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Epos Adapt 560 Wireless Headphones Review

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Epos Adapt 560 Wireless Headphones Review
For a lot of us, the pandemic has meant working from home, and this situation is continuing well into 2021. An integral part of a lot of our jobs is attending online meetings and video conferences. However, this involves being able to hear and speak clearly; you need a good pair of headphones for this. Most headphones today are focused more on the music experience, and business-friendly options for voice communications are considerably less common, particularly in India.That changed with Epos, a Danish enterprise and gaming focused audio brand, launching in India. One of the company’s first products is the Epos Adapt 560, a pair of wireless headphones that is focused on voice communications and co-developed with Sennheiser. Priced at Rs. 29,990, this is an expensive pair of headphones, especially given that it’s made for a very specific use case. Does it deliver enough by way of features to justify the price? Find out in our review.

The Sennheiser logos sit right below the larger Epos logos on the neckband of the Adapt 560

Foldable boom microphone and ANC on the Epos Adapt 560

While the price would suggest that you’re buying over-ear headphones, the Epos Adapt 560 has an on-ear design that’s typically seen on more affordable models. There’s also active noise cancellation, which typically benefits from the better noise isolation of over-ear fit headphones, so the design does come across as a bit odd, everything considered. The Adapt 560 is comfortable thanks to soft padding and its low weight, but I wasn’t too impressed with its ability to isolate background noise.

The headphones have been co-developed with German specialist brand Sennheiser. You can see its logos right below the Epos logos on both sides of the headband, and indeed Sennheiser’s distinct styling and ergonomics are evident in the headset itself. However, this is an entirely plastic headset, and looks far too basic given the Rs. 29,990 price tag.

The Epos Adapt 560 has all its controls and ports along the bottom of the right ear cup. There is a sliding button to control playback and volume, a dedicated button for answering calls, the power button, a dedicated button for ANC, and a USB Type-C port for charging and wired use. I found all of them a bit hard to manage at times. Even after a few days of use, my muscle memory still wasn’t trained to find the right button when I needed it.

Unlike most regular music-focused headphones that have microphones within the ear cups, the Epos Adapt 560 has a foldable boom microphone that extends outwards when needed, and can be stowed away almost flush with the ear cup when not in use. It’s plastic like the rest of the headset, and clicks into place when stowed. This promises to make voice pickup clearer and more accurate, and I’ll get into the actual performance of the microphone a bit later in this review.

Connectivity is through Bluetooth 5 for smartphones and tablets. The sales package also includes an Epos BTD 800 USB dongle for devices such as computers and laptops that might not have Bluetooth built in. This also allows the headphones to maintain simultaneous connections with a smartphone and a USB device. You can connect to two Bluetooth devices simultaneously, with or without the dongle, including laptops with Bluetooth built in.

epos adapt 560 review flat Epos

When stowed, the microphone of the Epos Adapt 560 sits nearly flush with the headset

A button on the dongle is said to allow quick launching of the Microsoft Teams app, but I couldn’t get this to work on my MacBook Air. The headphones directly and automatically connected to the dongle for me without any pairing process. Apart from Microsoft Teams certification, there is also support for the SBC, AAC, and aptX Bluetooth codecs.

The Epos Adapt 560 offers excellent battery life, running for around 34 hours with music playing when connected to a smartphone, on a single charge. With everyday use for around 6-7 hours a day of music, calls, and other audio, I estimate that the headphones will run for around four days on a single charge. Charging is slow though, with the headset taking nearly four hours to charge fully.

The Epos Adapt 560 is great for calls and productivity, not too good for music

Most of the headphones we review are music-focused, and the Epos Adapt 560 is a rare exception, meant for things other than music. With the primary use case for such a headset being calls and voice communications, that’s what I concentrated on for this review. I tested the headphones with iOS and Android smartphones, and also used the dongle for connectivity with my MacBook Air laptop. While I was able to use Bluetooth to connect to my laptop, I found that using the dongle made for quicker connectivity.

The Epos Adapt 560 is very good as a hands-free headset, and I had good experiences with both a smartphone and a computer. The sound tuning makes for clear voices, which were easy to hear and understand regardless of whether I used a cellular or fixed home Internet connection. The boom microphone proved to be excellent, ensuring that my voice was picked up accurately and clearly for the person on the other end of the call.

