Nova H1 are headphones disguised as earrings
Diamonds might be a girl's best friend, but can they play podcasts like these?
It might seem like you’ve accidentally clicked on jewelleryweekly.com, but Nova’s H1 isn’t a normal pair of earrings.
Sure, they come in silver or gold and are made using freshwater pearls, but crack one open and you’d find a tiny speaker inside, with Bluetooth 5.2 onboard to connect them to your phone, so they’ll hang on your lobes and fire the audio directly into your lug holes. Nova calls it Directional Sound and compares it to augmented reality; a layer of sound added to the ones that surround you.
Like bone-conduction headphones these probably won’t be the last word in sound quality, but that’s the price you pay for letting in the outside world. Obviously that means there’s no noise-cancelling, but they do have mics to help block out background noise when you’re on a call.
Don’t have your ears pierced? That doesn’t matter, because you can get them as both standard studs or clip-ons, so there’s no need to stick a needle through any of your bits before you buy some. Each one weighs 7g, which is only a couple of grams more than an AirPod Pro, so they should be light enough to wear all day.
They’re not waterproof and the battery only lasts 4.5 hours, so you’ll have to take them off to charge them fairly regularly, but they come with a suitably fancy-looking USB-C case that holds three full charges. They go into hibernation when you’re not using them, though, so there’s no need to remove them when you’ve got nothing playing or there’s nobody on the phone. Nova says the battery will last up to three years, but it can be replaced when it dies, which is just as well considering the price.
The silver ones cost €595, while the gold ones are an extra €100, and they’re available now from nova-audio.com.
Tom Wiggins
Contributor 
