Making you look sort of like an off-brand Princess Leia, these little black ear-cups are the world’s first truly wireless headphones. In short, they’re the sound you’d get from a good pair of Sennheiser or Beats by Dre cans, with the portability of the Airpods.

I distinctly remember the sheer ridicule that the Airpods were subjected to when they were announced back in 2016, with practically zero foresight of exactly what a phenomenon (and status symbol) they’d become in just the next few years… and chances are that we may get to see history repeat itself with the Human Inc. truly wireless headphones. The two unsuspecting cups rest on your ears as opposed to in your ears, giving you the convenience of the Airpods, but with much better sound and hopefully better battery life. They build on the functionality of truly wireless earphones too, with a much larger, easier to navigate touch surface, along with the ability to actively translate as many as 11 languages in real-time, a feature that Google debuted with their Pixel buds.

The Human Headphones pack not one but two 30mm audio drivers per ear-cup, giving you four speakers in total that provide a feeling comparable to having a 2.2 sound system. The speakers come with beamforming microphones that can pick up your audio without the noise around you, allowing you to answer calls as well as communicate with your smart device without any interference, and two 280mAh batteries provide the Human Headphones with a usage cycle of 9 hours on a full charge.

The best bit about the headphones are the fact that you can still use them when you’re charging them… not as headphones, but snapped together, as a Bluetooth speaker! The extra set of audio drivers per earpiece come handy when it comes to belting out audio into the surroundings, rather than into your ears.

Although it would seem weird to walk around the city in these wireless ear-cups, I imagine it wouldn’t be too difficult to get used to them. Designed to be worn everywhere you would wear your Airpods, the Human Headphones come with the ability to blend outside audio into your mix too, so you don’t end up completely tuning the world out; and when you experience earphone fatigue (it’s a real thing), you can easily use the Human Headphones together as a bonafide Bluetooth speaker… besides, with a $250 price tag, that’s much more than your Airpods could ever hope to offer you, right?

Designer: Human Inc.