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• The Fitbit Edge has leaked with similar specs to the Fitbit Air, plus an added screen
• This reportedly gives it access to apps like Google Maps and YouTube Music
• It could launch as soon as this month

In recent years, Google has seemed more focused on the Pixel Watch line than its Fitbit trackers, but it hasn’t abandoned those devices completely, with the screen-free Fitbit Air landing earlier this year — and now, a new wearable reportedly dubbed the Fitbit Edge has been sighted.

This device has been extensively leaked by Android Headlines, complete with images — some of which you can see below — and specs, but it sounds a lot like a Fitbit Air with an added screen. Like the Air, the Edge reportedly has up to seven days of battery life, GPS, elevation tracking, automatic activity tracking, and support for both Android and iOS.

But thanks to its screen, it also supports a handful of apps, like Google Maps, YouTube Music, and Find My Phone. You’ll also be able to get notifications on your wrist, and of course, you’ll be able to view things like your step count and heart rate without having to look at your phone.

Android HeadlinesAndroid HeadlinesA middle ground

So the Fitbit Edge should essentially sit somewhere between the screen-free Air and the Google Pixel Watch 5 — the latter being a full smartwatch with even more capabilities, but with worse battery life and no iOS support.

Android Headlines notes that you could also look at it as a successor to the Fitbit Charge line — a series which we haven’t seen a new entry in since 2023.

According to Android Headlines, the Fitbit Edge will come in black, green, and orange shades, with the potential for more options down the line.

It doesn’t sound like the site has any inside information on the price or release date, but it speculates that the Edge could launch this month, so that it’s on shelves in time for the holiday season, and that it might cost between $149 (roughly £110 / AU$215) and $199 (around £150 / AU$285).

A judicial spokesperson confirmed that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had filed a claim with the High Court in London and a hearing would take place Thursday.

(Image credit: Kirsty Wigglesworth)

OpenAI had an oddly casual way of apologizing to the Australian Government to explain how one of its experimental AI agents gained unauthorized access to a government health statistics system while trying to complete a routine research task. More casual than one might expect for such a huge security concern.

The agent was looking for publicly available information about medicine spending, but after failing to get what it wanted through the normal route, it found a vulnerability in and used it to access internal files, though no individual patient records.

The incident is a striking example of the risks that come with increasingly autonomous AI agents, but almost as striking is how OpenAI admitted what happened. OpenAI says it discovered the Australian activity in mid-August but did not notify Australia until September 10. When it finally did, the company sent a brief, almost jaunty email about it, as shared on LinkedIn by an ABC reporter:

"We are notifying you of a security vulnerability identified during our review of OpenAI model activity involving Services Australia’s Medicare Statistics service," the email begins before explaining what happened. "We recommend that the team responsible for the service investigate the vulnerability and assess the changes needed to prevent it. We would be glad to brief your security team and provide supporting evidence as available."

The message ends with "Best," though the letter hardly feels like it means it.

Won't accept a no

(Image credit: Getty Images)

The model was researching government spending per person on medicines for skin conditions in communities in Victoria in June. It was supposed to find publicly available statistics. Instead, it discovered a route into the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service that gave it non-public access.

Essentially, the model asked for information it shouldn't have access to and took the denial as a sign to find another way in. The ethics of the matter did not arise.

"We did not intend for this activity to occur, and the access to the service and follow-on activity should not have happened," OpenAI wrote in its follow-up explanation.

The timing makes the note considerably worse as, while OpenAI discovered in July what happened in June, it did not notify Services Australia until September 10.

That means the most significant delay was between discovery and disclosure. OpenAI now admits it still waited too long. In its expanded apology, the company said it should have shared preliminary findings sooner and kept Australian agencies updated as it learned more.

While using the public disclosures email is legitimate for the average person finding a security flaw, it seems odd for a company of OpenAI's size to report its own model's error this way.

Not really the 'best' way to say sorry

The apology also revealed that Medicare was only part of the story. OpenAI said its models had interacted with several Australian government services during training and evaluation. An agent accessed the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research's public Crime Mapping Tool, while agents found an exposed access key associated with a Victorian health reporting system and retrieved configuration information and aggregate survey statistics.

OpenAI said no individual medical or criminal records were accessed in those incidents. But OpenAI later expanded its response, adding that a model researching wildfire statistics had used crafted queries against the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service's Fire History service to infer database metadata that was not intended to be publicly exposed.

The growing list makes the Medicare incident harder to dismiss as a quirky model finding a single vulnerability. It suggests experimental agents were repeatedly interacting with real websites in ways their creators did not expect. OpenAI itself has responded by pausing training and evaluation involving tool use for its most capable models until additional safeguards are in place.

