1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,120 Earbuds that go inside your ear canal? 2 00:00:03,120 --> 00:00:07,100 Gross, cringe, no thank you. I don't like those at all, 3 00:00:07,100 --> 00:00:13,840 but they seem to be the most popular option. I am looking for earbuds that don't go inside my body. 4 00:00:13,840 --> 00:00:19,240 I've always been a fan of earbuds that don't want to violate your bodily autonomy, you know? 5 00:00:19,240 --> 00:00:25,480 Like ones like the Sony link buds clip. This is the latest entry in the form of earbuds 6 00:00:25,480 --> 00:00:29,320 that I'm more interested in, where they just kind of sit outside your ear canal 7 00:00:29,320 --> 00:00:32,960 and kind of, you know what, like we're just gonna keep our distance. Personal space is important. 8 00:00:32,960 --> 00:00:36,240 I really liked the original Sony link buds 9 00:00:36,240 --> 00:00:41,600 with that kind of circular design. The link buds clip use a different design 10 00:00:41,600 --> 00:00:47,080 where they clip on to your outer ear. There's at least one other model out there that does this, 11 00:00:47,080 --> 00:00:51,080 the Bose Ultra Open, and there's probably more that I'm not aware of, 12 00:00:51,080 --> 00:00:56,240 but this is Sony's take on it. I gotta say Sony seems to have stuck with this sort of like 13 00:00:56,280 --> 00:01:01,080 gray recycled paper packaging for their earbuds, 14 00:01:01,080 --> 00:01:04,520 which even after a few years, which is nice to see them stick with that, 15 00:01:04,520 --> 00:01:09,080 I appreciate that, I like the look. And maybe it's environmentally friendly, I don't know. 16 00:01:09,080 --> 00:01:12,720 Oh, extra cushions. Normally with the earbuds, 17 00:01:12,720 --> 00:01:18,200 you'd have different size tips that come with it, but this one, there are no tips, which is what I like. 18 00:01:18,200 --> 00:01:22,640 So they're giving you little cushions. I'm not sure whether you're supposed to wear them 19 00:01:22,640 --> 00:01:25,720 with or without the cushions by default. We'll find out. 20 00:01:25,720 --> 00:01:30,040 All right, we got a nice, look at that glossy finish 21 00:01:30,040 --> 00:01:33,160 on the top combined with a matte finish on the bottom. 22 00:01:33,160 --> 00:01:36,880 That's definitely a look. It looks like a little ottoman. 23 00:01:36,880 --> 00:01:40,040 It looks like, well, I mean, maybe you wouldn't wanna put your feet on the top there, 24 00:01:40,040 --> 00:01:44,760 but you'd maybe, I could put my feet on that. As long as we're looking at the outside here though, 25 00:01:44,760 --> 00:01:47,960 we got a USB-C port on the back for charging. 26 00:01:47,960 --> 00:01:51,160 We got a pair button as well. Nice to see. 27 00:01:51,160 --> 00:01:55,920 You know, Apple comes out here with their new cases and they were like, oh, there's no buttons. 28 00:01:55,920 --> 00:01:59,880 Figure it out. Inside, we got the Link Buds clip. 29 00:01:59,880 --> 00:02:04,680 Definitely the strangest looking earbuds I've ever seen. 30 00:02:04,680 --> 00:02:08,040 You got your charging contacts there. You got a little hole there, 31 00:02:08,040 --> 00:02:12,620 probably a mic of some sort. And then also, you know, Vietnam. 32 00:02:13,760 --> 00:02:19,560 And then on the other side, you've got the kind of audio output grill, 33 00:02:19,560 --> 00:02:23,120 speaker grill, you know, the earbud grill. I don't know what to call it. 34 00:02:23,160 --> 00:02:26,480 What are these? I don't even know what they are, but I like them. 35 00:02:26,480 --> 00:02:30,160 Oh, there's also a little either a mic 36 00:02:30,160 --> 00:02:34,060 or speakers on the inside. 37 00:02:34,060 --> 00:02:38,520 Can I bend this? So these are bendy, which makes sense. 