Anker’s new VR P10 wireless earbuds promise gaming freedom without lag

Anker’s newly introduced Soundcore VR P10 truly wireless earbuds, available soon, aim to be the answer millions of VR gamers have been looking for. Until now, the options for using true wireless earbuds with VR consoles (like the PSVR) and headsets (like Meta’s Quest family) have been almost nonexistent.

While some VR hardware does support the Bluetooth connectivity that most true wireless earbuds rely on, the latency that Bluetooth connection adds to the gaming experience would create out-of-sync sound. 

You might not hear a nearby explosion until after it had already killed your in-game character, for example.

To prevent this, the VR P10 earbuds support both Bluetooth and a low-latency, 2.4GHz connection via their included dongle. While this hybrid option is rare in earbuds, it has been done before in a few models, like the EPOS GTW 270 earbuds I recently gave very high marks in a review. 

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As great as those earbuds were, they didn’t include one thing that the Anker VR P10 earbuds do that might be the most “Why didn’t they think of that?” feature I’ve seen: a compartment for the dongle in the charging case. This will make it far less likely you’ll lose the dongle, and you’ll have it to hand when you’re plugging in a new headset.  

The new earbuds also support the LC3 (Low Complexity Communication Codec) protocol, a wireless communications protocol that can significantly reduce Bluetooth latency across connections that support it, at the cost of some audio fidelity.

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As for which headsets the model supports between its two wireless technologies, Anker has remained pretty cagey. When I recently tested the 2.4GHz dongle included included with the aforementioned EPOS GTW 270 earbuds, it was a no-go in my Quest 2 headset’s USB-C port. If Anker can offer 2.4GHz support for the Quest 2, or the reportedly leaked Meta Quest Pro, it really could be a game-changer for owners of one of the most popular headset types on the market. 

Although specific headset support and a few other questions remain unanswered about the promising VR P10 earbuds, Anker teased “some really exciting news” about them that would be revealed “in the coming weeks.” That’s a time frame that just so happens to align with Meta Connect 2022, the Oct. 11 event where most people expect the reveal of the Meta Quest Pro. Interesting…