CES 2015

New headphone company Phaz has announced a line of Bluetooth headphones that charge your phone while you listen to music.

The P2 by Phaz has an integrated lithium-ion battery that will charge your phone through a USB port on the earcup. You’d think that the battery would add a lot of weight to the design, but the P2 is remarkably light and has volume, call controls, and a microphone built into the earcup. Also unique are the interchangeable memory foam earcups that come in four colors.

Of course, to charge your device, you’ll need to use a USB cable. And if you don’t want to waste battery power on Bluetooth, the P2s have a removable analog ⅛” cable. The biggest downside is that passive playback and charging requires two separate cables, which when used simultaneously can be a bit… unwieldy. That said, the president of the company told me future versions would use USB only and utilize a D/A converter built into the headphones. For now, though, the Phaz idea is a novel one, and something I could see becoming a standard concept for headphones in the future. The Phaz P2 will be available in April for $250 on www.phazmusic.com.