38 00:02:38,520 --> 00:02:44,520 You probably don't want them to be too stiff, but I'm also worried, like, how far can I bend it? 39 00:02:44,520 --> 00:02:48,600 Probably shouldn't test it too much. Someone's ear, someone doesn't have an ear that big. 40 00:02:48,600 --> 00:02:55,080 I don't wanna judge. You can't really see in there, but like inside there, there's another little grill. 41 00:02:55,080 --> 00:02:59,200 So I don't know whether audio comes out of that little hole inside there. 42 00:02:59,200 --> 00:03:01,400 I feel like I'm getting ready for the ball. 43 00:03:02,400 --> 00:03:06,280 That's gotta be how it is. Right? It looks cool. 44 00:03:08,080 --> 00:03:11,160 Wow. It feels like you can kind of position it 45 00:03:11,160 --> 00:03:16,480 in a bunch of different, like you can kind of put it lower or like higher. 46 00:03:16,480 --> 00:03:19,720 I mean, my glasses are there than it runs into my glasses in the back. 47 00:03:19,760 --> 00:03:24,240 I mean, you probably just want it in kind of a more neutral position there. 48 00:03:24,240 --> 00:03:29,920 I've seen some takes from people saying that they couldn't wear this for longer than 30 minutes. 49 00:03:29,920 --> 00:03:34,400 Like it's unbearable and it bothers their ears. And I've seen other people saying that it feels great 50 00:03:34,400 --> 00:03:38,040 and it feels fine. And other people complaining are just whiny. 51 00:03:38,040 --> 00:03:45,920 So I'll let them sort that out. But for me right now, it definitely feels weird. 52 00:03:46,600 --> 00:03:50,880 It definitely feels unusual, but like not in a bad way. 53 00:03:52,320 --> 00:03:57,280 If I was walking around like this, like I feel like I'm in an alternative band or something. 54 00:03:57,280 --> 00:04:00,560 I feel like I need to now adjust more of my look 55 00:04:00,560 --> 00:04:04,560 to be more goth because of this. What do I, do I look like a normal person? 56 00:04:05,680 --> 00:04:10,240 I'm getting nose. So the cushions, pretty simple as far as I can tell. 57 00:04:10,240 --> 00:04:15,040 You just kind of squish them on there and then they're on there. 58 00:04:15,040 --> 00:04:20,920 I feel like if you wanted cushions anywhere, you would want some silicone like on the part 59 00:04:20,920 --> 00:04:25,880 that's pinching your ear, not on this part. But I mean, you know, we'll see. 60 00:04:27,960 --> 00:04:31,960 They're pretty, pretty intuitive just to kind of clip on like that. 61 00:04:31,960 --> 00:04:34,560 Probably more so than a regular earbud honestly. 62 00:04:35,480 --> 00:04:39,800 Oh, take it back. Okay. 63 00:04:39,800 --> 00:04:43,840 That kind of makes them feel like, if anything, it's less of a cushion 64 00:04:43,840 --> 00:04:47,520 and more kind of like a grip. Like I feel like it's keeping them in place 65 00:04:47,520 --> 00:04:51,000 more so than without. But they are earbuds. 66 00:04:51,000 --> 00:04:54,440 We can't forget that they are earbuds. So we should probably listen to something 67 00:04:54,440 --> 00:04:59,240 after this message from our sponsor. Oh, now that I think about it, this case is actually a little thick. 68 00:04:59,240 --> 00:05:02,600 So maybe I do want to do like a little pocket test. 69 00:05:02,600 --> 00:05:07,520 Is this, is this going to stick out of my pocket here? Like I wouldn't want to put that in my front pocket. 70 00:05:07,520 --> 00:05:11,040 You know, but that's just me. Like if you go, like what, what is, 71 00:05:11,040 --> 00:05:14,280 you got a growth or something. You got, I mean, you should get that looked at. 72 00:05:14,280 --> 00:05:18,040 That's kind of what's happening there. I guess people who carry bags with them everywhere 73 00:05:18,040 --> 00:05:22,920 won't care, they can just toss them in there. But for me, that might be an issue. 