The AI earphones are booming. Those equipped with large models cost less than 500 yuan. Is it the end for traditional earphones?
AI earphones are becoming the mainstream in the wireless earphone market. A report released by LOTU Technology shows that the sales volume of AI earphones priced below 500 yuan accounts for more than 60%. It seems that while many other industries are still using AI to hype concepts and "use AI to promote products", AI earphones have begun to penetrate the low - end market.
Image source: LOTU Technology
The popularization speed of AI earphones is even faster than the popularization wave of TWS true wireless earphones a few years ago. How exactly do AI earphones quickly reduce costs and meet user needs? After researching the mainstream AI earphones on the market, Xiaolei may have found the answer.
What can true wireless earphones + true AI bring?
In the view of Lei Technology, the compatibility between AI and true wireless earphones is quite high. The functions of wireless earphones such as voice interaction, noise reduction, and translation can all achieve a leap in experience through AI, which also makes the types of earphones covered by AI earphones very diverse.
After all, in the past few years, true wireless earphones have gradually made functions such as noise reduction and voice interaction standard features. Especially after brands like Baseus entered the market, you can even see earphones priced at just over 100 yuan with intelligent functions such as active noise reduction.
However, if any earphone that uses AI (even just machine learning technology) is considered an AI earphone, then the coverage rate of AI earphones in the earphone market would easily exceed 95%. So currently, when counting AI earphones, the main criterion is whether they truly apply AI: connect to a large AI model and provide specific AI functions. By browsing e - commerce platforms such as JD.com and Tmall, it's not hard to find that many true wireless earphones priced within 500 yuan are already equipped with intelligent voice assistants, AI translation, and other functions.
Image source: JD.com
With the support of large AI models, AI earphones can easily achieve functions such as information query, translation, and schedule reminders through voice. Compared with traditional smart earphones, the biggest change is that these operations can be achieved through more natural voice interaction, without users having to memorize operation instructions.
The earphones of mainstream mobile phone brands such as Xiaomi and Huawei have deeply integrated AI into the earphone ecosystem. By leveraging AI, the earphones can control some functions of the mobile phone, further strengthening the binding between the earphones and the mobile phone ecosystem.
In addition to achieving breakthroughs in general functions, there are also significant differences in core functions. Taking the active noise reduction function as an example, although most noise - reducing earphones have three modes: normal, noise reduction, and transparency, users basically have to switch manually and cannot achieve active switching like AirPods.
With the support of the AI algorithm optimized by the large AI model, the function of adjusting noise reduction according to environmental noise can be easily achieved. It even supports AI adaptive sound effects, which can adjust the sound settings of the earphones according to the type of music the user is currently listening to, providing users with a better music - listening experience.
In addition, the large AI model has also significantly improved the experience of translation earphones. When the overseas reporting teams of Lei Technology, such as those covering IFA, CES, and MWC, participate in overseas exhibitions, they will equip team members with Timekettle earphones, enabling team members to communicate efficiently in multiple languages. They can easily adapt to various languages such as English, German, French, and Spanish, and the translation efficiency and effect are comparable to those of professional translators.
Take the Timekettle W4 Pro that Xiaolei just used at IFA2025 as an example. It not only supports face - to - face mutual translation and on - site listening translation but also supports adaptive translation. That is, there is no need to select the translation language in advance. The earphone will automatically detect the language type spoken by the other party and then automatically switch, which is very suitable for scenarios where you meet someone for the first time and cannot determine their nationality.
It can be said that AI has greatly expanded the product value boundary and improved the upper limit of the usage experience of true wireless earphones. In fact, we can even boldly conclude that true wireless earphones that do not support AI will inevitably be eliminated.
Is the popularization of AI earphones solely due to cost reduction by large models?
As one of the important categories of AI hardware, how did AI earphones achieve rapid popularization and reach the price range below 500 yuan? Lei Technology believes that there are actually two core reasons behind this: strong demand in the application ecosystem and a significant reduction in AI costs.
Among them, Xiaolei has interpreted the strong demand in the application ecosystem in the previous text, so there is no need to repeat it here. The reduction in AI costs does not only benefit earphones. All kinds of AI hardware that have emerged like mushrooms after rain in the past year are all due to the extremely low cost of AI adaptation.
Taking Wenxin Yiyan as an example, at the beginning of 2024, it initiated an AI cost - reduction plan, reducing the cost of tokens of the latest Wenxin Yiyan 3.5 to 1% of that of version 3.0. In March 2025, Wenxin Yiyan 4.5Tuebo further reduced the input price per million tokens to 0.8 yuan, and the output price to only 3.2 yuan.
Not only Wenxin Yiyan, but the token prices of mainstream large AI models such as Tongyi and iFlytek Spark have also dropped significantly, which has also greatly reduced the AI cost of true wireless earphones. Moreover, true wireless earphones are often used with mobile phones. As long as the AI connection of the mobile phone app is completed, the earphones can leverage the mobile phone for AI connection, making the hardware cost of AI implementation almost negligible.