OpenAI also said that newer monitoring has already caught a model obtaining live internet access during another training run, allowing humans to stop it. The Australian government is investigating whether laws were broken and working on fixing older public-facing government systems to prevent it from happening again.

AI companies increasingly want us to trust agents with doing tasks autonomously on our behalf. The selling point is that an agent can encounter an obstacle and independently figure out how to accomplish its goal. This is an unusually vivid example of what happens when that feature works a little too enthusiastically.

The Medicare agent was assigned to find statistics about medicine spending, not penetrate a government server. But it simply steered toward a more direct route, ignoring every consideration but effectiveness. The technology had crossed a boundary its developer says it never intended the model to cross, and the company took weeks after discovering the incident to tell the organization on the other side of that boundary. That's why the email feels like more than a funny piece of corporate communication.

The follow-up acknowledges responsibility and describes concrete safeguards while admitting that notification should have come sooner. It also recognizes that the company now has work to do to rebuild trust. It's a much better message. "Best" is a way to end an email to a professional acquaintance, not when your experimental AI has hacked national medical databases.

Artificial intelligence is moving beyond the chatbot. Across enterprises, AI now does more than summarize documents, draft emails or answer questions. Organizations are increasingly piloting autonomous AI agents that read communications, retrieve information from business systems, update customer records, trigger workflows and execute operational actions with limited human oversight.

That autonomy creates a new kind of exposure. Our research finds 76% of organizations are piloting or rolling out autonomous AI agents, and 42% have already had a confirmed or suspected AI-related incident. Agentic AI is already inside the workplace; the real test is whether organizations can govern it without strangling the productivity gains it delivers.

Unlike traditional generative AI, which responds to a question and stops, agentic AI pursues an objective. It interprets a request, selects tools, accesses data and acts across connected business environments. A conventional assistant might summarize an email chain. An autonomous agent could read it, pull details from a CRM, draft a response, update a Zendesk ticket and schedule a follow-up call.

Each stage may look legitimate on its own, yet the end result could still be wrong, excessive or manipulated. Blocking AI tools outright isn't practical. It just pushes employees toward unapproved services where activity and data flows are harder to see. Leaders need to treat AI agents as a new category of digital worker, with clear boundaries, oversight and accountability.

Moving beyond traditional access control

Securing autonomous AI agents means moving from access control to behavior-aware governance. Permission to act matters less than whether that action fits the original request, the data it touches, and the consequences it could trigger.

Traditional enterprise security assumes a person makes the decision and a system executes it. Agentic AI compresses that chain. A human writes the prompt, the AI interprets it, pulls in connected tools, and triggers the action itself, often without a checkpoint between decision and execution.

That works fine for low-risk, repetitive, reversible tasks. But once an agent can send external communications, modify sensitive records, approve transactions or change permissions, a misunderstood instruction, or a malicious one, turns into an immediate consequence.

Security teams must assess what an agent is doing, why it is doing it, and whether its actions remain aligned with organizational policy and human intent. Governance has to cover the full chain of activity, from the original request through to the outcome inside a business system.

The risk of semantic privilege escalation

One emerging concern is semantic privilege escalation, where an agent stays fully within its access rights but stretches them further than the user intended.

An employee asks an agent to "organize customer communications." With access to a CRM, an email platform and a customer database, the agent could read that instruction broadly enough to email confidential pricing details to the wrong contact, message an entire distribution list instead of one recipient, or push through a change that should have needed a manager's sign-off.

The agent stays within its authorization the entire time; the mismatch is between its behavior and human intent. Static permissions can't catch that gap. Organizations need controls that weigh an action's purpose, context and likely impact before it completes, not just its permission level.

Human risk and data protection

AI agents are directed by prompts, shaped by whatever information they receive, and trusted by employees who assume the output is correct. Three failure points follow from that: what data goes in, how the agent interprets it, and how much employees trust what it produces.

Employees paste sensitive data into prompts or upload confidential files without thinking twice. An agent can misread a request, or get steered by hidden instructions buried in an email, document, chat message or webpage. And employees often wave AI-generated recommendations through without the scrutiny they'd give a colleague's advice.

Prompt injection is the clearest example: attackers hide instructions inside content they know an AI agent will process. If the agent treats that content as trustworthy, it can ignore policy, leak data, alter a workflow or act on an instruction no human ever approved. Against a chatbot, that produces an embarrassing wrong answer. Against an agent with direct access to tools and systems, it produces an executed action.