74 00:05:22,920 --> 00:05:28,280 Okay, it's time to see how these things actually sound. Just by default, before we get into any of the crazy 75 00:05:28,280 --> 00:05:35,040 features and stuff, I'm just going to play a song off Apple Music and see, see what we're dealing with here. 76 00:05:35,040 --> 00:05:38,640 Whew, whoa, that's loud. You can hear that. 77 00:05:38,640 --> 00:05:42,960 Okay, how about this? I'll turn it down and you tell me when you can't hear it anymore. 78 00:05:48,640 --> 00:05:52,080 Right now? Now you can't hear anything? That's pretty good. 79 00:05:52,080 --> 00:05:56,000 We're just under half volume. It's a little, I would want to turn this up 80 00:05:56,000 --> 00:05:57,400 a little bit more than this. 81 00:05:59,080 --> 00:06:03,200 Can you hear it now? Yeah. Now we should note that the guys here 82 00:06:03,200 --> 00:06:07,040 are eight to 10 feet away from me, but we're in a pretty quiet room. 83 00:06:07,040 --> 00:06:10,920 So I feel like, you know, it's a pretty good representative situation here. 84 00:06:10,920 --> 00:06:12,720 And as for sound quality, 85 00:06:14,160 --> 00:06:17,280 there's like a surprising amount of bass. It's actually kind of funny. 86 00:06:17,280 --> 00:06:25,200 I feel like there's a lot of bass going on and a lot of highs and not as much mids 87 00:06:25,800 --> 00:06:29,200 or at least, you know, at least those seem overly 88 00:06:29,200 --> 00:06:33,160 representative, the lows and the highs. That said, I don't know what sound mode I'm in 89 00:06:33,160 --> 00:06:36,560 and there are EQ options in the app that we'll look at in a second. 90 00:06:36,560 --> 00:06:40,400 Now, before I listen to any other music, I want to just head into the app here 91 00:06:40,400 --> 00:06:44,640 because some of these modes and features might affect the experience. 92 00:06:44,640 --> 00:06:50,480 We've got three listening modes here, standard voice boost and sound leakage reduction, 93 00:06:50,480 --> 00:06:54,420 which is the one that will stop your noise 94 00:06:54,420 --> 00:06:57,800 from leaking out into the environment so that other people can hear it. 95 00:06:57,800 --> 00:07:02,160 So it turns out we were in voice boost mode there, which probably affected my perception 96 00:07:02,160 --> 00:07:05,320 of the lows and the highs there. So let's go to standard, let's go back, 97 00:07:05,320 --> 00:07:08,360 see what that sounds like. Yeah, that seems a bit fuller. 98 00:07:09,360 --> 00:07:15,800 That kind of fleshed out the mids a little bit more. Voice boost will make things like, you know, 99 00:07:15,800 --> 00:07:18,840 have things be crisper, have voices be more audible to you, 100 00:07:18,840 --> 00:07:21,840 but it will probably be more audible to people around you as well. 101 00:07:21,840 --> 00:07:25,120 And this is just on standard mode and already on standard mode, 102 00:07:25,120 --> 00:07:28,360 the noise leakage is already a bit better. 103 00:07:28,360 --> 00:07:31,360 Interesting. Okay, sound leakage. Let's try that real quick. 104 00:07:31,360 --> 00:07:36,020 Let's see. I want to be able to go to max volume and have you guys not here at all. 105 00:07:36,020 --> 00:07:40,080 Oh man, that's muffled. That's much more muffled to me. 106 00:07:40,080 --> 00:07:43,680 You guys hear? You can't hear anything? 107 00:07:43,680 --> 00:07:46,960 You can't hear it? Just a little bit. Just a little bit. 108 00:07:46,960 --> 00:07:50,840 Wow. Okay, Sony. 109 00:07:50,840 --> 00:07:55,280 Sound leakage reduction mode is indeed sound leakage reduction mode. 110 00:07:55,280 --> 00:08:00,160 It works. In voice boost mode, they could hear it all the way down to like here. 111 00:08:00,160 --> 00:08:03,240 In standard mode, it was more like around here. 112 00:08:03,240 --> 00:08:06,800 And in this one, I forget exactly where, but it was like up here. 113 00:08:06,800 --> 00:08:10,080 So sound leakage reduction mode does affect the sound quality. 