Earbuds for office calls: Teams, Zoom and the phone
What matters on calls
For music you care about how you hear. For calls, what also matters is how others hear you: the microphone has to catch your voice and leave out the noise behind you, colleagues, the keyboard, the coffee machine.
Then comfort: a day with four or five meetings means wearing buds for hours. And, for many, how they move from the laptop to the phone without losing a call.
The microphone
On calls, the microphone matters as much as the speaker: earbuds keep it close to your mouth and away from the keyboard and the laptop fan, so colleagues usually hear you better than through the laptop microphone. Open-ear office buds such as the EA16 sit on the ear all day without pressing, so you can keep them on from the first meeting to the last.
A practical tip, whatever the earbuds: speak normally, not louder. The microphones are close to your mouth; if you raise your voice, others hear you distorted. And mute the microphone when you are not speaking in big meetings.
Open-ear or in-ear at the office
Open-ear buds such as the EA16 do not go into the ear canal. You hear your own voice naturally, you do not get a blocked-ear feeling after a day of meetings, and you can answer a colleague without taking anything out.
In-ear buds with noise cancelling, such as the Pro2, shut out the office: hybrid ANC up to 42 dB makes an open-plan office much quieter. They suit anyone who needs to focus between calls or works somewhere noisy.
Many people use open-ear for calls and in-ear for focused work; choose by what you do most.
The laptop and the phone at once
The Pro2 have multipoint: they stay connected to the laptop and the phone at the same time. You are on a call on the laptop and a call comes in on the phone, and the buds take it without reconnecting. For anyone who talks to clients on the phone and colleagues on the laptop, it is the difference between a call answered and a call missed.
Without multipoint, you switch devices in the Bluetooth menu: it takes a few seconds, but several times a day it gets tiring.
Battery for a working day
The EA16 last up to 8 hours on a charge, a working day, plus 26 with the case, and their case is the size of a card wallet, easy to keep in a pocket. The Pro2 last 7 hours with ANC on plus 28 with the case; the Ultra last 8 hours with ANC on and 40 hours in all with the case.
At lunch, put the earbuds in the case: ten to fifteen minutes is usually enough to finish the day without worry.
Comfort for hours
The EA16 weigh 7.4 g a bud, the Ultra 5.3 g and the Pro2 4.9 g. Open-ear buds rest on the ear, not in it, so the weight feels different from in-ear ones. If you wear glasses all day, try the fit with your glasses on first.
Take a few minutes' break between long meetings: take the earbuds out, let your ears breathe, then carry on.
If you work from home
At home the noise is different: children, the washing machine, neighbours, the dog barking at the courier. Open-ear buds let you hear what is going on in the house while you are in a meeting, which for many parents is exactly right.
If you need quiet for focused work, the Pro2's ANC cuts the steady noise of the house. For calls, always check at the start of the meeting that the app has picked the buds as the microphone, not the laptop's.
Not losing them at the office
Small buds are easy to lose on the desk, in drawers or between the cushions of a sofa in the break room. Get into the habit of putting them in the case when you take them out. With the Pro2, a lost bud can be made to ring from the TESNA app, so you can find it by sound.
In short
For many calls and a whole day with no pressure in the ear: the EA16, open-ear and discreet, with aluminium arms. For laptop and phone at once and quiet between calls: the Pro2, with multipoint and ANC. For quiet in a noisy office: the Ultra, with adaptive noise cancelling.
Every model is in the shop, under open-ear earbuds for the office and active noise cancelling earbuds.