Technics EAH-AZ100 review: true hi-fi wireless earbuds

Osaka, Japan-based Technics is an enigma within the audio world. On the one hand, its turntables enjoy legendary status, particularly among the DJ, club, and EDM crowds. So much so, that when Technics’ parent, Panasonic, put the brand on hiatus in 2010, the vinyl community pushed hardest to bring it back from the grave (in 2014, they got their wish).

On the other hand, Technics remains relatively unknown to most buyers — especially those too young to remember the company’s heyday in the late 1970s and ’80s, when a turntable was just one of the many Technics components a music lover would own.

I think, however, that might be about to change. It’s been a decade since Technics’ rebirth, and it has used that time to steadily grow (and refine) its product lineup. Turntables rightfully remain the stars of the show, but they’re now joined by high-end floor-standing speakers, CD players, amps, and a slick new set of wireless bookshelf speakers. But it’s the company’s wireless earbuds that are likely to be the way most people have their first Technics experience. If that experience is curated by the new EAH-AZ100, you may wonder why Technics isn’t on everyone’s short list of top audio companies.

The EAH-AZ100, which I’ll simply call the AZ100 from here, are the fourth major generation of wireless earbuds from Technics. They follow on the heels of the excellent EAH-AZ80, which offered better comfort, ANC, and sound quality than their predecessors.

With the AZ100, Technics has doubled down on all of the AZ80’s strengths and introduced a slew of new upgrades like spatial audio, LE Audio with Auracast support, caller-side noise suppression, and an innovative new driver design. Here’s a quick look at the highlights:

Technics EAH-AZ100 specs

Price	$300
Colors	Black and silver
Weight	0.20 ounces each (charging case 1.4 ounces)
Form factor	Closed earbuds
Noise cancellation	Yes
Battery life	10 hours per charge, 28 hours total with charging case (using AAC, noise canceling turned on)
Charging	USB-C, Qi wireless
Voice assistant	Native smartphone access
Multipoint	Yes — up to three devices
Water/dust resistance	IPX4 (earbuds only)
Hi-res audio	Yes
Fast pairing	Google Fast Pair
Bluetooth/codecs	BT 5.3 with AAC, SBC, LC3, LDAC
Auracast	Yes (smartphone OS support required)

Design and comfort

High-end wireless earbuds that use a stemless design are often big and kind of bulky, especially when compared to their stem-sporting cousins (like Apple’s AirPods). Sony’s WF-1000XM4 were gigantic, and the EAH-AZ80 weren’t exactly svelte.

By eliminating the AZ80’s external calling mic and repositioning one of the internal mics, Technics was able to make the AZ100 10% smaller. Their reduced size also translates into a smaller and lighter charging case. Technics has kept the aluminum lid with its elegant brushed-metal finish, and you still get wireless/USB-C charging — but it’s now a bit more pocketable and compares closely to the Sony WF-1000XM5.

Technics says the new smaller size and shape should make them even more comfortable than the AZ80, and I trust that their user data backs this up. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case for me.

While the earbuds themselves are smaller overall, the portion that sits in your concha (the cavity that leads to your ear canal) is a bit bigger. To be clear, the AZ100 are very comfy — I had no problem wearing them for three hours without pause. I might not have noticed a difference if I hadn’t swapped back and forth between the AZ100 and AZ80. But I did and the AZ80 are a better fit for my ears.

Unlike the AZ80, which shipped with seven sizes of eartips, the AZ100 only has five. According to the brand, the smaller shape of the earbud reduces the need for extra sizes. In practical terms, I doubt this will make much of a difference for most folks, but if you’ve had trouble with sizes in the past, it’s something to keep in mind, particularly if you’re a happy AZ80 owner considering an upgrade. And since Technics has changed the design of the eartips (it says the new ones are better at preventing sound leaks), you won’t be able to use your old ones on the AZ100.

The AZ100 keep the IPX4 rating from their predecessors, which should be plenty of protection from sweat and rain as long as you clean and dry them before putting them back in the case (which doesn’t have any water or dust protection).

Bluetooth, codecs, and Multipoint

Getting the AZ100 connected is a breeze on Android devices thanks to Google Fast Pair support (which also lets you locate missing earbuds using Google’s Find My service). Apple devices simply require the extra step of opening the Bluetooth device list to look for the earbuds.

