Timekettle Opens Makuake Pre-Orders For W4 Plus Interpreting Earbuds
Timekettle is pricing the W4 Plus on the absence of a monthly fee for its summarization and meeting-minutes features, which puts the recurring cost of interpretation software up for comparison rather than the hardware alone.
Reporting from 1 source: ASCII.jp.
Timekettle opened Makuake pre-orders for the W4 Plus, its latest set of AI interpreting earbuds, on October 8. The earbuds handle face-to-face two-way interpretation, phone and web conference interpretation, and audio/video translation, with AI meeting minutes generated after a conversation. Online interpretation covers 52 languages and 106 accents, with 13 language pairs available offline. Makuake pricing starts at 47,599 yen against a planned retail price of 67,999 yen, with delivery scheduled by the end of January 2027.
The Makuake project runs from 11:00 on October 8, 2026 to 21:59 on December 7. The planned general retail price is 67,999 yen, and the campaign price starts at 47,599 yen, with delivery scheduled by the end of January 2027.
The hardware pairs a bone voiceprint sensor with dual microphones and a noise reduction system Timekettle calls the VoiceFocus algorithm. In internal testing, the company reported average speech recognition accuracy above 90 percent in office and cafe environments. The translation engine, Babel OS 3.0, covers terminology in IT, manufacturing, environment and energy, and medical and biotech.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.