On Tuesday, Sony announced its newest set of fully wireless earbuds, the Sony LinkBuds.
Further Reading
The WF-1000XM4 is Sony’s noise-canceling answer to the AirPods Pro
The earbuds feature a unique "open ring" design built to let in ambient noise alongside your music, with the goal of keeping wearers aware of their surroundings at all times. That puts the earbuds in opposition to Sony's other high-profile wireless earbuds, the more awkwardly named WF-1000XM4, which feature active noise cancelation to block out as much external sound as possible.
The LinkBuds cost $180 and are available to order starting today, with shipping beginning on February 17. I've had the earbuds on hand for a few days now; here are some impressions from my testing.
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Embrace the donut
If you've used a new-ish pair of noise-canceling headphones in recent years, there's a good chance they've featured some sort of "ambient sound" or "transparency" mode. This is a setting that uses a headphone's built-in microphones to record the noise of your surroundings and then play it back to you, effectively in real time. The idea is to let users stay aware of their environment without having to give up their music or podcast entirely. It can be annoying to physically remove your headphones any time you need to hear a quick announcement on the bus or have a five-second conversation with a coworker, for instance. If you're out for a jog, it's reassuring to hear when cars are passing by. If your headphone has a good ambient sound mode, you can listen to the real world and your entertainment simultaneously.
With many headphones, a transparency mode is just one of multiple settings you can toggle. With the LinkBuds, Sony has built earbuds based entirely on this ambient sound experience. But instead of using microphones to record and play back outside noise—a method thatcan sound close to reality in the best implementations (Apple's AirPods Pro, for example) but still comes off somewhat distorted in many cases—the LinkBuds let in ambient sound naturally through a design that has donut-like holes in it.
Put another way, the LinkBuds are a different take on "open" earbuds. The resulting effect isn't toodissimilar from "unsealed" options likeApple's first- and third-gen AirPods, which rest outside the ear canal and thus let in outside noise. But having their 12 mm drivers cut into a ring shape makes the LinkBuds more explicit in their goal of allowing ambient sound to pass through.
Besides the donut holes, the first thing to note about the LinkBuds is that they're impressively tiny. Their case is one of the smallest I've seen from a true wireless headphone, and the earpieces themselves are similarly compact.From afar, it would be difficult for other people to notice you're wearing them.
The unusual design also necessitates a different kind of fit. Nothing goes in your ear canal, but the LinkBuds still sit entirely within your ears, with no AirPods-style "stem" protruding out. The ring-shaped driver rests along the bottom of the outer ear (tucked behind the antitragusif you want to get technical), while a squishy silicone "supporter" goes under your upper ear "flap" (or antihelix) to keep the earpiece in place.
The LinkBuds definitely aren't as quick to put on as traditional earbuds, and getting a good fit here is essential for decent sound quality given the odd design. They won't be as secure for exercise as a pair of wing-tipped exercise earphones. But they haven't taken me more than a second or two to get into place after the first couple of sessions, and they haven't jostled around or come loose while I've been on the move. There's no foam padding, but the LinkBuds' plastic housing is soft, smooth, and exceptionally lightweight, at 4.1 grams. The fit puts little pressure on the ear, so I've found the earbuds comfortable to wear for hours at a time. A little bulbous piece connected to the ring driver provides a natural place to grab when you need to remove or insert each earbud, too, so you're never jamming it into your ear. It's just important to find the right fit. Sony puts five different-size supporters in the box to help with that.
