There are so many earbuds out there and so many good ones. And they all have a kind of classic approach when it comes to delivering audio, but the Technics AZ100 are not like the others. In fact, you could say the tech that Technics has used here is out of this world… you’ll see why I say that in a minute.

And on top of this. Technics have made some much-needed, and pretty significant upgrades on the software side of things, and have also improved the overall design in some interesting ways.

And these like their 2024 flagship The Technics AZ80’s have a connectivity feature that simply doesn’t exist on any of the current highly recommended earbuds. But there is one huge audio upgrade that makes the Az100 unlike any other TWS earbud out there right now.

Explain ferrofluid simply

Now listen here, this is where things get interesting. On the table here are my current favourite earbuds from 2024 and earlier. All of these use variations of dynamic driver tech. Some earbuds have dual driver architecture where they add a Planar magnetic driver to handle vocal range and the Hi frequencies.

However, Technics has taken a very different approach. Have you ever heard of ‘Ferrofluid’? It was initially developed by NASA in the 1960s as a way to control liquid fuel in space.

It reacts to magnetic currents. And it has been used in speaker technology in the past but the way Technics are using it here is quite different. And yes, this could likely be what inspired the Marvel character Venom. I’ll explain how and why Technics are using this space-grade fluid and the difference it makes when we get into the Sound Quality section of this video.

Buds design

Let me give you a guided tour of the design and refinements that Technics has made compared to their previous flagships the Technics AZ80. The weight has been reduced by 16% and the AZ100 now weighs just 5.9grams. One of my criticisms of last year's Technics AZ80 despite how good they sound. The overall size of the earbuds may have been a little too large for some.

And I guess Technics must have thought so too because they have managed to reduce the size of the earbuds by 10% by eliminating one of the dedicated voice pick up mics. But there is an extra bit of hardware which has been added to compensate for this. We’ll come back to that.

Just like the Technics AZ80 they still have the brushed metal finish on the circular capacitive touch areas which are best described as highly re-mappable which is really nice to see & they still have the very important and premium eartips.

I think some companies may overlook the importance of these but Technics haven’t. the ear tips for the AZ100’s consist of three materials to minimize sound leakage, Improve the fit & to keep the speaker grills free of debris and they do very kindly give you five different size options to choose from.

Case design

The case still has the same pill shape with a slim profile & it easily passes the pocket watch pocket test. And in fact it’s even more pocketable than before because the case is noticeably smaller than the Technics AZ80’s and is flat on four sides so it’s not going to roll around on a desk or table. It has an LED light up front that gives an indication of battery life. This is pretty standard stuff…but it’s the electric blue colour that I really like here. The case is constructed from two different materials just like the AZ80 with the lid having a kind of metallic finish. I kind of wish the entire case was finished in the same way. And if I’m nitpicking a little bit here, one improvement that could be made is if Technics could improve the fit of the buds inside the case as there is a little rattle to the case.

The USB C charging port is around the back and it does support Qi wireless charging, but there is no pairing button. So pair the AZ100 if they’re already connected to another device. You need to be wearing them and touch and hold the capacitive touch areas on both sides simultaneously. I have mixed opinions on physical pairing buttons. What are your thoughts on that? Oh, and pop-up pairing with Android devices is supported. Overall it’s a nice case. But might really blow your mind, especially considering the AZ100 case and buds are smaller, is the battery life.

Battery Life

So with ANC on, using the standard AAC codec, the buds can last for up to 10 hrs on a single charge. Combined with the case you can get up to 28 hrs. This is quite incredible when you consider the AirPods Pro 2 max out at 6 hours. And remember the total time AZ100 can be even better with noise cancelling off. And side note when empty a 15 mins charge can give you 90 minutes of playback.

Now, listen there is a game-changing codec on board which does reduce the battery life by around 2 hours but in return, you get superior audio playback. And it is LDAC support. I’m not going to go too in-depth into this but it’s important that you know. If you have a phone that supports LDAC like the Galaxy S24 Ultra for example. You can receive audio with a bitrate that’s 3 times faster than the classic AAC. But this High-resolution signal would mean nothing if the hardware receiving the signal is not capable of reproducing the sound.

The Drivers

This brings me very nicely onto Technics use of FerroFluid in the drivers. So, this is not the first time Technics have used magnetic fluid in earbuds. In fact, it’s the second. The Technics TZ700 in-ear-monitors were in fact the first…and they cost upwards of £700. So it’s safe to say that this kind of audio tech ain't cheap.