Data leakage compounds this. Agents typically need broad access to enterprise data, which means sensitive information can travel through prompts, uploads, generated responses, logs and retrieval workflows. Data loss prevention has to extend into these AI environments, flagging sensitive content before it reaches an AI tool, and controlling where that tool can send it.

Email and collaboration platforms deserve particular attention. They sit at the intersection of people, data and autonomous workflows, while also serving as common routes for phishing, malicious links, manipulated files and prompt injection. Among organizations reporting an AI-related incident, 67% saw threat activity in email, 57% in SaaS or cloud applications, and 53% in AI assistants or agents.

Requiring human approval for every automated action would defeat the purpose of deploying agents in the first place. Targeted human-in-the-loop controls work better, reserved for high-impact, irreversible or sensitive decisions such as financial transfers, external communications, permission changes and regulated data sharing.

Lower-risk actions can run autonomously within clear boundaries. Higher-risk actions should pause for human confirmation, require step-up authentication or face additional policy checks.

Agentic AI security rests on four pillars: visibility into human-AI interactions, controls on sensitive data, governance over agent behavior, and audit trails that hold up under scrutiny. These agents are becoming digital colleagues with real system access and real authority to act. They warrant the same scrutiny organizations already apply to privileged users, critical applications and high-risk business processes.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit

• Five of Europe's biggest payment providers have agreed to enable cross-border payments
• European Network for Payments is a common framework for interoperability
• Combined, they already reach over 70% of the EU/Norway's population

Five European payment providers have come together to create the European Network for Payments (ENP) following a memorandum of understanding signed by the companies earlier in 2026.

With the ENP, the five platforms – Italy's Bancomat, Spain's Bizum, Portugal's MB WAY, the Nordics' Vipps MobilePay and Europe's Wero – will support Europe-wide interoperability.

Instead of replacing any of those platforms, the Network (ENP) will act as an interoperability layer between those companies – and potentially more in the future – so that users can send more payments to more people, without having to ditch their favorite app.

European Network for Payments is all about Europe-wide interoperability

In a press release, the Network revealed that those five platforms alone already reach 130 million users, which represents more than 70% of the EU and Norway's combined populations.

The goal is to enable instant account-to-account payments, but rollout is set to happen in stages, beginning with person-to-person payments across international borders. E-commerce will come later, and then physical, in-store payments will form the final release.

"By connecting strong national solutions through a common framework, we are enabling seamless cross-border experiences while preserving the diversity, trust and proximity that each system has built in its own market," Bancomat CEO Fabrizio Burlando explained – a hint to the bloc's ongoing digital sovereignty efforts.

In an earlier investigation, the Commission had already noted differences in standards covering QR codes, NFC and Bluetooth, impacting borderless payments. The Commission also declared that "the EU’s electronic payments market is dominated by a few large global players."

The European Central Bank also revealed that three in five (61%) card transactions in the euro area in 2022 were handled by international card schemes.

As for what's next, the European Network for Payments hopes to have implemented all three types of payments (person-to-person, e-commerce and physical retail) by the end of 2027.

Digital trust has rested on the simple assumption that behind every login or decision, there is a person. Passwords and multi-factor authentication were built to confirm that whoever was asking had the right access.

They were never built to answer a question that AI agents are now making unavoidable: not just whether you can get in, or even who you are, but who authorized you to act, what exactly you can do, and for how long.

Break it down, and there are really three separate checks. Authentication: can you access this? Identity: who are you? Authority: who authorized you to do this, what can you do, and for how long? Most of today's infrastructure was built to answer the first two. Agents are what make the third one impossible to ignore, and it's where the interesting problem now sits.

AI agents are completing transactions and handling admin tasks that used to require a person, often with minimal oversight. Many of the systems checking who's on the other end of a request weren't built to tell a person from an agent, or a legitimate agent from an unauthorized one. They confirm that someone, or increasingly something, holds the right credentials, not whether it has authority for the action it's taking.

The UK has spent the past couple of years building the infrastructure to answer the identity part of this equation. The Data (Use and Access) Act has put Digital Verification Services (DVS) on statutory footing.

Some use cases are going further still, introducing mandatory identity verification for directors and people with significant control. That's progress. But as agents start acting more inside business workflows, a second question is emerging that this infrastructure wasn't designed to answer: not who someone is, but who is acting, and with what authority.

