Most headphones ask you to make a choice. You either listen alone, or you reach for a separate speaker when friends are around. TDM. thinks that’s one gadget too many, and the Neo is its answer: a pair of over-ears that becomes a speaker when you twist the band.
It’s a bold idea, and it clearly struck a chord. Neo walked away from CES 2026 as the show’s most awarded headphone. Now it’s on sale in the US for $249, so we got a unit in and handed it to someone on our team to live with.
The report that came back was a happy one. The design won them over almost immediately, the twist turned out to be something they used for real, and pairing never got in the way.
It looks like headphones first
This was the part our tester kept coming back to. Neo doesn’t look like a speaker wearing a headband. It looks like a clean, modern pair of headphones, and you’d never guess there’s a second set of drivers hiding on the outside of the cups.
The twist mechanism sits inside the band, so nothing sticks out or rattles. At under 340 grams it isn’t the lightest pair around. Given what’s packed in there, though, the weight feels fair. The memory foam cushions and vegan leather headband keep it comfortable, and both the cushions and the battery module can be replaced down the line. That’s a small thing you don’t see often at this price.
TDM. also includes a carrying case in the box, which you’ll want for a pair of headphones you’re likely to toss into a backpack.
Then you twist it
This is the moment Neo was built around, and it delivers. Our tester’s reaction was simple: the twist mode is very cool. A turn of the band and the music moves from your ears into the room. No app, no menu, no second device to pair.
It works because TDM. engineered it properly. There are four 40mm drivers inside. Two face your ears, and two face outward with 5 watts behind each one. So when Neo becomes a speaker, it’s using drivers made for that job rather than cranking the headphone drivers up and hoping for the best.
You also get some say in what the twist does. By default it switches the audio, but the app lets you set it to pause and resume your music, or to power the headphones on and off. There’s a manual mode too, which keeps the speaker off until you choose it. We liked that one. Nobody wants to blast a playlist across a quiet office because they adjusted the fit a little too hard.
Speaker mode is made for close-range sharing, and that’s where it shines. TDM. calls it room-filling for a device this size, and it’s ideal for a desk, a hotel room or a picnic blanket. Think of it as the speaker you always have on you, because it’s already around your neck.
How it sounds
As a pair of headphones, Neo does the job well. Our tester found the sound in line with what you’d expect from a good everyday pair: clean, easy to listen to and comfortable over long sessions. If you want to shape it further, the app gives you separate EQ settings for headphone and speaker mode, so you can tune each one on its own. Neo supports SBC and AAC codecs, which pair nicely with iPhones in particular.
Noise control is passive. Instead of active noise cancellation, Neo relies on its memory foam cushions and a well-judged clamp to seal out the world around you. That keeps the design simple and is likely part of why the battery lasts as long as it does. For calls, the multi-array mics use environmental noise cancellation to keep your voice clear on the other end.
Day to day, it stays out of the way
Setup was painless. Neo paired over Bluetooth quickly on the first try, with none of the fiddling some headphones put you through. It runs Bluetooth 6.0 with multipoint, so it can hold a connection to your phone and laptop at the same time. If you’d rather plug in, there’s a 3.5mm input and a cable in the box.
The controls are physical buttons, four of them, for power, volume and switching modes. We’ll take buttons over fussy touch panels any day. You don’t need the companion app to use Neo, but it’s worth installing for the EQ, twist settings and Game Mode. It also has a Find My Device feature that can play a sound from the headphones, handy for something that’s going to move between rooms and bags a lot.
On paper, battery life is wild. TDM. rates Neo for more than 200 hours in headphone mode and 16 hours as a speaker. Five minutes on USB-C is supposed to buy you eight hours of listening, and a full charge takes around three hours. One small catch: TDM.’s product page lists speaker battery as 8+ hours in one spot, while the spec sheet says 16+. We’ve gone with the spec sheet.
Who it’s for
Neo is for people who like to share what they’re listening to. Think of the student who wants to play a playlist in the dorm, or the traveler who’d rather not pack a speaker on top of everything else. For them, the twist is a feature they’ll reach for every day, wrapped in a design our tester liked from the moment it came out of the box.
If you mostly listen alone on long flights and want active noise cancellation, that’s worth keeping in mind. For everyone else, Neo is an inventive, well-designed pair of headphones that’s easy to recommend.
Neo is available now in black and white at tdmofficial.com, Amazon and Walmart, with wider retail availability on the way.
Specs at a glance
