Since 2017, the most popular Bluetooth headphones in the market is TWS. What is TWS headphones? What are the advantages and disadvantages of TWS headphones? 

TWS is the abbreviation of “true wireless stereo”, which means real wireless stereo. TWS technology is also based on the development of Bluetooth chip technology. According to its working principle, it means that the mobile phone connects the main earphone, and then the main earphone quickly connects the secondary earphone through wireless way, so as to realize the real wireless separation of Bluetooth left and right channels, no need the bridge cable any more. When the slave speaker is not connected, the master speaker returns to mono soundtrack. TWS technology has been applied to the field of Bluetooth headphones, so it also gives birth to a new product - TWS Bluetooth headphones.

To trace its development, we have to start with apple. After the cancellation of the 3.5mm jack of the iPhone 7 in 2017, the Bluetooth headphone market has developed rapidly. Of course, the Bluetooth headpones technology and products have also developed for many years, among which the products and quality are also uneven, and the industry is in chaos. Until Apple first released the world's first TWS Bluetooth headset, airpods, which supports Apple's many ecological products (iPhone, iPad, iWatch, macbook), built-in optical sensors and accelerometers. Double click the wireless headset to access Siri. The headset can also reduce noise, filter noise and ensure sound quality during a call. At the same time, with the development of AI at home and abroad, TWS technology, with the help of AI, takes the fast train of "intelligent" era. From then on, Bluetooth headset headpones has launched a new vitality.

What are the features of TWS?

1.Truly wireless for one or two ears

TWS Bluetooth headset doesn't need wired connection, which gets rid of the shackles of traditional wired headset. The left and right earphones form a stereo system through Bluetooth, which improves listening to songs, talking and wearing. If we add professional acoustic pickup technology, intelligent noise reduction technology, AI algorithm noise reduction technology and so on, we can achieve a perfect sound experience: business hands-free call, video call, music enjoyment, out sport mountain climbing and running, safe driving and so on are not constrained.

2. Intelligent noise reduction function

From the product point of view, noise reduction is an essential technology. Experience in audio & video is the most important focus by users, we can design lots of application scenarios for products. But we are not sure that end-users have been using your products in the scenes you design. When we dig deep into some products of the industry, we find that many users make complaints about noise reduction when in outside. For example, one of SONY TWS earbuds has been roasted because of the bad calling experience. Aolang bes50xs series get bad noises when calling at the seaside or in airports. The Bluetooth connection of QCY earbuds was directly lost when getting on and off the subway station. These poor user experiences make the product discount greatly.

3.Semi Intelligence & Intelligence

In the era of crazy development in 2018, TWS headset has gone through the road of semi intelligent headset. Taking the intelligent TWS Bluetooth headset represented by “Chumenwenwen” as an example, it is not only a different hardware product, but also an intelligent interactive intelligent product with in-depth content in app. Similarly, more Bluetooth chips have been upgraded on version 5.0, embedded with serial flash memory, which can more flexibly upgrade customer software and support third-party software transplantation. With the original ecology or content provider to open its api, in fact, there is great potential in the content area. The mainstream front-line gods have been involved in the field of artificial intelligence and are building their own intelligent ecological chain. Such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon, they extend the wireless intelligent voice interaction services of Microsoft Cortana, Google assistant and Amazon Alexa, behind which is a battle for intelligent end users. 

Similarly, domestic hardware manufacturers, represented by mobile phone manufacturers, all support their voice assistant, Huawei's TWS supports Xiaoyi in their mobile phones, and Xiaomi's TWS supports Xiaoai classmate, and this is particularly important. The era of intelligence has come, and pure hardware is more flaunting the label of low-end products, because no one is willing to spend the same money to buy a low-cost hardware product. Q3-Q4 in 2019, it is expected that the sales volume of intelligent speaker products + TWS intelligent headset products will increase significantly, which will promote the faster development of artificial intelligence.

Why is TWS so popular?

First of all, let's talk about the market of wired headphones. According to industry statistics and professional market research institutions, the market of wired headphones is more than 100 billion US dollars every year! With the support of TWS technology, you can say goodbye to all kinds of cable earphones that can't be sorted out. When you enjoy music, you don't need cables not only between the media source and the earphones, but also between the left and right headset! The embarrassment caused by the connecting cable over the years is finally going to be history. There will be a greater breakthrough in the field of acoustic noise reduction, and once the volume of the whole TWS industry breaks through, the cost of chips and solutions will drop. Now the overall cost of the lowest end TWS solution in the market is around 6usd. It is expected that in the next two to three years, TWS headphones will become the standard equipment for mobile phone manufacturers to ship.

What are the disadvantages of TWS at this stage?

According to the actual test of the medium and high-end items domestic and foreign brands, and according to the feedback data from various mainstream e-commerce companies at home and abroad, the following is roughly as follows:

1.Battery life of the earbud is the top of all the problems. 

