Sony LinkBuds Alexa Earbuds

6 Reviews for Sony LinkBuds Alexa Earbuds

1. 

   Rated 4 out of 5

   CJ – February 23, 2022

   **UPDATE**: They’re really growing on me. I find myself using them more often than my usual pair. After tuning the EQ, they sound quite good, and if I’m gentle, they don’t really fall out. So, I updated from 3 to 4 stars.ORIGINAL: I was really excited for these headphones and they are slightly disappointing. Main points being:- They are difficult to put into your ear, even after repeated practice, reducing the convenience factor of having true wireless headphones- They easily fall out for me, regardless of which size retaining ring I put on. More on that later- They have an oddly bright sound, but I don’t think they have a poor sound quality at all like many reviewers are saying. More on that later.- Their direct competitors for most use cases are bone conduction headphones, and I think bone conduction is a better choice here.I do appreciate the innovation, and I think it’s a really cool concept and I love the novelty. If that’s enough for you to own it, then these are good true wireless headphones that sound pretty good and don’t cause pressure in your ears. But if you actually want them to be useful for most situations where being aware of your surroundings is important, I think you’d be better served by bone conduction headphones (such as AfterShokz).The rest of this review is just going into more detail about those points, so you can stop if you got the gist.– Not good for physical or outdoor activities –The question to ask yourself is: why do you WANT open back headphones? If your answer is, like I think most people, “to hear my surroundings”, then the next question to ask is “WHEN do I need to do that?”. If it has anything to do with being outside, then you don’t want these, go get bone conduction headphones. Those leave your ear completely open and essentially CAN’T fall off your head without significant effort. I think bone conduction is safer and more convenient for outdoor use or exercise. However, if your answer is instead “because I don’t like pressure in my ears”, these might be just what you’re looking for… see the “Great for relaxation” section.The Linkbuds are very light and just kind of “sit” in your ear. You can certainly move your head and they won’t fall out, and they didn’t even fall out for me when I yawn or move my jaw like others said. If you touch them the wrong way however, they just slide out of your ear. I actually think this is the real reason for the (very cool) “wide area tap”: see how there’s nothing holding the headphone into your ear on the backside? They’re only anchored into your ear with two points: the retaining ring at the top and the donut speaker. If you lightly push the headphones forward, with essentially no effort, they pop right out. Most people’s ears will have the same problem, because the Tragus (see an ear diagram, it’s the pointy bit at the front that the donut speaker wedges behind) locks the front of the donut into place, but in general, the Antitragus (the other side of your ear) isn’t a hook, so it’s just light friction keeping it in place back there. There’s nothing stopping the headphones from pivoting forward, and they DO stick out of your ears, so… something as simple as brushing your hair away could make them fall out. You have to be careful.The other problem is “hearing your surroundings”. The speaker sits directly over your ear canal and thus partially blocks it, and also makes any incoming sounds fight with the speaker. I find that with these, the sound from the headphones almost always drowns out anything important I’d want to hear around me. I can’t even have them super quiet and have a conversation with someone, as the sound from the speakers fights so heavily with incoming sound. But with bone conduction headphones, your ear is completely unobstructed, and I find that incoming sounds mix much better, maybe because the soundwaves don’t have to fight in your ear canal. That part could be subjective, but at least for me, bone conduction feels significantly safer, because I can still hear everything around me, even if the surrounding sounds are quiet.– Great for relaxation though! –That brings me to the title: who is the audience for the Linkbuds? I think it is for specifically people who want true wireless headphones but don’t like pressure in their ears and are NOT looking to use these for exercise or outdoor activities. In fact, you can look at the marketing and features to back this up. These are not “sports” headphones, and maybe that’s not why you’re buying them. I keep comparing the Linkbuds to bone conduction headphones, but if you don’t intend to use these while doing physical activity, the Linkbuds are honestly better. I find myself using them all the time in bed, because I AM a person who doesn’t like pressure in their ears, and you can’t exactly use bone conduction headphones while lying down (they have a band that extends behind your head).They also sound WAY better than even the best bone conduction headphones I’ve tried, which is why I’m surprised people say they sound so bad. I wonder if they’ve never used open-back headphones before: yes, you don’t get nearly as much potential bass as closed-back (and especially in-ear), no matter WHAT the design is. I have Sennheiser HD600’s, the “audiophile mainstay”, and they sound amazing, but they’ll never have as much bass as my cheap in-ears (iems). So if you’re a bass head, you won’t like these at all, you’re stuck with closed-back headphones and iems. To me, the Linkbuds do sound oddly bright though, like over-emphasized upper-mids and top. It’s not distorted, just a bit of a strange signature to my ears, but using the app, the EQ is saved IN the buds themselves (along with all the other nifty settings), so it’s easy to fix. But, I’ve also found that small adjustments in fit greatly alter the tone of the Linkbuds, so take that into consideration when reading reviews: they might not fit everyone the same and thus they might not always sound that great.All that junk being said, I do actually intend to use them all the time, just for relaxation and essentially nothing else. I don’t even trust them for cooking, I’m afraid I’ll brush them while moving around and they’ll fall into the food. But, I’m still gonna use them until they break. Also, the case is VERY SMALL, and I really like it! The picture attached shows one of those older slow iPhone chargers, and these are even smaller than that and only just about as thick, so it’s definitely nicely pocketable. The recycled plastic is a nice, unique touch, and the case feels sturdy enough (definitely nowhere near airpods). The lid locks into place if you pull it open enough, that’s kinda cool.The Linkbuds are so cool, and they serve a good niche, and I LIKE them, flaws and all. I gave them 3/5 (edited to 4/5) because I recognize that they have problems and that there are better alternatives for most use cases, and yet I’m still so fond of them. I want them to succeed, even though I don’t think they will. I think there’s absolutely a group of people for whom these are perfect, and I want these to stick around for those people.

2. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Carlos B. – February 23, 2022

   This isn’t much of a review but more of a fix for people that aren’t happy with the sound out of the box. First make sure DSEE is turned on it smoothes things out a bit, out of the box the blue tooth is set to prioritize connection so make sure that’s switched to sound quality, and finally take advantage of eq, all sony products heavily utilize this out of the box but it seems sony hasn’t applied any heavy eq out of the box for the link buds so it sounds like the xm3 headphones when there not powered on. I’ve included my custom eq settings that I’m happy with, to me it makes them sound like a mini version of the xm3 headphones but with less low end obviously.

3. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   deppkg – April 13, 2022

   I’ve been using these linkbuds for about 10hrs straight and I’ve got to say…I have been searching for open-ear earphones for a while now for work allowing me to communicate easily without removing my gloves and earphones and even though I was skeptical buying 300$ earbuds these have to be the best earphones I ever purchased.I’m fond of noise cancelling headphones for my usual gaming and media consumption but in terms of sound quality these buds highly compare to my QC15 headphones which I still adore.Yes there is no noise cancelling which is the whole point…Yes, these might not be ideal for everyone. I have fairly large ears compared to other members of my family and out of the 5 sizes I use the small to perfectly fit my ear.I tried them with media consumption awesome sound. 👌👌I tried them with music awesome sound. 👌👌I tried them with video calls and phone call awesome call and microphone seems to be good. 👌👌Battery for me lasted 6hrs before the low battery notification when putting on at 15-20%I did all my base set-up in the Sony Connect app and use my Huawei default music app for 360 sound and other sound customization for free.And I got to say if these ever fail me I’ll be sad…

4. 

