The Mars translation earbuds promise to do what the Pixel Buds couldn't

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Translation is set to be one of the biggest features of hearables, and we've already seen it in crop up in the Bragi Dash Pro and Google Pixel Buds. Sadly, the experience hasn't quite lived up to the Babel Fish promise, but the Mars earbuds are hoping to deliver on that front.

Their best feature is that they let you take out one earbud, hand it to someone else, and start having a conversation across two different languages. The processing is all done in the cloud, so you will need to have your smartphone paired, but assuming you have the languages set, you won't need to take your phone out of your pocket.

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That separates it from the Dash and Pixel Buds, which require one party to speak through the smartphone. The Dash has a bud-to-bud option, but you both need a pair each (What are the chances the taxi driver is going to have a Bragi Dash? Yeah, exactly.)

Mars, however, let you share a single pair. Take one out, hand it to the other person, and a single press of the earbud button will open the airwaves to start talking.

The Mars translation earbuds promise to do what the Pixel Buds couldn't

The earbuds currently support four languages: English, Korean, Chinese, Japanese. The company told us it's looking to tap into Siri and Google Assistant to support more down the road. They also one-up the Pixel Buds, which limit their translation powers to Pixel phones, by working with both Android and iPhone smartphones.

Read this: Putting Bragi's real-time translating to the test

Battery will run for three hours of music playback and 1.5 hours of call time. Like many other hearables, their case doubles as a charger that will give you four cycles before that needs re-juicing. It won't be long before you can try them for yourself: the Mars earbuds are shipping this summer with a price yet to be confirmed.

The Mars translation earbuds promise to do what the Pixel Buds couldn't



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Hugh Langley

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Now at Business Insider, Hugh originally joined Wareable from TechRadar where he’d been writing news, features, reviews and just about everything else you can think of for three years.

Hugh is now a correspondent at Business Insider.

Prior to Wareable, Hugh freelanced while studying, writing about bad indie bands and slightly better movies. He found his way into tech journalism at the beginning of the wearables boom, when everyone was talking about Google Glass and the Oculus Rift was merely a Kickstarter campaign - and has been fascinated ever since.

He’s particularly interested in VR and any fitness tech that will help him (eventually) get back into shape. Hugh has also written for T3, Wired, Total Film, Little White Lies and China Daily.


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