114 00:08:10,080 --> 00:08:13,840 You heard me say when I started playing it that it was immediately more muffled. 115 00:08:13,840 --> 00:08:18,560 But like if I go back to like the heart, you know, the active part here, 116 00:08:20,200 --> 00:08:25,440 it's definitely quieter, but this still feels like fairly loud volume. 117 00:08:25,440 --> 00:08:30,640 Like it's, I wouldn't want it this loud unless like I was in a very, very loud environment. 118 00:08:30,640 --> 00:08:34,200 So you, you know, there's trade-offs with these things. 119 00:08:34,240 --> 00:08:38,760 You're going to get slightly reduced sound quality, but not in a way that's like, 120 00:08:38,760 --> 00:08:44,040 it's not like it's not making it more tinny. It's kind of putting like a blanket on it, 121 00:08:44,040 --> 00:08:47,600 but it's still kind of there. It's obviously up to you. It's a bit of a subjective thing, 122 00:08:47,600 --> 00:08:51,560 but for me as someone who is looking for these 123 00:08:51,560 --> 00:08:55,960 kind of open earbuds, it's nice to see something that doesn't go 124 00:08:55,960 --> 00:09:00,840 into my ear canal, but gives me a lot of options about how to tailor my experience. 125 00:09:00,840 --> 00:09:06,020 It's nice to see. And of course that comes from Sony. They care about us, right? 126 00:09:06,020 --> 00:09:11,240 So let's go back to standard mode here, head back into the app and see what we're dealing with. 127 00:09:11,240 --> 00:09:17,480 So there is an equalizer mode because we're in standard, we can go in here and switch between a bunch of presets here, 128 00:09:17,480 --> 00:09:21,280 heavy, clear, hard, soft, manual, 129 00:09:21,280 --> 00:09:25,120 the standard names for EQ settings. 130 00:09:25,120 --> 00:09:28,920 Okay, now in device settings, I saw something that was kind of interesting about the controls. 131 00:09:28,920 --> 00:09:33,200 These are earbuds where you can customize 132 00:09:33,240 --> 00:09:37,360 what the taps do. On the right side, you've got sort of your default controls 133 00:09:37,360 --> 00:09:40,880 for Sony earbuds anyways, where a double tap is a play and a pause, 134 00:09:40,880 --> 00:09:44,240 a triple tap is an X song. And then I guess you also have the option 135 00:09:44,240 --> 00:09:47,280 to tap a bunch of times to raise the volume. 136 00:09:47,280 --> 00:09:50,560 On the left side, if you tap a bunch of times, 137 00:09:50,560 --> 00:09:54,960 it will lower the volume. And then you have a double tap and a triple tap 138 00:09:54,960 --> 00:09:58,760 that you can assign to change modes or to what? 139 00:09:58,760 --> 00:10:02,400 I don't know. So that setting that I couldn't change on the left here 140 00:10:02,400 --> 00:10:06,440 is you can set it to one of these services, 141 00:10:06,440 --> 00:10:10,400 Amazon Music Play Now, Endel, quick access, 142 00:10:10,400 --> 00:10:14,680 I don't know what that is, and Spotify tap. I don't think there's anything in the app here 143 00:10:14,680 --> 00:10:19,080 that won't be familiar to people who have used Sony earbuds before, 144 00:10:19,080 --> 00:10:22,440 but there's a number of ways that you can kind of customize your experience 145 00:10:22,440 --> 00:10:25,640 if you so choose. But I'm just thinking about the earbuds experience, 146 00:10:25,640 --> 00:10:31,040 like these earbuds as hardware here. So on that note, I'm just gonna listen to a couple tracks real quick 147 00:10:31,040 --> 00:10:36,200 that aren't crab rave because sometimes that's nice to listen to. 148 00:10:36,200 --> 00:10:40,000 This sounds pretty good. Like I'm at a pretty high volume here 149 00:10:40,000 --> 00:10:44,480 and I'm in standard mode without any EQ. In any situation with open earbuds, 150 00:10:44,480 --> 00:10:48,720 if you're right next to somebody, they're probably gonna be able to hear a bit of what you're listening to. 151 00:10:48,720 --> 00:10:52,040 That's just kind of the trade-off that you go with. I'm okay with that. 152 00:10:52,040 --> 00:10:58,280 I'm not usually listening to stuff that is inappropriate for children. 