If a company is assiduous in dealing with problems that arise once the product is out there in the wild, and it’s a company committed to customer service, it will issue firmware updates to fix the problems. Some call that software, but regardless of the name, it is the digital control system of the product.

That brings us to Panasonic and its RZ-S500W and RZ-S300W true wireless earbuds, which were released back in July 2020.

Now Panasonic has announced firmware upgrades to these earbuds. Interestingly, they aren’t bug fixes but feature enhancements. Thus, your three-month-old earbuds could well become better than they were when new.

These earbuds are both noise-cancelling models. No change on that front, but they also both incorporate an “ambient sound mode”. That uses their built-in microphones to pass through sound from the outside world into the audio feed. That’s useful if you need to speak to someone without removing the buds, or are simply out on the street and would like audible cues as to what’s going on around you. 

Before the upgrade, these earbuds were designed principally to let you hear voices. They had a restricted frequency range to achieve that. The firmware upgrade has broadened the range of frequencies captured for a “more natural sound similar to not wearing headphones at all”, says Panasonic. It has also reduced white noise in that ambient mode by between one quarter and one half.

Finally, the updated firmware lets you stop the blinking blue LED from, well, blinking.

Use the free Panasonic Audio Connect app, available for Android and iOS, to update the firmware. The switch for the Bluetooth blinking LED is also within the app.

For more information visit Panasonic