   Rated 4 out of 5

   Raul Soto – April 28, 2022

   These are sort of a mixed bag. I didn’t buy/preorder these right after seeing it featured on LTT’s Shortcircuit… yep.The bad:1. Battery life – put simply, they’re not very good. Sony advertises up to 5.5 hours per charge. In my experience however, they took 2.5 hours to go from fully charged to 20% at around 50% volume. That’s even worse than Sony’s WF-1000XM3’s (which I also own).2. Audio quality OR stable connection – setting the LinkBuds to prioritize audio quality results in the sound output being fairly close to the WF-1000XM3’s, but at the expense of frequent connection dropouts. Setting them to prioritize connection quality makes them sound marginally worse.3. With the “Wide Area Tap” feature enabled, the LinkBuds have an unfortunate tendency to interpret jaw movement as taps. I was eating a burger, so my fingers were nowhere near my ears – yet the music kept pausing and restarting, because the LinkBuds thought I was double-tapping via my jaws…4. The default setting for Speak-to-chat is a little too sensitive for me. I had to set it to Low to avoid unnecessarily pausing audio all the time.5. There is no user configurable option to customize double/triple taps to perform functions that are different from the various presets offered in the app.6. No wireless charging on the case.The good:1. Fit – Of the five wingtip sizes, I have to use the XL wingtips to prevent them from falling out. If my ears are any larger I’d have no choice but to return them. Once they’re fitted in my ears, though, they’re more secure than the WF-1000XM3’s, with none of the discomfort that all but stopped me from using those high-end TWS.2. “Open” back – the LinkBuds do not block or cancel external sounds. I don’t have to turn on “transparency mode” or hold my hand over my ear (or earcup) in a weird way, just to be aware of the surrounding environment.3. Audio quality – I did write that they sound marginally worse when the LinkBuds are set to prioritize connection quality. Truth be told, they’re not all that bad, especially considering the speaker design and the total absence of noise cancellation.4. Size – The LinkBuds case is thicker than the OG Apple AirPods (yes, I still have them!) while being slightly smaller on width/length. At the same time, it’s almost HALF the size of the WF-1000XM3’s. These are easily pocketable.Would I recommend the LinkBuds to anyone? No. They are TWS, yes, but the similarities stop beyond that, because these are TWS with the inherent disadvantages of open-back headphones. Battery life is not good, there’s no sugarcoating it.Then why should I rate these 4 stars instead of 3? Simple. The vast majority of TWS on the market are closed-back, many of them with eartips and active noise cancellation. If I want a conventional TWS I can just buy some Samsung “Beans”. The LinkBuds are open-back TWS, more open than AirPods, without the bone conduction tech that is otherwise mandatory this side of Bluetooth headphones. It’s easier to rate highly when the choices are more limited, as is the case here.

5. 

   Rated 3 out of 5

   JT – May 3, 2022

   These earbuds are amazing and have a lot of potential, but they aren’t going to fit everyone. It includes 5 sizes for the “wing tip” on the back of the earbuds, yet none of the sizes properly fit my ears. I’m somehow about halfway between the small and medium size – small is too small and falls out, medium is too large and pops out. Even just smiling displaces them in my ears, so exercising or jogging in them would be impossible.For the short period of time they’re in my ears before falling out, they’re terrific. They’re probably the most comfortable earbuds I’ve ever used, the “open” design works perfectly and I could hear everything around me