This voice-focused sonic signature also makes the Epos Adapt 560 very good for dialogue-heavy content, such as instructional videos, podcasts, and even many kinds of movies. I found this quite useful as my job often involves watching this kind of content, and having the headset always connected to both my smartphone and laptop made this part of work a lot easier. Furthermore, device switching was almost seamless, and the headset managed to switch the audio signal to the device I wanted to hear from nearly every time in just a couple of seconds.

While the Epos Adapt 560 handles communications capably, the same can’t be said of the music listening experience. Interestingly, the aptX Bluetooth codec is supported on this device and I did try it with a compatible Android smartphone to see if this made a significant difference to the music experience, but this wasn’t the case. The sonic signature made for a rather plain and ordinary sound that is workable for the occasional track you might want to listen to, but the Adapt 560 certainly isn’t meant to be used for a lot of music.

epos adapt 560 review mic Epos

Although excellent for communications, the Epos Adapt 560 is less than ideal for listening to music

Listening to a high-resolution version of Golden Brown by The Stranglers with the aptX Bluetooth codec in use, I found a lack of character in the music, and none of the detail and drive that I’d usually expect from a high-end wireless headset. The instrumentals at the start of the track, which sound beautifully cohesive and detailed on the Sony WH-1000XM4 were much more plain on the Epos Adapt 560.

Active noise cancellation on the Epos Adapt 560 is decent; there was a noticeable reduction in the typical background sounds I hear in my home office, and even a faint drop in sounds such as voices and the television in the background. That said, this isn’t class-leading active noise cancellation by any means. It’s more closely comparable to the mid-range ANC offered by headphones and earphones priced at around Rs. 15,000. It’s also worth pointing out here that the on-ear design reduces some of the effectiveness of the active noise cancellation.

Verdict

Given that most wireless headphones are music-focused, Epos has a rather unique product on its hands with the Adapt 560. This is a headset that is unashamedly meant for communications, but isn’t as specific in its design and feature set as most business or enterprise audio products. Instead, this is a productivity-centric device that looks, feels, and works like any retail wireless headset. It’s excellent for its core purpose of communications, with great connectivity options and battery life that is among the best in its segment.

However, all of this still isn’t enough to justify the Rs. 29,999 price tag, in my opinion. The on-ear design, ordinary ANC performance, and lack of flexibility for music makes this a niche product that not a lot of people will truly see the point of. Even those who do might think many times before spending this much money on such a purpose-built product. It might perhaps be more worth considering an all-round headset such as the Sony WH-1000XM4, which offers better value for money and will work reasonably well even for productivity.

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Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox

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Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox


Microsoft is teaming up with Inworld AI to create game development tools for Xbox, enabling developers to create characters, generate entire scripts and quests, and more. The multi-year deal brings an AI design copilot and an AI character runtime engine to the forefront, both of them being totally optional to use and to varying degrees. Of course, the use of AI in art has been criticised by many for simply lacking originality, in addition to running the risk of fewer jobs for artists — a growing fear among many considering the alarming number of layoffs seen at game studios this year in an attempt to cut costs.

“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”

The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.

Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.

Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.


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BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It

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BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It


BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) is a state-owned telecommunication company in India. Earlier this year in May, the government said that the firm started rolling out 4G services in the country. By December, the networks were said to be upgraded to 5G. However, at the India Mobile Congress, BSNL chairman P K Purwar said that the company will launch 4G services in December and then roll it across the country by June 2024. The chairman added that the 5G upgrades will take place after June next year.

In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.

To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.

Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.

The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.


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Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed

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Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed


Realme GT 5 Pro’s launch date is not far away. The Chinese smartphone brand on Tuesday (November 7) confirmed the arrival of the new GT series smartphone in its home country. The Realme GT 5 Pro is teased to come with a display with over 3000 nits of peak brightness. It is also confirmed to pack a larger heat dissipation area for thermal management. The handset will ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come as a successor to the Realme GT 5 that debuted in China in August.

Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.

The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.

For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.

The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.


The Motorola Edge 40 recently made its debut in the country as the successor to the Edge 30 that was launched last year. Should you buy this phone instead of the Nothing Phone 1 or the Realme Pro+? We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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