Erato Apollo 7: An Apple AirPods competitor that gets it right

[MUSIC] You probably never heart of Erato but it is a Taiwanese startup and it bills its Apollo 7 headphone as the world's most compact true wireless earphones. Apple might dispute that claim now that it's unveiled its air pods but the Apollo 7's certainly are very small. The key all these truly wireless earphones and by that I mean there's no cord linking the ear buds The wireless bluetooth connection between both your phone and the two buds is rock solid, or at least close to it. And that's what's impressive about the Apollo 7s, they really do work well. And after I've paired them with my phone once, I have no trouble pairing them again. I can't say the listening experience was totally flawless, I did encounter the occasional dropout But that's par for the course when using most Bluetooth headphones. They also sound good for Bluetooth ear buds with a reasonable amount of clarity and decent bass. Using one of the larger tips I managed to get a secure fit and a tight seal and that tight seal really helps improve sound quality. These are sweat resistant so you can use them for running or working out at the gym and you get a few sets of wing accessories to help you lock the buds in place. You can control your music and volume levels using your phone or use the single multi function buttons on each of the ear buds to skip tracks forward, answer and end calls and raise and lower the volume. There are microphones built into both buds and when a call comes in you go into mono mode with only one of the buds outputting sound. Battery life is rated three hours which isn't great, but standard for this type of headphone, but the good news is that a charging case is included and when you're finished using the buds you click them into their charging compartments in the case, and close the case to begin charging. At first I thought it would be Be easy to lose the buds, but after getting into the habit of slipping them into their case I really wasn't worried about that. In the end my only real gripe is the price. These are $300. That still is a little bit pricey. In time that price Price should come down, but for now, it is the price you pay for being an early adopter of cutting edge technology. I'm David Carnoy for cnet.com. Thanks for watching. [MUSIC]