Embattled Chinese tech manufacturer Huawei is set to announce the Freebuds Studio, its first premium over-ear wireless headphones, alongside next week's Mate 40 phone range. Despite the name, the Huawei Freebuds Studio are definitely not earbuds, but rather a high-end pair of Bluetooth headphones, seemingly meant to ape the success of Apple's Beats.

Don’t expect a bargain — official pricing will likely be announced on the day of the event, but WinFuture reports the price will be set at just under €400, putting them squarely in the Bose/Sennheiser/Sony bracket. This sort of statement of intent is always a risk for a company breaking into a new market, and with Huawei’s current global reputation, it’ll be interesting to see how many people are willing to take such an expensive punt on an unknown product.

Left: Huawei FreeBuds Studio in Graphite Black. Right: Blush Gold. Credits: WinFuture

Offering a 40mm dynamic driver backed by a Huawei Kirin A1 audio processor chip, the headphones should deliver decent sound quality, though we only have the company's premium true wireless earbuds to compare to. Automatic Noise Cancelling (ANC) is standard, which will reduce ambient noise by up to 40dB. This feature can be turned on or off from a hardware button.

There are two 410mAh batteries within the 265g headphone, which will apparently offer up to 20 hours of music playback or 15 hours of calls — though we’d hasten to add that we don’t expect it’ll be anything like that much with the ANC switched on. Either way, the whole unit is said to be charged in around 70 minutes, but marketing material reviewed by WinFuture claims that 10 minutes of charging via the USB-C port will give you 5 hours playback (again, probably without ANC).

Connection to a Huawei EMUI 10.x device is made simple by quick pairing, and this will also allow you to see the battery level of the headphones from your phone. Offering the latest Bluetooth 5.2 (but fully backwards compatible), the Huawei Freebuds Studio will be available in ‘Blush Gold’ and ‘Graphite Black’, as shown in the leaked renders above.

Huawei doesn’t always range its accessories in every territory, so we won’t find out for certain where you’ll be able to buy them (or perhaps pick them up free with a phone) until the Mate 40 range is unveiled next week.