153 00:10:58,280 --> 00:11:01,760 Another one of the trade-offs that you make going with open earbuds 154 00:11:01,760 --> 00:11:05,320 is the potential that you are losing some sound quality. 155 00:11:05,320 --> 00:11:08,960 Obviously like an isolated environment where they can control exactly 156 00:11:08,960 --> 00:11:13,280 what sound waves you're listening to. There isn't like distortion happening or disruption. 157 00:11:13,280 --> 00:11:17,160 That's the environment that you're gonna wanna choose if you just are prioritizing sound quality. 158 00:11:17,160 --> 00:11:20,640 If you're going with open earbuds, you're kind of acknowledging that like, 159 00:11:20,640 --> 00:11:25,320 okay, tip-top sound quality is not the most important thing to me. 160 00:11:25,320 --> 00:11:29,200 I just don't like do hickies inside my ear canals. 161 00:11:29,200 --> 00:11:32,600 Why do they keep wanting to go in there? It's that's for me and my wife. 162 00:11:34,520 --> 00:11:37,520 But I gotta say, this is a very quiet environment, 163 00:11:37,520 --> 00:11:42,680 but like, it sounds really good. There's definitely things with these earbuds, 164 00:11:42,680 --> 00:11:45,920 you know, that I would like to kind of tweak with the EQ. 165 00:11:45,920 --> 00:11:49,840 I'd wanna spend a little bit of time in the app tweaking the EQ to my liking, 166 00:11:49,840 --> 00:11:54,080 but there's nothing that I'm experiencing right now that's like, ooh, that's bad. 167 00:11:54,080 --> 00:11:58,040 But overall, it's fine. It's, it's fine. 168 00:11:58,040 --> 00:12:03,200 Generally, I'm someone who wouldn't wanna do a lot of tweaking with my, with my headphones or earbuds. 169 00:12:03,200 --> 00:12:06,480 I would want to just kind of put them in and have them sound good. 170 00:12:06,480 --> 00:12:10,640 And that's why I feel like I'm satisfied with this because I put them in, they sound pretty decent. 171 00:12:10,640 --> 00:12:14,760 And I know that there's some trade-offs that you're gonna make with open versus closed earbuds 172 00:12:14,760 --> 00:12:18,320 or headphones or whatever. Now that's all my subjective experience, 173 00:12:18,320 --> 00:12:21,920 but we had Labs test these earbuds 174 00:12:21,920 --> 00:12:25,160 and they came back with this frequency response graph. 175 00:12:25,160 --> 00:12:28,360 Now, in case you haven't seen our graphs here, 176 00:12:28,360 --> 00:12:31,680 this gray band here is the average listener preference. 177 00:12:31,680 --> 00:12:36,840 So that's generally what the average listener is going to want to hear. 178 00:12:36,840 --> 00:12:40,840 And the red band here is what the link buds returned 179 00:12:40,840 --> 00:12:46,960 in terms of frequency response. So as you can see, the lows drop off pretty harshly 180 00:12:46,960 --> 00:12:52,040 around the 100 Hertz mark. And that's mostly to be expected with, you know, earbuds. 