These Wooden Wireless Earbuds Claim to Self-Heal Small Scratches

Just when you thought you’d seen everything in the world of wireless earbuds, innovation strikes again. This time around, that innovation comes courtesy of JVC Kenwood, which just launched its Victor Wood Master (get the jokes out now) wireless earbuds. The new hi-fi wireless earbuds are named so for their use of, well, wood. But first let’s get to the real novelty of it all: self-healing paint.

These wireless earbuds claim to be the first-ever to use self-healing paint on the top housing, which is designed to make exterior scratches on the wireless earbuds “less noticeable over time.” Having not really been brushed up on my bleeding-edge paint technology, I looked into the whole idea of self-healing paint, which is apparently a real thing, though it seems to be used mostly on cars. I don’t know exactly what kind of self-healing paint JVC Kenwood is using in the Wood Master wireless earbuds, but self-healing paint on vehicles uses a special polymer structure that, when scratched, allows the paint to reform when heat (like from the sun) is applied.

The consensus seems to be that it does actually help heal smaller scratches, which is great if you own a Lexus, and now potentially also if you own a high-end pair of wireless earbuds.

Outside of the self-healing paint bit, the Wood Master wireless earbuds also get weird with it in other ways. As you may have gleaned already, the Wood Master incorporate wood in a big way and come with what the company is calling a new “hybrid wood driver.” Like its previous wireless earbuds in the wood series, the Wood Master use a “proprietary wood diaphragm technology,” which, this time around, is made of African rosewood and wood pulp. JVC Kenwood claims that the Wood Master wireless earbuds maintain the “vocal expressiveness that is a characteristic of Wood [series].”

I’ve not used any of these wooden earbuds myself, so it’s hard to say what that “expressiveness” really means in practice, but JVC Kenwood is definitely positioning these as truly hi-fi wireless earbuds both in its marketing and through design. The Wood Master use 10mm drivers and will come in two different colorways, both inspired by instruments. My favorite is the sunburst, which resembles sunburst guitars, but there’s also a black colorway meant to mimic a piano. Both come with a leather-ish charging case that is meant to mimic a hard case for an instrument. Battery-wise, JVC Kenwood is advertising 7 hours when active noise cancellation is on and 14 hours from the charging case. Those aren’t great figures, but they’re not horrible either.

If any of this is speaking to you, the Wood Master is expected to launch in Japan late this month for 41,800 yen, which is about $270. So… Wood you? Or woodn’t you?