The idea behind the Vinci headphones seems to have been to incorporate all available technologies into them, even those that no one really expected from headphones.
In addition to being tethered to a music source, they listen to your voice, cancel external noise, monitor your fitness, charge wirelessly, and yes, they have a touchscreen on the outside of one earbud.
We discovered Vinci, which comes from a very successful Kickstarter campaign that launched in November 2016, at ShowStoppers, a smaller event that accompanies CES.
The Vinci headphones are a pretty crazy product, but they haven't even been released yet. The prototype at CES is version 1.0, and it lacked many of the features mentioned above, including noise cancellation.
But they're functional, if a little flimsy. You put them on your head and control the volume by swiping your finger up or down on the touchscreen. To change tracks, swipe sideways.
Why do you need a screen on your headphones? We're not sure. When you're listening to music, people around you (but obviously not you) can see some information about the tracks and get a visual representation of the music. At least you don't have to explain what kind of music you like when they ask you on the subway!
The best thing about these is their ability to play music without being connected to a music source. With 16/32GB of storage (depending on model), you can load music onto them and forget about your phone.
What makes the Vinci even more amazing, though, is its price. The standard model is priced at $99 on Kickstarter, while the Pro model costs $149.
The Vinci are an interesting, inexpensive pair of headphones, however we will have to wait quite a while to see them on store shelves and with so many features in a single product we cannot be sure of its performance.
