The Sony LinkBuds Clip open earbuds don’t stand out from competitors

Sony LinkBuds Clip is the company’s first clip earbud. They follow the innovative donut-hole LinkBuds and LinkBuds Open and, like their predecessors, allow you to listen to music or podcasts, make phone calls or be active outdoors while maintaining awareness of your surroundings. The clip design has become more popular over the past few years, and while the LinkBuds Clip have a solid design and good sound, there’s nothing significant that sets them apart from competitors, especially at their $229.99 price.

Like other open earbuds, the LinkBuds Clip wraps around your ear like an ear cuff. The small circular speaker enclosure is located just outside your ear canal and is attached by a flexible band to a larger capsule-shaped housing that is located on the outside. I like the look of the clip buds, including their slightly shiny casing and selection of light color tones including lavender, green, greige (a brownish beige) and black. Some people may prefer a bolder, flashier look, but I like the green sample provided by Sony. You can also mix and match five different case covers – black, green, blue, coral and lavender – to customize them.

The clip is intended to sit in the middle of your ear, but since everyone’s ears are different, it may take some adjustment to find the most comfortable spot for you (for me, it’s a little below my ear). Once you find the right spot, putting the earbuds in is quick and easy, although I found the fit a little loose. The band isn’t as flexible as the Shokz OpenDots One, which fits more securely around my ear. Instead, Sony includes silicone “cushions” that fit around the band. (The color-matched cushions come with an additional top case cover.) They gave me the secure fit I was looking for, and I was able to wear them for almost an entire workday without any discomfort. I would sometimes even forget that I was wearing them, because of the ambient sound they produced. Those with larger ears may experience more discomfort even without cushions.

Clip sound performance fluctuations

While I preferred the fit of the LinkBuds Clip with cushioning, their use affected the sound balance. The cushioning caused the speakers to sit slightly away from my ear canal, resulting in reduced bass performance. And the Clip – and really every pair of open earbuds – is a little light on the thumping bass. There are three primary listening modes: Standard, Sound Boost, and Sound Leakage Reduction.

Standard mode sounds the most natural, with a clear mid-range that isn’t dominated by the high frequencies. Voice Boost added a bit of vocal presence that became oppressive during longer music listening sessions, but added good clarity for podcasts and news programs. Sound Leakage Reduction mode reduces high-end feedback, limiting potential disturbance to those around you, but it also makes music sound muffled and dull. And anyway, there was no significant amount of leakage even in standard and voice boost modes.

If you want to boost or cut a specific frequency range, Sony’s Sound Connect app has a few presets, as well as a 10-band equalizer. For some of my more rocking tracks – Soundgarden’s “Spoonman”, for example – I boosted the bass and low mids a bit. It also has Sony’s DSEE, which makes compressed audio sound slightly better.

The LinkBuds Clip really shine when on calls. They have a new AI noise-reduction chip and bone-conduction sensor that allows them to focus on the wearer’s voice and isolate it from the noise around them. During several calls while walking the busy streets of my Los Angeles neighborhood, my friends could easily hear me, while the traffic around me was muffled. There were occasional moments where he commented about hearing the gust of wind or the sirens of a nearby police car, but they were fleeting. However, during those moments, I had some trouble hearing them due to the open design of the clips.

I was a little surprised that the LinkBuds Clip was lacking, especially at $230. While they have good battery life at nine hours per charge (and 28 hours with the case), the case doesn’t have wireless charging. The earbuds support the standard SBC and AAC codecs, but are missing Sony’s own high-resolution LDAC. They also don’t have audio sharing, which is available on the WF-1000XM5 and can now be found for just $25 more than the Clip.

Touch controls can be finicky. You use multiple taps for different controls – two taps on the right side to pause and play, three taps for the next song, and four taps to increase the volume (or decrease the volume on the left earbud). But there’s a slight margin for error in where I tap the band, so if my finger was off target at all, taps wouldn’t register. It was even more difficult while jogging. I have to go from slow to fast to get better control.

You can set up scene-based listening in the Sound Connect app, which allows you to customize the earbuds’ functionality based on your activity or location. So you can start a specific playlist when you start running, or have the app switch to your favorite music streaming service when you get home. You can also ask the app to read notifications to you. This is an interesting feature if you have a certain routine and take the time to set it up.

It makes sense that Sony came up with the Clip, especially since it helped popularize the trend of open earbuds with the original LinkBuds. And the clips are good earbuds that look good, sound great and are comfortable. But for $230, there’s nothing that sets them apart from other recent open earbuds like the Shox OpenDots One and EarFun Clip, both of which are cheaper. Once their price drops or they go on sale, they will become an even more attractive purchase. But until then, unless you love the LinkBuds clip look, it’s better to wait.

Photography by Amelia Holovaty Cralls/The Verge