Identity is only the first check

For businesses, proving a person's identity has always gone hand in hand with checking what they are authorized to do. Take an employee approving a payment on a company's behalf: the organization relying on that action needs to know not just who they are, but whether they're currently entitled to do it. Financial services and healthcare already layer eligibility and role checks on top of identity verification, because identity alone doesn't tell you what someone is allowed to do.

AI agents make that distinction unavoidable everywhere else, too. Identifying the agent behind a request doesn't show who authorized the action or whether it falls within the permission originally granted. The infrastructure built so far is much stronger on identity verification than on applying delegated authority, and that gap will widen as more of what businesses do is offloaded to agents.

Minimum necessary authority

The same discipline that good identity design applies to documents should apply to authority: ask for, and grant, only what a transaction actually needs. An agent completing a task should be able to prove it holds a specific, limited mandate for that task, not standing access to everything behind it.

Broad, standing access is easier to build, but it means a single compromised or mis-scoped agent can do far more damage than a narrowly scoped one ever could.

Preparing for delegation

So how should businesses actually close this gap? The starting point isn't a new verification step. It's moving that check earlier, so authority is confirmed before an agent acts rather than discovered after something's gone wrong. An organization should give an agent a specific, limited job rather than a copy of a person's own access, and keep a clear record of who granted that authority and when it can be pulled.

For any agentic action, a business should be able to answer five questions: Who, or what, is acting? Who authorized it? What can it do? Under what constraints? And is that authority still valid? It's a simple test, but it's a useful one, and it maps closely onto the ‘on-behalf-of’ (or OBO) delegation models already used in identity standards, which is a promising foundation to build on rather than starting from scratch.

Without those answers, a mis-scoped agent could quietly approve a payment it was never meant to touch. Waiting for a regulator to define the standard first only leaves that exposure open for longer.

Where the framework needs to catch up

The government's role here too is to extend what already exists rather than build new infrastructure from scratch. The DVS Trust Framework already recognizes delegated authority when a person acts on behalf of somebody else or an organization. What it doesn't yet address is how that same principle should apply when the delegate is software, and the UK now needs to work out how its existing delegated-authority thinking extends to that case.

Whatever shape that takes, an agent needs to be able to present a machine-verifiable mandate: who authorized it, what it can do, under what constraints, for how long, and whether that authority is still valid. Digital wallets are one plausible home for that mandate, sitting alongside a person's or organization's verified credentials so it can be checked or revoked.

They're not the only answer, but they point at the kind of infrastructure this problem needs, and the UK has a narrow window to work it out before agent deployments outpace the systems meant to govern them.

With the Data (Use and Access) Act, the DVS Trust Framework is already laying much of the groundwork for secure, reusable digital identity, the UK has an opportunity to get ahead of this shift, extending principles it has already established rather than inventing new ones.

In the near future, trust online will no longer depend on whether something can pass a login. It will depend on whether we can prove who, or what, is really acting behind the screen, on whose authority, and for how long.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced early elections Monday after his government suffered a bruising legislative defeat last week on emergency measures related to the country's housing crisis.

(Image credit: Bernat Armangue)

Republicans and Democrats, both patients and politicians, seem united in their disdain for the healthcare companies known as pharmacy benefit managers. Tennessee and Arkansas are regulating them now.

(Image credit: Earl Neikirk)

The case centers on whether local governments can hold giant energy companies accountable for the local harms of climate change, but it has repercussions beyond climate.

(Image credit: Jimena Peck for NPR)

While scientists have a decent understanding of how sauna and other forms of heat exposure exercises our cardiovascular system, they know relatively little about its impact on mental health.

(Image credit: Siv Dolmen for NPR)

Voters are already voting in the midterms. This year, some voters are trying something new to get ready for the election: asking AI to help research their ballot and even decide who to vote for.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

This year, federal forecasters say the planet could see the strongest El Niño event on record. Here's what you need to know.

(Image credit: NOAA Satellites)

Investigators are still searching for the motive behind a midair attack aboard a FlyDubai plane, SCOTUS term begins with climate change case, Brazil's presidential race heads to run-off.

• BT agrees rescue deal to buy broadband operator TalkTalk
• However DCMS has already stepped in over competition concerns
• TalkTalk has 1.5 million retail customers and one million wholesale customers across the UK

BT has signed a rescue deal to save TalkTalk in a move which could have major ramifications across the UK market.

TalkTalk, which is the UK’s fourth-largest broadband company with 1.5 million retail customers and a million wholesale customers across the country, had been on the edge of potential administration due to rising debts.

However the UK government may still have its say on the deal, which covers both TalkTalk and its wholesale arm PlatformX Communications (PXC), and it will need to be approved by the Competition Markets Authority (CMA) due to the range of control it would give BT over the UK broadband market.

