one twist, and your headphones change into a speaker — Gadget Circulation

Most headphones ask you to select. You both pay attention alone, otherwise you attain for a separate speaker when buddies are round. TDM. thinks that’s one gadget too many, and the Neo is its reply: a pair of over-ears that turns into a speaker while you twist the band.

It’s a daring thought, and it clearly struck a chord. Neo walked away from CES 2026 because the present’s most awarded headphone. Now it’s on sale within the US for $249, so we received a unit in and handed it to somebody on our staff to stay with.

The report that got here again was a cheerful one. The design won them over nearly instantly, the twist turned out to be one thing they used for actual, and pairing by no means received in the way in which.

It seems to be like headphones first

This was the half our tester stored coming again to. Neo doesn’t appear like a speaker carrying a scarf. It seems to be like a clear, trendy pair of headphones, and also you’d by no means guess there’s a second set of drivers hiding on the skin of the cups.

The twist mechanism sits contained in the band, so nothing stands out or rattles. At below 340 grams it isn’t the lightest pair round. Given what’s packed in there, although, the burden feels truthful. The reminiscence foam cushions and vegan leather-based headband maintain it comfy, and each the cushions and the battery module will be changed down the road. That’s a small factor you don’t see usually at this value.

TDM. additionally features a carrying case within the field, which you’ll need for a pair of headphones you’re prone to toss right into a backpack.

Then you definitely twist it

That is the second Neo was constructed round, and it delivers. Our tester’s response was easy: the twist mode could be very cool. A flip of the band and the music strikes out of your ears into the room. No app, no menu, no second machine to pair.

It really works as a result of TDM. engineered it correctly. There are 4 40mm drivers inside. Two face your ears, and two face outward with 5 watts behind each. So when Neo turns into a speaker, it’s utilizing drivers made for that job reasonably than cranking the headphone drivers up and hoping for one of the best.

You additionally get some say in what the twist does. By default it switches the audio, however the app helps you to set it to pause and resume your music, or to energy the headphones on and off. There’s a handbook mode too, which retains the speaker off till you select it. We favored that one. No person needs to blast a playlist throughout a quiet workplace as a result of they adjusted the match a bit too laborious.

Speaker mode is made for close-range sharing, and that’s the place it shines. TDM. calls it room-filling for a tool this dimension, and it’s splendid for a desk, a lodge room or a picnic blanket. Consider it because the speaker you all the time have on you, as a result of it’s already round your neck.

The way it sounds

As a pair of headphones, Neo does the job nicely. Our tester discovered the sound according to what you’d anticipate from a very good on a regular basis pair: clear, simple to hearken to and comfy over lengthy periods. If you wish to form it additional, the app provides you separate EQ settings for headphone and speaker mode, so you possibly can tune each by itself. Neo helps SBC and AAC codecs, which pair properly with iPhones specifically.

Noise management is passive. As a substitute of energetic noise cancellation, Neo depends on its reminiscence foam cushions and a well-judged clamp to seal out the world round you. That retains the design easy and is probably going a part of why the battery lasts so long as it does. For calls, the multi-array mics use environmental noise cancellation to maintain your voice clear on the opposite finish.

Each day, it stays out of the way in which

Setup was painless. Neo paired over Bluetooth rapidly on the primary strive, with not one of the fiddling some headphones put you thru. It runs Bluetooth 6.0 with multipoint, so it may possibly maintain a connection to your telephone and laptop computer on the identical time. When you’d reasonably plug in, there’s a 3.5mm enter and a cable within the field.

The controls are bodily buttons, 4 of them, for energy, quantity and switching modes. We’ll take buttons over fussy contact panels any day. You don’t want the companion app to make use of Neo, but it surely’s price putting in for the EQ, twist settings and Sport Mode. It additionally has a Discover My Machine function that may play a sound from the headphones, useful for one thing that’s going to maneuver between rooms and luggage rather a lot.

On paper, battery life is wild. TDM. charges Neo for greater than 200 hours in headphone mode and 16 hours as a speaker. 5 minutes on USB-C is meant to purchase you eight hours of listening, and a full cost takes round three hours. One small catch: TDM.’s product web page lists speaker battery as 8+ hours in a single spot, whereas the spec sheet says 16+. We’ve gone with the spec sheet.

Who it’s for

Neo is for individuals who prefer to share what they’re listening to. Consider the coed who needs to play a playlist within the dorm, or the traveler who’d reasonably not pack a speaker on high of all the pieces else. For them, the twist is a function they’ll attain for each day, wrapped in a design our tester favored from the second it got here out of the field.

When you principally pay attention alone on lengthy flights and need energetic noise cancellation, that’s price preserving in thoughts. For everybody else, Neo is an ingenious, well-designed pair of headphones that’s simple to advocate.

Neo is offered now in black and white at tdmofficial.com, Amazon and Walmart, with wider retail availability on the way in which.

Specs at a look

Madhurima Nag is the Head of Content material at Gadget Circulation. She side-hustles as a parenting and STEM influencer and likes to voice her opinion on product advertising, innovation and devices (in fact!) basically.