as if I wasn’t wearing earbuds, and sound quality is amazing for wireless earbuds. There’s almost no bass, because of the design, but they have a much more open and wider soundstage than any wireless earbud I’ve used before. Plus mids are good and highs are clear. I find the positives more than make up for the lack of bass, but that’s just my preference (I mainly listen to rock and alternative, so little ti no bass isn’t the end of the world for me. Just means kick drums don’t have much of an oomph to them). I did tweak the equalizer settings in the Sony app and tune it to what sounded best to me – audio quality right out of the box with a flat eq isn’t anything special.I wanted earbuds to pair with my Samsung galaxy watch 4 for jogging specifically, but wanted ones that don’t directly go inside my ear canals. That means my options boiled down to these, or the galaxy buds live. So I got both to see which one I liked better. To directly compared them:Fit: the Buds Live fit me significantly better than the Linkbuds do, but this is subjective and won’t be the same for everyone. I can shake my head as hard as I possibly can and the Buds don’t budge an inch. Meanwhile smiling makes the Linkbuds fall out. Two areas the Linkbuds do win here, though, are comfort and putting them in properly. I found the Linkbuds far more comfortable to wear for short periods than the Live. I couldn’t test long term comfort because of how easily the Linkbuds fall out of my ears, though. The Linkbuds are also easier to put in your ears the “correct” way, meanwhile I still sometimes struggle to put the Buds properly in which leads to muffled audio until I adjust them into the correct position.Sound quality: the Linkbuds easily win in this category. The Buds have mildly more bass (we’re talking 2.5/10 vs 1/10), but mids, highs, and the soundstage are all much better on the Linkbuds.Build quality: for the earbuds, the Linkbuds win by a mile. The earbuds themselves just feel so much higher quality, I much prefer the matte plastic used over the glossy plastic of the Buds. I also like the donut design more than the bean Buds, and the Linkbuds are also physically smaller which I like. In terms of the cases, though, the Buds win. The plastic in the Linkbuds case also feels nicer to the touch, and it uses a physically latch to open and close which is nice, but the Buds case supports wireless charging (the Linkbuds case does not) which is a huge advantage to me. The Buds also magnetically slide into their proper place, the Linkbuds need to be “clicked” into place or they won’t charge. Lastly the Buds case has a larger battery which means more recharge time before depletion.Features: this one’s a toss up. Wireless charging in the case is a pretty big one for me, in favour of the Buds, but the Linkbuds have a fully adjustable eq which is a massive (the Buds have multiple preset equalizers, no custom eq’ing). The open design of the Linkbuds also works significantly better than the transparency mode on the Buds. The Buds Live do feature active noise cancelling, but it’s a joke and barely does anything at all. Lastly I have both a Samsung phone and smartwatch, so the Buds Live do automatically switch between devices for me. It’s nice to have, but I have Sony XM4 headphones for my phone and only use the Buds with my Galaxy Watch, making the feature not especially useful. Both earbuds support some kind of “360 audio” but I didn’t care for either implementation.Conclusion: If the Linkbuds had properly fit me, I would’ve chosen them over the Buds Live. But, because they fall out every 30-60 seconds, they were completely useless and all of their benefits and comparison wins were meaningless. I had no choice but to go with the Buds Live. Ended up returning the Linkbuds after only two days.