BT-TalkTalk deal

“This is a genuinely unprecedented situation, where millions of citizens and businesses were at risk if TalkTalk had collapsed," said Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive of BT Group.

"BT is the digital backbone of the country, with a presence in every postcode. We have been connecting the nation for generations, stepping up in the moments that matter, and BT acquiring TalkTalk is now the only viable option to keep millions of customers connected and supported."

The terms of the deal have not been revealed, but BT's press release noted that the estimate of the total cash impact in its FY27 would be around £400 million.

TalkTalk, which employes around 900 people in the UK, made around £1.2bn in revenue over the last 12 months, but was still loss-making, BT said.

“Our immediate priority is to stabilise the business and provide a safety net for the households and businesses who rely on TalkTalk," Kirkby added.

"Once the regulatory process has been concluded, TalkTalk’s customers will benefit from access to the UK’s best network, and the full range of market-leading products and services that BT offers. And, over a period of time, the transaction will create value for all our stakeholders – customers, colleagues, the country, and our owners.”

Hurdles ahead?

Given the scale of the move, the deal immediately drew intervention from the UK Government, with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) issuing a press release alongside BT's announcement.

In it, it noted that "given these exceptional circumstances and the potential risk to life and public services", it would be utilising Enterprise ‌Act powers that will permit Secretary of State Lisa Nandy to consider the wider public interest following the CMA's ruling.

The CMA has been told to file its report by October 19, 2026, when further Government intervention may be considered.

“Phone and broadband services are vital national infrastructure. If TalkTalk services fail, there is a genuine risk to life and public services – including to hospitals, schools and emergency care," Nandy added.

“These are unprecedented circumstances that require action now. That is why I am acting with urgency to ensure that impacts on public health, critical national infrastructure and supply to vulnerable customers are fully considered as part of this process.”

TalkTalk customers have been told that no changes will happen to their services for the time being, with no adjustments to bills or services until the deal closes.

Now there are two: Brazil heads into a runoff after a first round that failed to fully energize voters, setting the stage for a more polarized contest that Washington is watching very closely.

(Image credit: Mauro Pimentel, Sergio Lima)

• Oregon’s data center tax breaks have become a major political flashpoint statewide
• A warning about one election cycle helped accelerate Oregon’s grassroots organizing
• More than $450 million in exemptions intensified scrutiny of Oregon data centers

Oregon’s expanding data center industry has triggered an increasingly organized political backlash involving residents, environmental groups, educators, farmers and elected officials.

The dispute intensified after reports showed Oregon data centers receiving more than $450 million in property tax exemptions during 2026, including about $85 million in the Hillsboro area.

The resistance is a grassroots coalition led by the nonprofit 1000 Friends of Oregon, which has already helped unseat a Hillsboro-area senator and pushed Governor Tina Kotek to reverse course.

A warning turns into political action

Sam Diaz, executive director of 1000 Friends of Oregon, said his concerns deepened after seeing how facilities affected communities and resources around Prineville.

In 2022, a rancher told him water allocations had been reduced because large server buildings had arrived nearby.

A later warning from a Virginia land-use executive gave Diaz another reason to accelerate organizing before data centers became harder to regulate politically.

“They said, ‘Once this takes hold in your state, you really got to get ahead of it, and you probably have one election cycle before you really start seeing politicians do the bidding of data centers,’” Diaz recalled.

Trouble escalated when Senator Janeen Sollman proposed opening 1,700 acres of farmland to industry and doubling a tax break that data centers already had.

Intense pushback forced her to drop the plan to double that tax break within days of the 2026 session starting, yet the backlash had already begun.

Sollman later lost her seat to Myrna Muñoz, though she blamed a separate bill on strike benefits rather than data centers for her primary defeat.

Criticism intensified again after Hillsboro was found to have approved incentives for 17 data centers shortly before a statewide moratorium took effect.

Tax incentives bring an unlikely coalition together

The incentive decisions helped bring previously separate groups into a common campaign involving education funding, environmental concerns, farmland and tax policy.

In June, 1000 Friends and 11 other plaintiffs sued Hillsboro and companies connected with the facilities, questioning whether the city had legal authority to approve the agreements.

“The first question of, ‘Does the city have the authority to do what it did?,’ and then the second question is, ‘Even if they did, do these applications even meet the Enterprise Zone Act requirements?’” Diaz said.

The coalition argues that reduced property-tax collections can affect public services, including education funding through Oregon’s State School Fund.

