s to make them sound more like loudspeakers, so it’s almost certainly going to be slightly more restrained. Which sounds alright by me
ANC is a given, of course. There’s apparently 4x the ANC (we’re not told what that’s being compared to, presumably older B&O buds), so we should be looking at some excellent noise canceling. Traditionally, B&O has focused on sound rather than noise blocking, so it’s unlikely that the ANC will bother Sony or Bose just yet.
Where’s the battery life?
The good part about the battery life is that they’re rated for 2,000 charges — four times the usual. The bad bit? They’re not going to last very long, so you’ll need to charge them more. They’re going to last 4.5 hours on a charge — which is lower than just about any other pair of earbuds out there.
You can extend that to 17 hours when you pop them in the charging case, but it’s still not really enough power for your earbuds when you’ve paid $1,500.
I’m not going to give a final verdict as to whether they’re worth their lofty asking price until I’ve got them in my ears for testing. But that is an awful lot of money to pay for just about anything — and the competition is very strong indeed.
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