6. 

   Rated 3 out of 5

   CJ – November 11, 2022

   The short version of this review is that I think this is a product that will make a very limited set of people happy that are looking for something very specific or don’t care about a lot of the trade-offs that come with making a product like this. It is tough to recommend for a general audience. For that small group, maybe it is four stars, but for everyone else, I’d say it’s two stars, so three overall. Let me get into the why…So to start, I’m big into music and headphones, and I own a total of 12 pairs. Four of those are “consumer” headphones like AirPods Pro 2, AirPods Max, Sennheiser True Wireless 3, and all of the rest are true HiFi headphones like Audeze, Focal, Fostex, Denon, etc. and all of the accompanying amplifiers and DACs. I generally enjoy lots of different genres of music – rock, alternative, R&B, hip-hop, pop, some classical. I just point this out, to point out I do a LOT of detailed sound comparisons and appreciate lots of different types of music and how different headphones may impact the experience.So, with these, I think there are only a few specific reasons one should even consider these, as if you don’t fall into BOTH #1 AND at least one of the other reasons below, there are far better options for this price.#1 – you really don’t like the “closed” feeling of buds and want a more “open” sound (and as such don’t care at all about noise isolation – both from outside and others hearing your listen, which is standard for any open setup)#2 – you don’t care about sound quality much but want some wireless buds that are stable enough to do light workouts in or just want some really small/discrete buds#3 – you primarily listen to music like jazz and classicalNow onto the logic and trade-offs.First, with respect to the sound. The tonal balance is extremely lacking in low end. The reviews that have said that these are a “balanced sound” are simply wrong. If you search around the net, you can see some sites have actually measured the frequency response of these, and not only is the bass very rolled off, it creeps up into the lower mids as well. This results in a very hollow listen. Music has nearly no low-end impact at all. Even with every bass setting cranked all the way up, it makes almost no noticeable difference because the drivers and design simply can’t handle it (which I’ll get back to). Further evidence of this, the EQ in the app only even goes down to 400Hz, which should be a sign, as most wouldn’t even consider it true “bass” until maybe 150Hz, and humans can hear down to 20Hz – yet the EQ doesn’t even let you adjust these frequencies. To call this balanced is just wrong. Good balanced headphones simply do not OVER-emphasize bass or let it bleed into the other frequencies – these lack bass, period. This is a very big difference if you listen to basically any Top 40 type music – hip-hop, pop, R&B, EDM, even rock or alternative. There will be no bass. This CAN be ok, however, if you’re a classical music listener or jazz or music that doesn’t have a lot of low-end (including bass drums, bass guitar, etc.). These would also be OK if you’re primarily going to use them for listening to voice stuff – podcasts, audiobooks, news, etc.The rest of the frequency response is overall just OK. You can adjust the mids and upper frequencies to your liking, and those adjustments make more of a difference than the bass adjustment, as I mentioned. So you can tone down or up the brightness to your liking, for example. They do an OK job at brining out detail, about what I would expect for buds in this price range. The semi-standout in the overall sound is the soundstage, or the way the music is presented in terms of position in space. Because of the “open” design, they are somewhat more natural sounding in terms of airiness and don’t have that “dome in your head” kind of feeling. That said, the stage itself is not hugely bigger than “regular” buds (goes ear to ear, maybe a tad outside the ear), it’s just a slightly more open stage. Because the buds are still sitting in your ear, versus when an over-ear open headphone has a driver sitting outside your ear, i would call these only semi-open sounding. The inside your head feeling is gone, but you still don’t get that great open naturalness of a true open-back headphone. The positioning is also good, meaning, individual pieces of the mix are fairly separated and identifiable, for this price range. The question is it worth the trade offs…Open back headphones of all types (buds, over-ear, etc.), all else equal, have less bass response than closed-backs. This is because there’s less pressure build up and resonance for the bass to build (in simple terms). So the tradeoff for losing that “in your head” feeling is less bass. Bigger, over ear headphones can counter this by using bigger drivers that can pump more bass and by still creating somewhat of a seal around your ear with the pads. in this case, these buds just sit in your ear, create no seal, and the drivers are tiny, so you get basically no bass. This is the biggest trade off of these. Whether that trade off is for you or not…your call.The other tradeoff is size. Smaller size leads to smaller drivers, which as I discussed means less bass, and it also means – way small batteries. Although the “up to” five hours of battery life may be accurate, there are some big issues with this. First, you have to turn off all of the electronic conveniences to hit this target – automatic voice detection, automatic volume adjustment, wide area tap – which are all pretty cool. Keep these on, and battery is more like two hours, which is FAR below, by more than half, what most buds get nowadays.Call performance is decent, and fit for me is also decent, though individual ears always vary with fit. The smallest included piece is what got me the best fit, and they are stable in my ears.What these actually remind me of are the first AirPods that were released, then upgraded to the AirPods Pro. The original AirPods also had a “sit in your ear” plastic design that was somewhat like this. While they were wireless and packed with nice new apple “magic” features, many had a view that they really still sounded like the $30 wired buds that came with iPods/iPhones at the time, but they were wireless. Then Apple released the AirPods Pro that claimed “far better sound”, and the biggest change was that they used a silicon tip to create a seal in the ear – and that added a way more appropriate low-end to the sound that was missing before, and NOW and AirPods Pro and Pro 2 are known as a mostly balanced set of buds. These are the opposite – by having no seal, combined with tiny drivers, I would say these have the sound profile of a $50 or less pair of buds, but you are paying for the true wireless stuff and fancy features. They MAY be worth it for you if you don’t mind the trade offs, but that’s not most.

7. 

