Not so long ago, even wireless earphones had cables trailing over the back of the wearer's neck. Then Earin happened, and the market soon became flooded with so-called truly wireless in-ear headphones. Now Glasgow's RHA Audio is nipping at the heels of Apple's Airpods with the launch of its first true wireless earphones, the TrueConnect.

"We believe we have come up with the most sophisticated true wireless earphones on the market; delivering great battery life, an intuitive user interface and an elegant, single-handed opening mechanism," said RHA's Kyle Hutchison.

The TrueConnect earphones have a 6 mm dynamic driver in each earpiece, and we expect the kind of signature high quality audio to be offered that impressed us with the excellent (cabled) T20 in-ears – helped along by Bluetooth 5 for high-bitrate streaming and a frequency response of 16 Hz to 18 kHz.

RHA is promising high quality audio from its TrueConnect earphones

Each earpiece has a stem sprouting from it that places the microphone a little closer to the wearer's mouth, which RHA says should result in clear and detailed call quality, and there are integrated buttons on the side for playback and digital assistant control. The earphones come with Comply foam tips, which kept the Earin wireless earphones securely in our ears while out and about during our review in 2015, and they're IPX5 sweat-, splash- and weather-resistant for commuting and active use.

The TrueConnect earpieces will last for 5 hours per charge, but they can be popped in the flip-up case for an hour and 40 minutes to charge them up on the move for four times before the case's own Lithium Polymer battery needs a wall outlet for its own 5 hour top-up. Usefully, the case delivers fast charging that will get the earpieces to 50 percent capacity in 15 minutes.

The TrueConnect true wireless earphones are up for pre-order from today for US$169.95, ahead of going on sale on October 18.

Source: RHA