The wireless Technics AZ100 earbuds offer great sound and noise cancellation

Technics is a brand with history, going back to 1965. It’s actually Panasonic nowadays, but it has a bunch of audio gear that’s sold under the Technics brand name, like the AZ100 wireless earbuds that I’ve had plugged into my ears for a couple of weeks now.

EAH-AZ100 is their full name which is hard to remember, and they’re Technic’s flagship earbuds, costing around $345. 

They are nicely made, and you can have them in two colours: black and silver like the ones sent to yours truly. This being 2025, even seemingly simple things like wireless earbuds are in fact complex pieces of technology, but Technics has done a good job of it with the AZ100s.

Down the Bluetooth rabbit hole we go

The wireless technology is of course Bluetooth. The fairly recent version 5.3 is supported, and the new Low Energy (BLE) feature which does exactly what the name suggests. What does all that mean? Quite a bit, and if you can stomach the techno-detail, here’s a deep dive.

For your listening pleasure, BLE brings the LC3 codec. The name stands for Low Complexity Communication Codec; a codec refers to a coding/encoding algorithm that can be implemented in software or hardware (or a mix of both) for compressing and decompressing digital media.

The LC3 codec is a newer and better-sounding alternative to the older Low Complexity Subband Coding, abbreviated as SBC. Sony’s Sony Bluetooth Lossless Digital Audio Codec (LDAC) which provides 990 kilobits per second streaming at 96 kHz resolution is also supported, along with the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) codec.

Now, the codec thing on wireless earbuds is a story of trying to “bend” the laws of physics, and engineers trying to work out what trade-offs are acceptable to users. Lossless audio is the holy grail here: all the information encoded into audio tracks should be passed on via the playback device (usually your phone) to the listener’s earbuds.

That sounds easy, but it’s not. First, lossless audio requires quite a bit of bandwidth as it transmits more information, and Bluetooth maxes out in good circumstances at 1.5 to 2 megabits per second which isn’t really enough.

Upping the amount of bandwidth is tricky though. You could use a higher frequency band than the 2.4 GHz that Bluetooth runs in, like the 6.5 GHz for Ultra Wide Band (UWB) technology. That, however, causes issues with signal penetration for the higher frequencies in question, leading to dropouts.

There’s some early commercial implementations of switching over to Wi-Fi for high bandwidth audio coming up, that’s difficult too. Portable devices and earbuds with tiny batteries need to be energy misers, and using Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth could sink that notion.

Without going too deep geek with the technical detail, the answer here is using wired audio devices for lossless, non-battery-draining music. That could mean losing out on desirable features such as active noise cancelling, Dolby Atmos/spatial audio, not to mention the convenience of wirelessness as well. 

Speaking of wireless, you need to pick which Bluetooth standard to use: BLE or Classic Audio with the AZ100s. Going with the former the Technics app says you get low latency and audio sharing, and the LC3 codec.

You drop support for multipoint connections, only one device instead of several, and the spatial audio support goes along with the voice assistant. 

Classic Audio, meanwhile, means you don’t lose out on the above features, and get support for hi-res codecs like LDAC, and AAC.

Sometimes, nothing is easy and really, you’d have to have pretty good ears and be quite a serious audiophile to notice the difference between wired and wireless sound. It’s there, but wireless audio sounds pretty good nowadays. Ho-humm.

Fit and controls

Finding the right tip (five sizes are supplied) for the AZ100, that fits your ear canal the best is super important for comfort and audio quality, and to ensure the noise cancellation works as advertised.

You have to do this “manually” as there’s no fit-testing feature in the Technics Audio Connect app.

The AZ100s don’t weigh much at 5.9 grams each and are quite comfortable to wear for longer periods of time, provided of course you don’t mind poking things into your lugholes. In my ears, the AZ100s seemed secure enough, and didn't threaten to fall out. Your experience with that could be different, however.

Tapping on the sides of the AZ100 lets you do things like stop and start music, increase/decrease sound volume, answer phone calls, and change the noise cancellation mode. It works quite well, once you memorise which earbud does what and how many times (or how long) you should tap.

No complaints about the sound quality

The AZ100s have 10mm magnetic fluid drivers, and here’s the Technics video that shows what that is:

Drivers are what hi-fi nerds call the component that drives the diaphragm that vibrates and creates the sounds you desire to expose your poor long suffering ears to.

Listening to a bunch of tracks via Apple Music, I’ve got to say the AZ100s set to Bluetooth Classic deliver on the audio front. Bass sounds in particular are very clear with good response.

Classical music, which I listen to a lot on long commutes, sounds good too. I swear it makes yours truly a better driver.

You can tweak the audio with the Technics Audio Connect app. Most of the time I kept in Direct mode, but outside in particular, switching to Dynamic was nice, albeit probably not what the sound engineers of the music tracks intended.

Once you start using earbuds with high-quality microphones (and audio in general) for phone and video calls, it’s difficult to go back to speaking into a device. It’s worth spending some time dialling in the Adaptive Noise Cancelling (ANC) so that you get some ambient sound feedback, and don’t raise your voice too much in calls because you can’t hear yourself. 

Otherwise, the ANC works nicely as advertised, without too much difference in audio quality when you switch it on or off. Some earbuds have a bewildering sound difference here.

Also, the AZ100s have a trick called Voice Focus AI which removes external sounds; it works well outdoors in particular, for those moments when you have to take a call in a noisy environment and want people to hear what you say. There’s no speech detection mode though, unlike Apple AirPods and Sony XM5.

Battery life and charging

How long the AZ100s last depends on the audio codec used. With LDAC, they’re rated at 7 hours with noise cancellation on, and 8 with it off.

With the charging case added to the equation, you can keep the AZ100s going for 18/19 hours (noise cancellation on/off). 

Using AAC extends the AZ100 earbuds battery life to 10/12 hours on their own, and 28/29 hours (again, noise cancelling on and off). The figures are approximate, but very good overall.

Charging the earbuds from empty takes about two hours, and the charging case with USB-C takes a bit longer, two and a half hours. Wireless Qi charging is also possible.

The Technics app shows the state of charge for both the AZ100s and the case, but you don’t get the Apple AirPods style overlay on iPhones. Speaking of the app, while the iPhone one is nice and easy to use, there’s nothing equivalent for macOS, or Windows as far as I can tell. 

Quality ‘buds from an old name in the biz

Priced nearly the same as Sony’s XM5, which are similar in design, and less than Apple’s AirPods Pro (different design), the Technics AZ100s certainly are competitive in terms of audio quality and features. 

Which ones to go for of the three probably comes down to design preference, and fit (there’s no try before you buy with earbuds, because if there were, eewwch!!) but the Technics AZ100 are unlikely to disappoint if you pick them.