Virtual assistants are slowly becoming ubiquitous. You probably have one living in your phone, one on your desk (in your Google Home or Amazon Echo) and if you’re really fancy you might even have on hidden in your refrigerator.
But what if we told you that virtual assistants have also made it to headphones? Introducing the Vinci smart headphones – which offer an atypical mix of features borrowed from smartwatches, music players and phones.
The Vinci headphones are pretty sweet as they don’t need to be connected to a smartphone to be able to play your favorite music, act as an activity tracker, offer direction or read back text messages.
The headphones feature a touchscreen on one side which users need to use to set up the device. In order to ask the AI living inside a question, just tap and hold on the display and start talking. Or you can simply say “Hey Vinci”. You can ask it to play your favorite Linkin Park song, inquire about the weather or request to be told a joke.
Vinci also features dual-mic noise reduction technology to filter out ambient noise, which improves its voice recognition features.
The more you use Vinci, the more it learns you habits and preferences (like any self-respecting virtual assistant, right?). So your intelligent companion will be able to pick out songs to match your pace and preferences.
While all this sounds quite good on paper, to me Vinci seems like you’d be walking around with a smartphone strapped to your head.
The touchscreen on the side even features an audio visualizer (the default one features a circle of dots that flows with the music) that reacts to the music you’re playing. So basically you’ll be putting on a show for onlookers. The benefits of that? I’m not really sure. Maybe the visualizer might encourage others to start talking to you.
But if you’re open minded about new technology, the Vinci intelligent headphones are up on Indiegogo. The Early Bird bundle comes with a $129 price tag. For this amount of money, you will receive one pair of Vinci headphones in Black/White/Silver/Red or Lime Yellow. Estimated delivery date is listed as April 2017.