The Oregon Education Association, representing 41,000 teachers, joined the lawsuit over what it described as financial consequences for statewide schools.

These concerns have also become part of the coalition’s agenda for the 2027 legislative session, where members want changes to subsidies, land-use rules and public spending on economic development.

The lawsuit also brings major technology companies into the dispute because their facilities are connected to the tax incentives being challenged by the plaintiffs.

It names major technology companies including CoreWeave, Adobe and NVIDIA among firms tied to the disputed Enterprise Zone tax arrangements.

None of these companies has issued an official statement on the lawsuit or allegations concerning their involvement.

Via Street Roots

In Brazil, President Lula da Silva faces Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the jailed former president, in a tight race. If neither wins more than half the votes they'll face each other again on Oct. 25.

Trump said Clayton will lead the White House's new "Super Intelligence Force," which will coordinate government engagement with artificial intelligence.

(Image credit: Mariam Zuhaib)

Earfun Wave Pro X: Two-minute review

Earfun is not a company known for unveiling premium tech. The audio specialist keeps to the budget side of the tracks, and we’re better off for it — see winning products such as the Air Pro 4 Plus in-ear buds or Earfun Clip 2 open options for starters.

The Earfun Wave Pro X aren’t premium headphones; they’re not going up against the AirPods Max 2 or Sony WH-100XM6 in our list of the best headphones you can buy. But nevertheless, they’re Earfun’s most high-end over-ears yet; the company says it took over 30 months to design them — and it’s clearly true, given the year-long gap between their announcement and actual release.

All of Earfun's typical traits — which I’ve come to really appreciate from the brand’s kit — are evident in the Wave Pro X. The battery life is great, lasting 90 hours if you turn ANC off, and the app is chock-full of useful features — including one of the most in-depth equalizers I’ve ever seen on headphones I’ve reviewed.

The Wave Pro X also have a more refined design than I’ve seen from Earfun headphones in the past. Neat flourishes and smart material choices make these feel like headphones that’d usually cost twice the price. Before them, I tested the Bose QuietComfort Headphones (2nd Gen), and these feel just as well-designed as those pricey options.

In fact, I was surprised by how how similar these cans are in general, focusing on comfort and solid noise cancellation. The Earfun don’t sound quite as good, but if you want budget Boses, these are a pretty solid pick.

You’re getting all that for a relatively affordable price. These won’t find a place on our list of the best cheap headphones by any means, but they’re an inexpensive option which you could feasibly buy as a gift or pick up for yourself without it being a scary purchase.

However they’re not perfect, and I wish the sound was a little bit more refined. The Wave Pro X offers a slightly muddy performance overall, which occasionally drowns out trebles with overstated mids and bass, and presents some peaking as well as a reduced soundstage.

In true Earfun fashion though, the list of features may overwhelm some, especially in the ANC menu (there are loads of different modes), and with a listening test that challenges you to pick your favorite in a carousel of honestly identical-sounding mixes. I also associate top-end headphones with fun color ways, thanks in part to Bose’s range of hues, and Earfun has nothing of the sort.

But these are affordable, offer some of the perks of the recent Bose headphones, and beat them in a few departments — including battery life. So they’re well worth picking up if you want a premium-adjacent set of headphones that won’t break the bank.

Earfun Wave Pro X review: Price and release date

(Image credit: Future)

• Released in August 2026, almost a year after their official unveiling
• Sells for $129.99 / £119.99 (about AU$240)
• Earfun's most premium offering

The Earfun Wave Pro X had a long road to release; they were first announced in September 2025, re-announced in January 2026 with some tweaks, and then actually unveiled to buy in August 2026. Better late than never, then!

You can buy the Earfun Wave Pro X for $129.99 / £119.99 (about AU$240; Earfun does ship globally but the cost will be the current conversion from the USD price). So they’re not quite affordable cans — they’re a touch too pricey to qualify for our best cheap headphones round-up — but you’re not going to confuse these for premium cans.

The original Earfun Wave Pro sold for $79.99 / £79.99 (about AU$120) but they came out two and a half years prior, and so can be found for about half that price now.

Earfun Wave Pro X review: Specs

Drivers

40mm + 10mm

Active noise cancellation

Yes

Battery life

50 hours (ANC on), 90 hours (ANC off)

Weight

259g

Connectivity

Bluetooth 6.0, USB-C, 3.5mm

Frequency response

Not specified

Waterproofing

None

Earfun Wave Pro X review: Features

(Image credit: Future)

• ANC good for most uses
• Fantastic 90h battery life (with ANC off)
• Range of app features including loads of EQ tools

You’ll get a solid, commendable amount of listening time with the Earfun Wave Pro X; the company estimates that they last for 90 hours with ANC turned off, or 50 hours with it turned on. And from my testing, those figures sound about right. That means these puppies will last for much longer than your standard flagship ANC cans, with top options from the likes of Bose, Sony and Apple generally lasting 20-30 hours, but they don’t quite match the longest-lasting options on the market.