Why? The size of the single ear. Considering the ergonomic design, most of the TWS earbuds are small in ear or half in-ear. According to statistics, the battery capacity of a single earbud is between 25-60mah, and the maximum battery life is no more than 6 hours after a single or double earplug is fully charged. Of course, we believe that the follow-up will do better. The premise is a breakthrough in battery technology and ergonomic design. Of course, there is another way, which is to give larger battery capacity for the charging case, because when we take off the earubds and put it into the charging bin, it is in the charging state, so if the battery capacity of the charging case is large enough, it can maintain the long-term endurance, because after all, no one is willing to charge the charging case repeatedly in three or two days. To some extent, increasing the battery life of the charging case can make up for the problem of small battery capacity of the earbud, which is more acceptable to users.

2.Noise reduction in complex environment.

ANC(Active noise cancellation) and ENC(Environmental Noise Cancellation), these are not studied by every TWS manufacturer in the field of acoustics, but there are few China companies specializing in acoustic technology. In the era of smart phones, noise reduction technology is achieved through network optimization + hardware support + software assistance and other methods. In the middle and high-end brands we tested, only few noise reduction experience we are satisfied with.

The function of noise reduction is very important for earphones. One is to reduce noise and avoid excessive volume amplification, so as to reduce the damage to ears. The second is to filter the noise so as to improve the sound quality and call quality.

Noise reduction can be divided into passive noise reduction and active noise reduction.

Passive noise reduction is also called physical noise reduction. Passive noise reduction refers to the use of physical characteristics to isolate the external noise from the ear. It mainly realizes the physical sound insulation of the earphone through the tight design of the head beam of the earphone, the acoustic optimization of the cavity of the earmuff, the placement of sound-absorbing materials inside the earmuff, etc. Passive noise reduction is very effective in isolating high-frequency sound (such as human voice), which can reduce the noise by about 15-20db. Active noise reduction is ANC, ENC, CVC, DSP and other noise reduction technologies that businesses will focus on when promoting the noise reduction function of headphones. 

ENC noise reduction. Enc (environmental noise cancellation) can effectively suppress 90% of the reverse environmental noise, thus reducing the environmental noise up to 35dB, so that game players can communicate more freely. Through the dual microphone array, we can accurately calculate the speaker's speaking direction, protect the target voice in the main direction, and remove all kinds of interference noise in the environment.

3.The bottleneck of wireless transmission distance

 TWS earphone itself relies on Bluetooth technology to realize wireless communication. According to Bluetooth 4.2 protocol, its theoretical communication range can reach 100 meters, and finally the new Bluetooth 5.0 theory can reach 300 meters. However, in the actual use process, there are many problems, such as complex environment, circuit itself, radio frequency interference and so on, The distance is limited. According to the measured data, the current market mainstream use range is 10 meters, and the farthest is only 12 meters. At this stage, according to the domestic application scenarios, it obviously can not meet the user's experience needs. 

4. Sound quality and effect

Foreign buyers have higher requirements for sound quality. In Amazon, we have collected a lot of data, and many bad reviews have reported that the sound quality are too poor. In addition to good chips and solutions, good materials in hardware are also needed. On the other hand, tuning in hardware and software (very professional) is also needed. The cavity structure design of headphones will directly affect the sound quality and sound effect experience. In a word, if you want to do TWS earbuds well and be more professional in this industry. It's not easy as to do a plagiarism of appearance and structure.

Industry development prospect of TWS headphnes:

According to the market development and industry prediction, combined with the our experience of the product market and the capture of TWS related issues, we forecast the industry of true wireless earbuds according to our own cognitions:

1.TWS headphones will be intelligent. 

With the help of AI technology and rapid development, TWS headphones can be perfectly combined with AI products in the field of AI. On the other hand, they can also walk a complete intelligent product line. Because the intelligent voice service technology at this stage is becoming more and more mature, which is widely used in cars, smart home products, etc., TWS headphones can do these things: such as full voice control, gesture control, etc., in addition, the now widely used smart bracelet and watch can also be extended to TWS earphones. In the next stage of market competition, artificial intelligence of TWS products will become one of the focuses.

2.The chip of hardware manufacturer will integrate more functions of TWS. 

Take Qualcomm as an example, the new QCC 5100 series Bluetooth chip is also supported by Qualcomm's TWS plus technology. TWS plus is currently only used with snapdragon 845 platform. If the headset supporting this technology is paired with other devices, it will only be connected in TWS mode. In addition, the technology can use the mobile phone as a broadcasting center and transmit audio signals to multiple Bluetooth devices at the same time without the support of any secondary equipment. At present, mobile phones that support Bluetooth 5.0 technology have gradually become the mainstream configuration. I believe that with the continuous investment of hardware manufacturers and the upgrading of products, more technical applications will add wings to TWS headphones.

3.The extension of TWS products

At present, the main performance of TWS industry is TWS earphones. In fact, TWS is not only applied to earphone products, but also can be extended to all audio fields (TWS speakers, TWS smart wearable products, etc.) every category of innovation or preemptive market opportunity is enough to make you stand out in the market!