   JT – January 15, 2023

   These earbuds are amazing and have a lot of potential, but they aren’t going to fit everyone. It includes 5 sizes for the “wing tip” on the back of the earbuds, yet none of the sizes properly fit my ears. I’m somehow about halfway between the small and medium size – small is too small and falls out, medium is too large and pops out. Even just smiling displaces them in my ears, so exercising or jogging in them would be impossible.For the short period of time they’re in my ears before falling out, they’re terrific. They’re probably the most comfortable earbuds I’ve ever used, the “open” design works perfectly and I could hear everything around me as if I wasn’t wearing earbuds, and sound quality is amazing for wireless earbuds. There’s almost no bass, because of the design, but they have a much more open and wider soundstage than any wireless earbud I’ve used before. Plus mids are good and highs are clear. I find the positives more than make up for the lack of bass, but that’s just my preference (I mainly listen to rock and alternative, so little ti no bass isn’t the end of the world for me. Just means kick drums don’t have much of an oomph to them). I did tweak the equalizer settings in the Sony app and tune it to what sounded best to me – audio quality right out of the box with a flat eq isn’t anything special.I wanted earbuds to pair with my Samsung galaxy watch 4 for jogging specifically, but wanted ones that don’t directly go inside my ear canals. That means my options boiled down to these, or the galaxy buds live. So I got both to see which one I liked better. To directly compared them:Fit: the Buds Live fit me significantly better than the Linkbuds do, but this is subjective and won’t be the same for everyone. I can shake my head as hard as I possibly can and the Buds don’t budge an inch. Meanwhile smiling makes the Linkbuds fall out. Two areas the Linkbuds do win here, though, are comfort and putting them in properly. I found the Linkbuds far more comfortable to wear for short periods than the Live. I couldn’t test long term comfort because of how easily the Linkbuds fall out of my ears, though. The Linkbuds are also easier to put in your ears the “correct” way, meanwhile I still sometimes struggle to put the Buds properly in which leads to muffled audio until I adjust them into the correct position.Sound quality: the Linkbuds easily win in this category. The Buds have mildly more bass (we’re talking 2.5/10 vs 1/10), but mids, highs, and the soundstage are all much better on the Linkbuds.Build quality: for the earbuds, the Linkbuds win by a mile. The earbuds themselves just feel so much higher quality, I much prefer the matte plastic used over the glossy plastic of the Buds. I also like the donut design more than the bean Buds, and the Linkbuds are also physically smaller which I like. In terms of the cases, though, the Buds win. The plastic in the Linkbuds case also feels nicer to the touch, and it uses a physically latch to open and close which is nice, but the Buds case supports wireless charging (the Linkbuds case does not) which is a huge advantage to me. The Buds also magnetically slide into their proper place, the Linkbuds need to be “clicked” into place or they won’t charge. Lastly the Buds case has a larger battery which means more recharge time before depletion.Features: this one’s a toss up. Wireless charging in the case is a pretty big one for me, in favour of the Buds, but the Linkbuds have a fully adjustable eq which is a massive (the Buds have multiple preset equalizers, no custom eq’ing). The open design of the Linkbuds also works significantly better than the transparency mode on the Buds. The Buds Live do feature active noise cancelling, but it’s a joke and barely does anything at all. Lastly I have both a Samsung phone and smartwatch, so the Buds Live do automatically switch between devices for me. It’s nice to have, but I have Sony XM4 headphones for my phone and only use the Buds with my Galaxy Watch, making the feature not especially useful. Both earbuds support some kind of “360 audio” but I didn’t care for either implementation.Conclusion: If the Linkbuds had properly fit me, I would’ve chosen them over the Buds Live. But, because they fall out every 30-60 seconds, they were completely useless and all of their benefits and comparison wins were meaningless. I had no choice but to go with the Buds Live. Ended up returning the Linkbuds after only two days.

8. 

   deppkg – March 18, 2023

   I’ve been using these linkbuds for about 10hrs straight and I’ve got to say…I have been searching for open-ear earphones for a while now for work allowing me to communicate easily without removing my gloves and earphones and even though I was skeptical buying 300$ earbuds these have to be the best earphones I ever purchased.I’m fond of noise cancelling headphones for my usual gaming and media consumption but in terms of sound quality these buds highly compare to my QC15 headphones which I still adore.Yes there is no noise cancelling which is the whole point…Yes, these might not be ideal for everyone. I have fairly large ears compared to other members of my family and out of the 5 sizes I use the small to perfectly fit my ear.I tried them with media consumption awesome sound. ??I tried them with music awesome sound. ??I tried them with video calls and phone call awesome call and microphone seems to be good. ??Battery for me lasted 6hrs before the low battery notification when putting on at 15-20%I did all my base set-up in the Sony Connect app and use my Huawei default music app for 360 sound and other sound customization for free.And I got to say if these ever fail me I’ll be sad…

9. 

