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  Huawei's Watch Buds. It's a watch and earbud case combo. [credit: Ron Amadeo ]

Huawei is still clinging to life despite constant trade war bombardment from the US government, and its latest project suggests that maybe all the stress is starting to get to the company. Huawei's newest product, the Huawei "Watch Buds," is now getting an international release. Like it says on the tin, this is a smartwatch that is also... earbuds? Imagine sticking a smartwatch display onto the lid of a wireless earbuds case and then strapping that whole contraption to your wrist. The smartwatch display sits on a hinge that lifts up, revealing two big chasms inside the watch body that hold and charge your earbuds. Your earbuds are always at the ready, I guess.

How many ways is this a bad idea? Smartwatches are primarily limited by their size, so anything that makes a smartwatch bigger is probably not a great design choice. Having a smartwatch open up to be a container for something else, like a 1990s wrist fanny pack , is certainly an interesting way to spend your limited space budget. You generally want your space-limited smartwatch to contain 100 percent smartwatch parts, but this one is about 50 percent smartwatch parts and 50 percent earbuds parts. The watch body is officially "47 mm×47.5 mm×14.99 mm"—a massive size that's more volume than even an Apple Watch Ultra (49 mm×44 mm×14.4 mm), which is already too big for some people.

Generally, the space-limited size of smartwatches means battery capacity is pretty tough to come by. Huawei is giving you a 410 mAh battery to both run the watch and charge the earbuds while they're in your earbuds/smartwatch case. The Apple Watch Ultra, which, again, has a smaller body, has a 542 mAh battery , and that's just for smartwatch duties. This device also has GPS, a 24/7 heart rate monitor, and sleep tracking. The one saving grace for the battery life is that it doesn't run Android—instead it uses Huawei's "Harmony OS." The name "Harmony OS" means almost nothing in terms of a software stock. On phones, "Harmony OS" means it's an Android fork , but on watches, "Harmony OS" is a completely different OS based on Huawei's LiteOS. Huawei claims you'll get three days of battery life for "the entire device," while a more normal LiteOS watch from the company gets a claimed "14 days" of "typical usage."

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CUPERTINO, Calif.—The first major update to Apple's AirPods Pro in-ear headphones are on the way, and they'll bring better noise canceling, personalized sound-staging, and 33 percent longer battery life, the company says.

The earbuds look exactly the same as their predecessors, but they offer some improvements nonetheless. The new H2 chip facilitates enhanced noise cancellation that Apple says is twice as powerful as the previous AirPods Pro. A new adaptive transparency mode can also offer more dynamic tuning with what it allows in. Personalized spatial audio will also help listeners tune the sound to their ears.

Things should also sound cleaner across the range of pitches with a new "low-distortion" driver. Lastly, on the audio front, voices should be clearer in calls and through transparency modes thanks to Conversation Boost. There will also be smaller silicone tips to fit a wider range of people.

Enlarge / All four new color variants of Google's Pixel Buds Pro. (credit: Google)

Google announced the Pixel Buds Pro earlier this year as an apparent upgrade to Google's impressive 2020 earbud refresh . "If you liked Pixel Buds 2, you'll love Pixel Buds Pro" was likely music to the ears of anyone who had been charmed by Google's audio-redemption plotline.

Ahead of their retail launch today, with nearly a week of Buds Pro testing, I learned that these new $199 earbuds do not do what the AirPods Pro did for the original AirPods. While some aspects have improved, others have regressed—so it's tough to recommend Buds Pro over the competition.

At least the Bluetooth connectivity is better

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  The box. [credit: Sam Machkovech ]

When they debuted, Buds 2 stood out in an increasingly competitive portable-audio fray (and ran circles around Google's first stab at the segment in 2017 ). They're still my daily drivers thanks to their impeccable sound balance, attractive aesthetics, comfortable fit, solid battery life, and nifty egg-shaped case. I still recommend them to Android smartphone owners—or, in a pinch, the $99 Pixel Buds A , which nearly match the 2020 version in features and audio quality. (As a longtime Buds 2 owner, I'll continue to compare the new Pixel Buds Pro to those earbuds for the rest of this review.)