As with their predecessors, the AZ100 give you the option to use Sony’s LDAC codec with compatible Android phones, which can provide noticeably better sound quality when paired with a lossless source of music. I’m also really happy to see that Technics is offering Bluetooth LE Audio on these earbuds, along with support for Auracast.

This is great news for Android owners — the AZ100 will leverage Android 15’s built-in Auracast management — but iPhone owners are left out. With no native support for Auracast in iOS and no support in the Technics Audio Connect app, you won’t be able to listen in on Auracast broadcasts. I tried it out using a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra (one of the first smartphones with OS-level Auracast support) and it worked perfectly.

Technics remains the only company that allows up to three connected devices at a time when using Bluetooth Multipoint — an impressive accomplishment. For the AZ100, it has improved the feature further, letting you control how Multipoint behaves.

With most Multipoint connections, you need to halt playback on device A before you can begin playback on device B. With the Audio Connect app, you can keep that default behavior, or devices can interrupt each other once you hit play on the non-playing device. With interruptions allowed, the switch of audio source is instant. You can set the same preferences for incoming calls.

Controls, active noise cancellation, and transparency

The touch controls are responsive and easy to use — the entire outer surface is tappable, making it hard to mess up. They’re also fully customizable within the Audio Connect app. With four gestures (single-tap, double-tap, triple-tap, plus tap-and-hold) per earbud, you can control almost any setting — except for turning spatial audio on/off or switching EQ presets. You can access your phone’s assistant, but this time around, there’s no optional Amazon Alexa integration as on the AZ80. I asked why and Technics told me that just 0.04% of all AZ80 owners used it daily.

The AZ80’s active noise cancellation wowed me, and the AZ100 deliver a small, but noticeable improvement, especially in the higher frequencies. On a recent flight, I compared them to the AirPods Pro 2 and the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (QCUE). While both the Bose and Apple buds performed slightly better than the AZ100, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend all three for flights. Perhaps more importantly for daily use, I couldn’t detect any difference between these models in other situations like working from home, walking along busy streets, or working out at the gym.

Transparency mode is excellent, rivaling both the AirPods Pro and QCUE in terms of letting you hear the world clearly. It’s less effective at passing through your voice, but that’s not unusual — Bose and Apple are alone at the top of that capability.

Technics offers two versions of transparency: regular and “attention.” Attention mode behaves a little differently. When it’s in use, your music automatically pauses, but it also sounds different. While regular transparency lets in the outside world, attention mode tries to enhance voices. This might be helpful in busy/noisy environments, but at other times, it sounds like people are speaking to you through a cardboard tube.

I’d prefer if the music auto-pause were a choice on both modes since that’s a very convenient option. Curiously, Technics said it considered adding an automatic attention mode that would trigger when it detected speech, but ultimately rejected it because its research showed that people don’t like this feature, which does have a tendency to turn on when it hears some non-speech sounds.

Sound quality

Technics says that traditional dynamic drivers in wireless earbuds can suffer from distortion due to the voice coil’s small lateral “tumbling” movements as it responds to electromagnetic impulses. Typically, a thicker and wider diaphragm support structure is used to help minimize this undesirable movement, but this can lead to muddier bass performance, and it doesn’t eliminate distortion.

For the EAH-AZ100, Technics has adapted its magnetic fluid driver technology, which surrounds the voice coil with an oil ring loaded with magnetic particles. Doing so makes any lateral movement difficult, if not impossible. With that kind of control exerted on the voice coil, the diaphragm support can be made thinner and more flexible, which gives the diaphragm greater up/down (pistonic) freedom — and ultimately creates more accurate and distortion-free sound.

That’s the theory. What matters is the reality, and I have to say, I think the AZ100 sound stellar. Listening to them side by side with my favorite models — e.g. the Sony WF-1000XM5, Master & Dynamic MW09, Bose QCUE, Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 4, and the AZ80 — revealed just how much progress Technics has made.

Keep in mind that we’re talking about refinements to what was already excellent sound quality. I doubt you’ll notice much difference if you’re focused on getting through reps at the gym or battling a daily commute. But if you find a quiet spot where you can sit back and fire up your favorite tracks (preferably from a lossless source like Amazon Music, Tidal, or Qobuz), I think you’ll hear a sound signature that is both open and natural while also offering superb clarity, precision, and punchy bass.

I can’t think of a better set of wireless earbuds for critical listening.