   CJ – March 19, 2023

   The short version of this review is that I think this is a product that will make a very limited set of people happy that are looking for something very specific or don’t care about a lot of the trade-offs that come with making a product like this. It is tough to recommend for a general audience. For that small group, maybe it is four stars, but for everyone else, I’d say it’s two stars, so three overall. Let me get into the why…So to start, I’m big into music and headphones, and I own a total of 12 pairs. Four of those are “consumer” headphones like AirPods Pro 2, AirPods Max, Sennheiser True Wireless 3, and all of the rest are true HiFi headphones like Audeze, Focal, Fostex, Denon, etc. and all of the accompanying amplifiers and DACs. I generally enjoy lots of different genres of music – rock, alternative, R&B, hip-hop, pop, some classical. I just point this out, to point out I do a LOT of detailed sound comparisons and appreciate lots of different types of music and how different headphones may impact the experience.So, with these, I think there are only a few specific reasons one should even consider these, as if you don’t fall into BOTH #1 AND at least one of the other reasons below, there are far better options for this price.#1 – you really don’t like the “closed” feeling of buds and want a more “open” sound (and as such don’t care at all about noise isolation – both from outside and others hearing your listen, which is standard for any open setup)#2 – you don’t care about sound quality much but want some wireless buds that are stable enough to do light workouts in or just want some really small/discrete buds#3 – you primarily listen to music like jazz and classicalNow onto the logic and trade-offs.First, with respect to the sound. The tonal balance is extremely lacking in low end. The reviews that have said that these are a “balanced sound” are simply wrong. If you search around the net, you can see some sites have actually measured the frequency response of these, and not only is the bass very rolled off, it creeps up into the lower mids as well. This results in a very hollow listen. Music has nearly no low-end impact at all. Even with every bass setting cranked all the way up, it makes almost no noticeable difference because the drivers and design simply can’t handle it (which I’ll get back to). Further evidence of this, the EQ in the app only even goes down to 400Hz, which should be a sign, as most wouldn’t even consider it true “bass” until maybe 150Hz, and humans can hear down to 20Hz – yet the EQ doesn’t even let you adjust these frequencies. To call this balanced is just wrong. Good balanced headphones simply do not OVER-emphasize bass or let it bleed into the other frequencies – these lack bass, period. This is a very big difference if you listen to basically any Top 40 type music – hip-hop, pop, R&B, EDM, even rock or alternative. There will be no bass. This CAN be ok, however, if you’re a classical music listener or jazz or music that doesn’t have a lot of low-end (including bass drums, bass guitar, etc.). These would also be OK if you’re primarily going to use them for listening to voice stuff – podcasts, audiobooks, news, etc.The rest of the frequency response is overall just OK. You can adjust the mids and upper frequencies to your liking, and those adjustments make more of a difference than the bass adjustment, as I mentioned. So you can tone down or up the brightness to your liking, for example. They do an OK job at brining out detail, about what I would expect for buds in this price range. The semi-standout in the overall sound is the soundstage, or the way the music is presented in terms of position in space. Because of the “open” design, they are somewhat more natural sounding in terms of airiness and don’t have that “dome in your head” kind of feeling. That said, the stage itself is not hugely bigger than “regular” buds (goes ear to ear, maybe a tad outside the ear), it’s just a slightly more open stage. Because the buds are still sitting in your ear, versus when an over-ear open headphone has a driver sitting outside your ear, i would call these only semi-open sounding. The inside your head feeling is gone, but you still don’t get that great open naturalness of a true open-back headphone. The positioning is also good, meaning, individual pieces of the mix are fairly separated and identifiable, for this price range. The question is it worth the trade offs…Open back headphones of all types (buds, over-ear, etc.), all else equal, have less bass response than closed-backs. This is because there’s less pressure build up and resonance for the bass to build (in simple terms). So the tradeoff for losing that “in your head” feeling is less bass. Bigger, over ear headphones can counter this by using bigger drivers that can pump more bass and by still creating somewhat of a seal around your ear with the pads. in this case, these buds just sit in your ear, create no seal, and the drivers are tiny, so you get basically no bass. This is the biggest trade off of these. Whether that trade off is for you or not…your call.The other tradeoff is size. Smaller size leads to smaller drivers, which as I discussed means less bass, and it also means – way small batteries. Although the “up to” five hours of battery life may be accurate, there are some big issues with this. First, you have to turn off all of the electronic conveniences to hit this target – automatic voice detection, automatic volume adjustment, wide area tap – which are all pretty cool. Keep these on, and battery is more like two hours, which is FAR below, by more than half, what most buds get nowadays.Call performance is decent, and fit for me is also decent, though individual ears always vary with fit. The smallest included piece is what got me the best fit, and they are stable in my ears.What these actually remind me of are the first AirPods that were released, then upgraded to the AirPods Pro. The original AirPods also had a “sit in your ear” plastic design that was somewhat like this. While they were wireless and packed with nice new apple “magic” features, many had a view that they really still sounded like the $30 wired buds that came with iPods/iPhones at the time, but they were wireless. Then Apple released the AirPods Pro that claimed “far better sound”, and the biggest change was that they used a silicon tip to create a seal in the ear – and that added a way more appropriate low-end to the sound that was missing before, and NOW and AirPods Pro and Pro 2 are known as a mostly balanced set of buds. These are the opposite – by having no seal, combined with tiny drivers, I would say these have the sound profile of a $50 or less pair of buds, but you are paying for the true wireless stuff and fancy features. They MAY be worth it for you if you don’t mind the trade offs, but that’s not most.