The ANC works well, doing a reliable job of blocking out most annoying noises around you. I can’t pretend it’s best-in-class, suffering most to unpredictable and non-repetitive nearby sounds, but it’s close enough that you won’t mind if you’re not a silence connoisseur. Earfun overcomplicates matters with a range of different noise cancelling modes, such as "AI Ear Adaptive ANC" and "AI Environment Adaptive ANC", but take my advice: just slap on full-strength normal ANC, and leave it there.

‘Loads of features’ was likely another bullet-point on the flipboard when Earfun was workshopping these headphones, because the brand’s audio products always come chock-full of the kind of tools you’d be lucky to get on another device.

(Image credit: Future)

I’m talking hearing health protection modes; I’m talking gaming-focused low-latency settings; I’m talking dual-device connections, AI translation and the ability to change the volume and language for voice prompts. I know!

The highlight on the features list — which I don’t recall from other Earfun products — is an equaliser that beats basically anything else in the business right now. There are 30 presets, a 10-band custom EQ mode, a listening test to create a personal EQ, and a ‘Professional EQ’ tool which gives you even more control over filters, frequency and gain. It’s a wonderful range of customization — even if the listening test is quite hard to use.

If you really love EQ, a tool called SoundSense lets you adjust the EQ on the fly and customize it per song. That’s a lot of admin, but a way to fine-tune your favorites, if you're so inclined.

These all come courtesy of the Earfun Audio app, readily available on the Play Store or App Store. Over my several weeks of testing, connection was generally impeccable, save for one occasion in which my Android phone couldn’t detect the Wave and I had to ‘Forget’ then re-pair them.

• Features score: 4.5/5

Earfun Wave Pro X review: Design

(Image credit: Future)

• Comfortable to wear thanks to soft padding
• Some premium materials; folds up small
• No IP rating; useful buttons on cup

The Earfun Wave Pro X are the brand’s premium headphones, and it lets you know in their design. Banish the thought of some all-plastic, generic-looking cans; there are some refinements in the Wave.

Look at the headband, for example. It has a soft fabric top, and comfortable leather padding. Like in the Sony WH-1000XM6, a sleek cylindrical bar, not a thin plasticky beam, connects the band with the cups. They’re little details, but they paint the picture of a more refined design than we’ve seen from Earfun before.

The Wave Pro X is comfortable to wear; I used it for hours at a time without any kind of ear or head pain. The cans weigh 259g so they’re not particularly heavy, and the soft material used for the cups and band keeps your cranium happy.

(Image credit: Future)

You can rotate the cups inwards, extend the band a fair way, and fold the Wave Pro X up too; they even come in a protective carry case. Oh, and while I’m mentioning neat touches: they have a 3.5mm jack, which I can’t say about every pair of over-ear headphones I’ve tested recently.

That joins the power button, volume rocker and noise cancellation toggle on the right cup (all of which save the first can be customized to change their function). The left cup has the USB-C charging port.

If the Earfun Wave Pro X has an IP rating, I haven’t been able to find any information on it. That’s not particularly unusual for over-ear headphones, but worth knowing in case you were planning on wearing these in the rain.

• Design score: 4/5

Earfun Wave Pro X review: Sound quality

(Image credit: Future)

• 40mm woofer + 10mm tweeter
• Slightly muddy, bass-heavy sound
• 24-bit audio; LDAC, aptX, Snapdragon Sound

Are the Earfun Wave Pro X some of the cheapest over-ear headphones with dual drivers? Not quite, but only because the company itself has the even-cheaper Tune Pro. In the Wave Pro X you’re getting a 40mm dynamic woofer for low-end, as well as a 10mm diaphragm precision tweeter to handle the high-end; they’re positioned on top of each other to avoid undue sonic spacing.

So Earfun’s talking audiophile-grade language, but do those words translate to music? Unfortunately, not to the degree you’d hope.

Bass is controlled and powerful, instilling songs like Fire by Kasabian with a punchy undercurrent. Despite the tweeter, though, treble doesn’t have quite the sparkle you’d want, often falling low in the mix to bass and mids. In something like I IV V by Don McCloskey, it sometimes sounds like the singer is hiding behind their guitar.

