- Fender unveiled two Bluetooth speakers at CES 2026
- They are joined by wireless over-ear headphones with a 100-hour battery.
- They are not made by Fender, but by another licensed company of the name.
You probably know Fender as a legendary guitar brand, ubiquitous for its Stratocasters, Telecasters, and Jazzmasters, as well as its amps and pedals. But as part of CES 2026, we are now seeing consumer products with this name appear, designed not only for artists but also for music listeners.
Headlining this range are two Bluetooth speakers, under the title ELIE, an acronym for Extremely Loud, Infinitely Expressive. There’s the $299 ELIE E6, with 60W output and 15 hours of battery life, and the $399 E12 which doubles the power and adds three hours of battery life. Exact release dates and international availability are yet to be confirmed.
The exact audio specifications of these speakers have not yet been confirmed, but they feature built-in subwoofers for detailed and powerful bass. They offer Bluetooth connectivity, allowing you to pair two speakers in stereo mode or up to a hundred in cacophonous-sounding multi mode, and there’s also a 3.5mm AUX jack connection. A handle ensures that they are very portable.
One nice feature is that ELIE products have an XLR jack, so you can theoretically plug in your guitar and use it as portable amplifiers. Obviously they won’t quite match real portable amps, but they might come close, and that’s something I’d be curious to check out with my own Strat.
However, with ELIE, manufacturers may have missed a trick that rival music companies Orange and Marshall knew about going from amp to speaker. Models like the Orange Box and Marshall Middleton II retain this amp DNA, resembling miniature versions of the stacks that would adorn the sides of a stage at a concert. Fender ELIE models are… boxes, basically.
Fender, but to tie around your face
The other version is the first wireless headphone to carry the Fender name, called Fender Mix (referred to as “MIX” in marketing), which is expected to go on sale at some point in the future for $299. These use 40mm drivers and have many of the features you’d expect from the best headphones: noise cancellation, spatial audio, 3.5mm connectivity, and the ability to listen via USB-C as well as 3.5mm.
Official battery life is 52 hours with ANC on or 100 hours off, and apparently you can continue using them once they’re at 0% using a wired connection. The jam, it seems, never ends.
At a glance, the Mix looks like your standard Bluetooth headset; I don’t want to talk about Marshall, but his own ears again maintain that guitar amp aesthetic, and some might call Fender’s options. slightly uninspired in comparison. However, we can’t judge a speaker by its cover, so we’ll have to test these inaugural models to see if they can live up to the brand’s iconic status.
These three products mark the debut of the consumer-facing Fender Audio brand, which is technically owned by Fender but operated by a Singapore company called Riffsound. They were actually announced a month before CES, but the brand made it clear in its first reveal that CES would mark their “real” unveiling – and why not? CES is a great showcase in Las Vegas, worthy of a rock ‘n’ roll legend like Fender.
Since another company uses this name, it is unclear to what extent these and future products will remain true to the Fender style, nor to what extent the brand’s musician- and guitar-specific amplifier technology will be used in these consumer products. Once again, the proof will be in the pudding – that is. the tests. But I don’t expect a licensing deal like this to be done just for three gadgets; we’ll probably see more of it in the future.
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