In Direct mode (no EQ applied), I couldn’t detect much in the way of boost. All five EQ presets (dynamic, treble+, vocal, bass+, and super bass+) provide noticeable frequency kicks, without going overboard. Super bass+ will satisfy even the biggest of bass heads, while dynamic does a good job of boosting overall energy — in this mode, the AZ100 start to sound a lot like the WF-1000XM5.

I’m not wild about the vocal preset’s midrange balance (it doesn’t sound natural to me), but even if none of these presets do it for you, you can save up to three of your own versions using the 8-band equalizer.

I ended up spending most of my time in Direct mode, and couldn’t have been happier with the results.

Spatial audio

All stereo headphones and earbuds let you hear spatial audio when it’s processed by a streaming app, e.g. Dolby Atmos Music tracks from Apple Music, Tidal, or Amazon Music.  But when spatial audio processing is added to your headphones/earbuds, they can do two more things: make regular stereo tracks sound more immersive, and (if they have onboard sensors) enable head tracking, which controls whether the sound moves with you or stays fixed in space as you turn your head.

There’s often an audible price to be paid for artificially expanding the soundstage: vocals become thin and distant, and there’s an overall loss of fidelity. I often breathe a sigh of relief when turning spatial audio off, and never turn it back on again.

And yet, Technics has created a spatial audio effect that I don’t hate. Using it on stereo tracks doesn’t sound as good as listening to native Dolby Atmos or Sony 360 Reality Audio versions, but it absolutely delivers an appreciable increase in width and depth. This effect is more pronounced when stereo tracks already have strong left/right placement of sounds. On Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean, the rhythmic shh-shh feels like it’s coming from just behind your shoulders, and his echoed response, “Don’t think twice,” drifts in from several feet away.

Technics says its spatial audio is optimized for Dolby Atmos — meaning, it’s supposed to make Atmos sources sound even more immersive. Jabra made the same claim for its spatial audio implementation on its now-discontinued Elite 10 earbuds. The problem with this claim is that Dolby Atmos is mixed in the studio to sound best when rendered into two channels by streaming apps (or when played on discrete 7.1.4 home theater systems). Any additional processing alters that mix. You may like what that extra processing does (I’m not a big fan), but it’s not what the creators heard when they created these tracks.

I will say this: The head tracking is seamless. No matter how fast I moved my head from side to side, the illusion of having a sound source directly in front of me was perfectly preserved.

Call quality and battery life

Manufacturers are increasingly looking to AI to help them improve noise suppression, particularly on phone calls. Normally, this is focused on the wireless earbuds’ side of the call, but with its Voice Focus AI feature, Technics has applied the technology to the other end too. Inside the app, you enable/disable noise suppression on each side independently.

On the surface, this is really cool. Switching it on while I was in a noisy environment instantly cut all sounds but my voice, and much more effectively than on the AZ80.  It was less noticeable on my caller’s side, but that could simply be because their earbuds/phone combo was already doing a good job at noise suppression.

The problem, if you can call it that, is the balancing act. Without noise suppression, my voice sounded very clear, but so did all of the background noise. With noise suppression, my voice became muffled. The louder the background noise, the more muffled it would get.

A truly intelligent AI system would know when to engage and when to switch itself off.

Not that I’m dissing the results — the AZ100 are great for calls — I just wish I didn’t have to think about noise suppression settings at all.

Battery life is another highlight. The AZ80 were already very capable, with a claimed 4.5 to 7 hours of playtime depending on which features you turned on, with a maximum of 24 hours when you included the case’s capacity. The AZ100 bump this up a lot, with a range of 7 to 12 hours on the earbuds and up to 29 hours with the case.

These numbers easily trump the AirPods Pro 2 (5.5/24 hours) and put the AZ100 almost on par with Sony’s excellent WF-1000XM5 (12/36 hours).

With top-notch sound, superb noise cancellation, a very comfortable fit, and a wealth of other meaningful improvements, the Technics EAH-AZ100 are a solid upgrade over the AZ80. If you’re an audiophile hunting for your next wireless earbuds (and you have room in your budget for their $300 price), they should be on your short list.

Not that I want to make that decision harder, but there’s something else you should know: With the introduction of the EAH-AZ100, Technics has decided to keep the AZ80 in the lineup with a new price: $200. Whichever way you go, you really can’t lose.

Editor’s note: Technics provided travel and accommodations in Kyoto, Japan, for the author to attend the official announcement of the EAH-AZ100. Technics did not receive copy approval and did not influence the coverage.