Here’s how these magnetic fluid drivers work. Imagine the driver as a small drum inside your headphones. The surface of the drum (the diaphragm) is made of two special materials An aluminium at the center that gives you crisp and clear high-pitched sounds (like violins or cymbals). Then there’s the Flexible Edge. Imagine all around the edge of the drum skin is extra bendy. This allows it to vibrate more freely, producing deep and powerful bass. This is how most drivers work.

But here’s where the Magnetic Fluid takes things to the next level, they've added the magnetic fluid around the part that makes the drum vibrate otherwise known as the voice coil. This liquid acts like a shock absorber for the central part of the driver, and this allows for better control & makes the movement of drivers more precise…And the bass is even deeper with ultra-low distortion and all of which whilst delivering a wide frequency range of 20Hz to 40Khz

Sound Quality.

But is it as good as it sounds? Well to find out I test them against my favourites from 2024. Which still includes the AZ80’s. The first thing I noticed when testing the Technics AZ80 vs the new AZ100’s is how good the Technics AZ80’s still sound. They are right at the top of my top of my best-sounding earbuds with the BW Pi8. Honestly, they are hard to beat but of course, the AZ100’s are superior, at first they were most notably better in the vocal range. The best way to explain it is they sound so clean, that you can hear every breath and subtle details. But the AZ100 takes it even further with their bass output. I am basing these descriptions on listening via LDAC and the Equaliser in the direct setting.

Which means no altering of the original recording. The bass is the best that I’ve heard to date, from an earbud. It’s so well-rounded, with no distortion, lots of power without muddiness in the mid-range and not so much that it ruins the vocals. But of course, you might wonder what happens when you EQ them. Well, the first preset is Bass+ if you like bass you’ll absolutely love how deep the sound gets…honestly better than a lot of the best…but it’s Technics Super Bass + that will literally blow your mind. I’ve never heard such powerful and controlled bass on TWS earbuds before. It really is that good.

Now listen, if heavy bass isn’t something you prioritise. The audio accuracy, sound stage, depth, volume and overall clarity is all top-tier. The reason they're so good is likely due to Technics 60 years in the audio game & the fact that they're using hardware that was previously reserved for Pro in-ear-monitors has something to do with it.

App / Software

Alright now let's talk about the App and the software upgrades & that unique feature exclusive to Technics.

So the home screen consists of quick settings & battery levels. And a row of shortcuts across the bottom. Something that I really like about this app now is that you can customize what quick settings live here on the homescreen.

When you jump into the sound settings. You get 6 professionally tuned EQ presets for various styles of music and they all sound amazing when you listen to the various types of music. But, In some scenarios the direct EQ is perfect and I don’t think I’ve said that before about any other earbud.

Now that unique feature which is currently exclusive to Technics. I’m sure you’ve heard of multipoint pairing before. The ability to stay connected to phone and laptop for example.

Well these earbuds are one of the few that can do triple point pairing. So you can stay connected to three devices. So let’s say desktop, laptop and phone.

LE audio & Auracast are also supported and a dedicated mode to prioritise stability, or to reduce audio lag. Spatial audio is also supported and the AZ100 are officially optimised for Dolby Atmos. So Dolby Atmos Music and movie content is going to sound amazing here. 

But there’s still a couple more tricks that the AZ100 has up its sleeve.

ANC test

The Noise cancelling has also been upgraded. And I like the implementation of this. There’s the auto optimisation that adapts the ANC based on the sound around you. But when you turn that off you can manually dial in the exact amount that works for you. I really like this.

And on the ambient passthrough side, you can do a similar thing. And there are two modes to choose from here.

Now, I test the Noise cancelling against my favourites and it destroys most of them in regards to sound suppression. The only earbuds that I have that can compete with it are the Sony XM5, Galaxy Buds 3 Pro and the older Technics AZ80’s. With some noticeable improvements in the higher to mid-range frequencies.

So that’s your usual travelling noises like cars, planes and train noise & the amount that voices can pass through is also heavily reduced. It’s really, very impressive. So Noise cancelling is very impressive.

Voice Call Quality

Most earbuds have noise reduction algorithms for voice pick up and AZ100’s has that too but it also uses a new Ai voice feature thanks to that new bit of tech that I mentioned that they added to make up for the exterior mic. It’s called the Voice Focus Ai chip.

It not only improves voice calls but it also has a unique feature that can clean up the audio from incoming calls. So if someone has a bad pair of earbuds or an old phone these earbuds will clean that up too.

 Price / Availability / same-priced earbuds

So, the Technics AZ100 comes in at a very competitive £259 in the UK, $299 in Europe and the same in Dollars. Making them cheaper than Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 by £90 and £30 more expensive than the AirPods Pro 2. I do think this is kind of the sweet spot and a reasonable price for such a premium-sounding set of earbuds. These are now firmly placed at the top of my list for sound quality.

Technics AZ80 Review