Bose's $99 USB-C wired ANC earbuds ditch the battery brick by drawing power from your phone
aakashgupta · x · 2026-09-29
Bose is back in wired earbuds with a $99 pair featuring active noise cancellation, connected via USB-C. aakashgupta contrasts this with Bose's 2013 wired ANC model, which cost $299 and made you carry the battery in a plastic brick on the cord: the analog headphone jack passed almost no power, so microphones and the ANC chip needed their own battery pack. USB-C carries digital audio plus a few watts over one cable, powering four mics and the noise-cancelling processor straight from the phone—nothing to charge or pair.
The clever part, he argues, is that the battery is what makes wireless earbuds disposable: AirPods' cells are glued in and wear out. Moving power supply back to the phone eliminates that failure point. Bose discontinued its last wired ANC model in 2022; USB-C effectively revives the category.
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