While some of Skullcandy’s best-known offerings reside in the sub-$100 market, the company makes a variety of different types of headphones at a number of different price ranges. While neither the Venue nor the Crusher — both unveiled on Wednesday, August 22 — are as affordable as some of Skullcandy’s offerings, both of them are worth a look for different reasons.
With the new Venue noise-canceling headphones, Skullcandy seems to be aiming at a more youthful market, not surprising given that this is typically the company’s focus. Saying that most noise-canceling headphones are “only seen in the business-class section of an airplane,” the company says that the Venue headphones are for everyone.
For a fairly affordable price, the Venue headphones are packed with features. The headphones feature up to 24 hours of playback, with Rapid Charge technology gaining you five hours of battery life on a 10-minute charge. While noise-canceling is intended to keep out the noise of the world around you, these feature a Monitor Mode, letting you hear the outside world with just a simple push of a button. Skullcandy has also partnered with Tile, letting you find your headphones with the Tile mobile app. The Venue headphones are available in black and white color varieties.
Following up on the Crusher Wireless, which was released in 2016 and built on the earlier Crusher, the Crusher 360 is the latest generation of the bass-booming headphones. In addition to standard features, these headphones feature a haptic engine that rumbles the headphones, letting you feel the bass instead of simply hearing it. These headphones are also wireless, providing up to 30 hours of playback time on a single charge. These will be available exclusively via Best Buy in Black/Tan and Black/Black color varieties.
The Venue noise-canceling wireless headphones will retail for $180 and are available for pre-order now, while the Crusher 360 will retail for $300 and will be available for pre-order beginning September 5. For more information or to pre-order, see the Skullcandy website. If you want to see how the competition stacks up, take a look at our list of the best headphones you can buy or our list of the best noise-canceling headphones.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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