(Image credit: Future)

It all gives the impression that the woofer and tweeter are working independently, not creating one cohesive sound. It’s like having some really great performers in your band, but no matter how great they shred or sing, they’re playing the song with no thought for their other band members — so it’s not going to sound especially harmonious. That’s especially true if one’s playing a loud electric guitar, and the other an ocarina.

Of course, you can use the numerous EQ tools to fix the audio a little bit, but it doesn’t help with the other issue: they often sound a little muddy. Mids are more prominent than I’m used to in consumer headphones like these, but they sound a little… gloopy, is the best word I can think of. At the same time, sounds from hi-hats and high-pitched acoustic guitars often turn into a hiss, reminding you of the artifice of what you’re listening to. The soundstage also isn’t what you’ll get from other headphones at this price.

You’re getting highly-detailed music, at least. The Wave Pro X supports 24-bit audio with Snapdragon Sound, and a range of codecs including LDAC, aptX, aptX Adaptive and apTX Lossless.

• Sound quality: 3.5/5

Earfun Wave Pro X review: Value

(Image credit: Future)

• In many areas, these are top-value headphones
• The only minor issue is that the audio isn't exceptional

The Earfun Wave Pro X are a little pricier than some other headphones from the brand, but they justify that price in a few ways, particularly the design and noise cancellation. If you’ve been considering a budget option but would be open to a step-up alternative, you’ll get the uptick in quality you're paying for.

However, they're also a great step-down alternative to pricier options, like the aforementioned (and contemporary) Bose QuietComfort Headphones (2nd Gen). They're comfortable, long-lasting and full of features.

If they sounded better, Earfun could sell these for a fair-amount more, so if you don't care especially about top-tier audio quality, they're an even more tempting pick.

• Value: 4.5/5

Should I buy the Earfun Wave Pro X?Earfun Wave Pro X score card

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Features

The battery life, ANC and feature roster are all solid, with the EQ modes a real highlight.

4.5/5

Design

The Earfun are comfortable and versatile, with handy buttons.

4/5

Sound quality

The sound is muffled, so it's really only excellent for bass-heads.

3.5/5

Value

The Wave Pro X feel surprisingly affordable, when you consider what you're getting.

4.5/5

Buy them if…

You need a long-lasting pair of cans
If you turn off ANC, you can get 90 hours of listening, or almost 4 days. That's fantastic for people who can't charge regularly.

You want comfortable headphones
The Wave Pro X were comfortable to wear for hours at a time, longer than most cans I've tested.

You like tweaking with your EQ
I can't get my head around how the Earfun have better EQ options than audiophile offerings.View Deal

Don’t buy them if…

Audio quality is your deciding factor
If you want audiophile-quality cans, these will disappoint you. Buy them for their features and value, not the sound.

You need some durable headphones
The lack of an IP rating means these might not survive a nasty spell in mother nature.

Earfun Wave Pro X review: Also consider

Looking for alternative over-ears? Here are a few we've tested and would recommend.

Earfun Wave Pro X

Soundcore Space 2

Nothing Headphone (a)

Drivers

40mm + 10mm

40mm

40mm

Active noise cancellation

Yes

Yes

Yes

Battery life (ANC on)

50 hours

50 hours

75 hours

Weight

259g

264g

310g

Connectivity

Bluetooth 5.4, USB-C, 3.5mm

Unspecified Bluetooth, 3.5mm

Bluetooth 5.4, USB-C, 3.5mm

Waterproofing

Not specified

Not specified

IP52

Soundcore Space 2
For the same price, these are just as comfortable and have incredible ANC. They also sound a little better, and are more colorful.
Read our full Soundcore Space 2 review

Nothing Headphone (a)
For a little more money, Nothing's boxy cans have a much longer-lasting battery, and they sound great.
Read our full Nothing Headphone (a) review

How I tested the Earfun Wave Pro X

• Tested for over two weeks
• Paired with Android phone for Bluetooth and USB-C
• Used on walks around neighborhood, at work, and on public transport

I used the Earfun Wave Pro X for two weeks before writing this review, and it got another week of use during the writing process.

During this time, I used the headphones alongside an Android smartphone, paired mostly with Bluetooth but occasionally over USB-C. I mostly listened to music via Spotify, but also watched videos and played games. Listening was done at home and on walks around my neighborhood, as well as on public transport and while working out at the gym.

I've been testing gadgets for TechRadar since early 2019, and in that time have tested many other pairs of over-ears, and countless Earfun audio products.

• First reviewed in October 2026

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

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