Image source: Baidu Cloud
Some readers may complain: Is it a bit of a shortcut to achieve AI functions by relying on the mobile phone? Actually, it's not. Xiaolei believes that this is the most correct approach. Although the cost of AI computing power chips such as NPUs has decreased significantly, in theory, it's not difficult to enable earphones to have local AI functions. However, we must consider the usage scenarios and user needs of the earphones themselves.
Firstly, in 99% of cases, wireless earphones are used with mobile phones. The NPU chip in the earphone itself can be considered redundant, and its computing power is negligible compared to that of the mobile phone's NPU. Secondly, users are very sensitive to the wearing experience (weight), battery life, and price of earphones. Deploying an AI computing power chip such as an NPU in the earphone will inevitably affect these three aspects, making it difficult to convince users to sacrifice so much of their daily experience for a few rare scenarios of using the earphone alone.
Therefore, compared with traditional smart earphones, the main cost increase of AI earphones is concentrated in software development. As long as the app adaptation and function development are completed, the AI functions can be popularized to most of the earphones under the brand at almost zero cost.
The rise of AI earphones is a microcosm of the development of AI hardware
Although from a product perspective, the experience of AI earphones is definitely better than that of traditional earphones, what about the actual user experience? As a heavy earphone user, Xiaolei has some say in this. Take the most common real - time translation function of AI earphones as an example. Behind this seemingly simple function, there are high requirements for the performance of the earphones.
Previously, Xiaolei bought a flagship earphone of a certain mobile phone brand that claimed to have various AI functions, including real - time translation and real - time meeting transcription. However, in actual use, the experience was quite mediocre. Take the translation function as an example. As long as the surrounding environment was a bit noisy, the entire translation content would be chaotic and almost unusable.
In contrast, professional AI translation earphones such as Timekettle use technologies such as bone conduction and directional sound pickup to ensure that the earphone only receives the user's voice, allowing the real - time translation function to operate normally in scenarios such as exhibitions.
Based on Xiaolei's personal experience, the voice recognition accuracy of iFlytek AI earphones is relatively high, and they are more natural and smooth for meeting records than mobile phone apps. Timekettle AI earphones, on the other hand, have truly changed the way of cross - language communication, making people feel like having a "portable translator".
Image source: Lei Technology
However, relatively speaking, the price of professional AI earphones is significantly higher than that of ordinary AI earphones. So, at present, entry - level AI earphones are in a rather awkward position. The experience of most products is quite similar, and they are all based on apps. As the AI app ecosystem becomes more perfect, the official apps of most AI earphones may not be as good as the official apps of leading AI companies such as Tencent and Doubao.
Moreover, although AI earphones do solve many problems in daily use, they also bring some new problems. For example, the translation and transcription functions provided by some miscellaneous - brand AI earphones basically need to run online. In essence, the data is sent to the cloud server for processing and then sent back to the local device. In this process, has the brand taken proper data encryption and protection measures?
There are many concerns about privacy leakage of AI earphones. Even more broadly, leading AI companies such as ChatGPT have always faced privacy - leakage issues and have been questioned by the industry and users more than once. The current AI industry is still in a stage of rapid growth, and many security problems have not been well resolved. As AI combines with more and more hardware and software, this problem will be faced by more people.
However, as the biggest technological advancement in recent years, the wave of AI popularization is irresistible. As AI expands further, the functions, experience, and privacy protection of AI earphones will naturally become more perfect. If you have concerns about the security of AI earphones, you can also choose not to download the official app and use the earphones as ordinary earphones.
Lei Technology believes that the current AI earphone market is still in a follow - the - trend stage, and only a few brands are really thinking about how to improve the AI functions of earphones. Therefore, Xiaolei believes that the future development of AI earphones will gradually diverge.
Entry - level products priced below 500 yuan will continue to be popularized, and their functional experience will gradually mature. At the same time, they will rapidly expand the user base with their price advantage. In the mid - to - high - end market, there will be more differentiated competition. Manufacturers will distinguish themselves through more precise scenario - based designs. For example, real - time meeting translation and transcription for business people, health monitoring and data analysis for sports people, and even learning assistance and oral English practice for students, opening up the education track.
In the view of Lei Technology, the rise of AI earphones is not just a simple iteration of the earphone market. It is more like a microcosm of the popularization of AI hardware. Behind it is the rapid decline in the cost of large AI models, the rapid iterative ability of the Chinese supply chain, and the growing user demand for intelligent and convenient interaction.
Perhaps in the near future, we won't distinguish between "earphones" and "AI earphones" separately, just like no one specifically mentions "smartphones" today. AI will become a standard feature of wireless earphones, and wireless earphones will become one of the most natural interfaces between us and the AI world.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Lei Technology". Author: Lei Technology. Republished by 36Kr with permission.