10. 

    Raul Soto – April 3, 2023

    These are sort of a mixed bag. I didn’t buy/preorder these right after seeing it featured on LTT’s Shortcircuit… yep.The bad:1. Battery life – put simply, they’re not very good. Sony advertises up to 5.5 hours per charge. In my experience however, they took 2.5 hours to go from fully charged to 20% at around 50% volume. That’s even worse than Sony’s WF-1000XM3’s (which I also own).2. Audio quality OR stable connection – setting the LinkBuds to prioritize audio quality results in the sound output being fairly close to the WF-1000XM3’s, but at the expense of frequent connection dropouts. Setting them to prioritize connection quality makes them sound marginally worse.3. With the “Wide Area Tap” feature enabled, the LinkBuds have an unfortunate tendency to interpret jaw movement as taps. I was eating a burger, so my fingers were nowhere near my ears – yet the music kept pausing and restarting, because the LinkBuds thought I was double-tapping via my jaws…4. The default setting for Speak-to-chat is a little too sensitive for me. I had to set it to Low to avoid unnecessarily pausing audio all the time.5. There is no user configurable option to customize double/triple taps to perform functions that are different from the various presets offered in the app.6. No wireless charging on the case.The good:1. Fit – Of the five wingtip sizes, I have to use the XL wingtips to prevent them from falling out. If my ears are any larger I’d have no choice but to return them. Once they’re fitted in my ears, though, they’re more secure than the WF-1000XM3’s, with none of the discomfort that all but stopped me from using those high-end TWS.2. “Open” back – the LinkBuds do not block or cancel external sounds. I don’t have to turn on “transparency mode” or hold my hand over my ear (or earcup) in a weird way, just to be aware of the surrounding environment.3. Audio quality – I did write that they sound marginally worse when the LinkBuds are set to prioritize connection quality. Truth be told, they’re not all that bad, especially considering the speaker design and the total absence of noise cancellation.4. Size – The LinkBuds case is thicker than the OG Apple AirPods (yes, I still have them!) while being slightly smaller on width/length. At the same time, it’s almost HALF the size of the WF-1000XM3’s. These are easily pocketable.Would I recommend the LinkBuds to anyone? No. They are TWS, yes, but the similarities stop beyond that, because these are TWS with the inherent disadvantages of open-back headphones. Battery life is not good, there’s no sugarcoating it.Then why should I rate these 4 stars instead of 3? Simple. The vast majority of TWS on the market are closed-back, many of them with eartips and active noise cancellation. If I want a conventional TWS I can just buy some Samsung “Beans”. The LinkBuds are open-back TWS, more open than AirPods, without the bone conduction tech that is otherwise mandatory this side of Bluetooth headphones. It’s easier to rate highly when the choices are more limited, as is the case here.