181 00:12:52,040 --> 00:12:56,000 We are partly within the preferred range through the mids, but then as we get to the highs, 182 00:12:56,000 --> 00:13:01,560 we're in some weird kind of variations and spikes. So it's a good thing the app has a decent EQ tool 183 00:13:01,560 --> 00:13:06,480 you can use to try to compensate for those. Labs left a note here that this frequency response 184 00:13:06,480 --> 00:13:09,560 is relatively normal for what you'd see 185 00:13:09,560 --> 00:13:14,120 from a open ear device. And one thing to note here is that this is a Sony device, 186 00:13:14,120 --> 00:13:18,160 but they do not support Sony's LDAC codec 187 00:13:18,160 --> 00:13:21,480 that they developed. So anyone going for these open earbuds 188 00:13:21,480 --> 00:13:25,320 are probably, there's a trade-off. You know that you're not going to get 189 00:13:25,320 --> 00:13:28,480 like the absolute highest quality. So I guess they thought, 190 00:13:28,480 --> 00:13:31,920 oh, we won't even put the LDAC in there. I don't have enough background information 191 00:13:31,920 --> 00:13:36,200 to know why they chose not to put LDAC in there. But just so you know, it doesn't have LDAC 192 00:13:36,200 --> 00:13:40,200 if that's what you're looking for. Okay, that's audio quality. What about mic quality though? 193 00:13:40,200 --> 00:13:43,640 And this is kind of interesting because the link buds clip apparently use 194 00:13:43,640 --> 00:13:49,040 bone conduction for the mic. They don't use bone conduction to play audio, 195 00:13:49,040 --> 00:13:54,000 like, you know, shocks, headphones or something, but they do use it to record audio 196 00:13:54,000 --> 00:13:57,480 or at least to detect that you're speaking. So I'm going to give Bell a call here 197 00:13:57,480 --> 00:14:01,480 and he's going to record and we'll see how it sounds for him. 198 00:14:01,480 --> 00:14:05,880 So this is me speaking from the mic, from the link buds. 199 00:14:05,880 --> 00:14:09,200 Obviously this will depend on your particular device 200 00:14:09,200 --> 00:14:12,920 and your speaker setup. You know, maybe that'll sound good or bad to you. 201 00:14:12,920 --> 00:14:16,360 I don't know what it sounds like. I can't hear through your ears. 202 00:14:16,360 --> 00:14:19,960 I'm listening to the recording that I've just recorded through these earbuds 203 00:14:19,960 --> 00:14:24,720 and it sounds like I'm a bit far away in it. It doesn't sound bad. 204 00:14:24,720 --> 00:14:28,080 So audio quality, mic quality, not bad 205 00:14:28,080 --> 00:14:31,640 for an open set of earbuds. In terms of battery life, Sony says 206 00:14:31,640 --> 00:14:35,120 that the earbuds themselves can last for nine hours 207 00:14:35,120 --> 00:14:38,320 and then you get 28 hours of battery life in the case 208 00:14:38,320 --> 00:14:42,000 for a total of 37. That's obviously in optimal conditions. 209 00:14:42,000 --> 00:14:47,000 They got Bluetooth 5.3, IPX4 water resistance rating, 210 00:14:47,520 --> 00:14:53,280 which is pretty standard for these kinds of things. And it comes in four colors, lavender, grayish, 211 00:14:53,280 --> 00:14:57,080 green and black for $230. 212 00:14:57,080 --> 00:15:04,000 Now that's a little bit on the high side for what some people would feel is like a compromise 213 00:15:04,000 --> 00:15:09,980 in terms of sound quality, but for someone like me who is really looking for open earbuds, I don't know. 214 00:15:09,980 --> 00:15:14,320 There's not a ton of really great options. We mentioned the Bose Ultra Opens. 215 00:15:14,320 --> 00:15:18,840 There are the nothing open ears, whatever they're called, 216 00:15:18,880 --> 00:15:23,600 but those are a little bit of a different design because they don't clip on. They like sit on top of your ear. 217 00:15:23,600 --> 00:15:27,840 So there's not a ton of options out there. So I don't know, 230, it's up to you. 218 00:15:27,840 --> 00:15:31,320 Well, that's it for the link buds clip, guys. Thanks for watching. 219 00:15:31,320 --> 00:15:34,460 If you're looking for another video to watch, let me tell you, I had a lot of fun 220 00:15:34,460 --> 00:15:37,500 with the Ricci Mini Robot. I think we're friends now. 221 00:15:37,500 --> 00:15:40,600 We're supposed to hang out this weekend, but we'll see. 222 00:15:40,600 --> 00:15:42,480 Subscribe to ShortCircuit. Bye.