- I'm really excited for these that the- - [Jono] Oh no, it broke.
- [Brandon] Jono broke the press kit it's not Sony's fault. (Jono laughing)
- Way to go Jono. (Jono laughing) - [Jono] It wasn't my fault.
- [Brandon] It kinda was though. - Oh, there's goo on it.
The conventional wisdom has always been that in ear headphones isolate you from the outside world.
And we've used technology to get around that to a degree
with things like transparent modes that use microphones to pass through ambient sounds.
But the LinkBuds take a far more holistic approach to this problem with a shape
that I would've actually never imagined ever seeing in an earphone.
Unfortunately, I have no idea how to open this box.
- [Jono] Check that little cap on your right. (indistinct) - This paper.
- [Jono] Yeah that part. - [Brandon] Sheer brute force. - [Jono] Oh, he forced it.
- Okay.
Oh, please tell me it's not an NFT. YouTube sent this cringe NFT display thing to me
a little a while ago. Just didn't know what to say.
Sustainability is extremely important to us at Sony which is why the LinkBuds and their charging case
are made using recycled plastic materials and have plastic free packaging.
Not the press version apparently.
I swear to you, this thing's really cool.
I can't get the box open. And then I can't get the other box open.
But trust me, it's really cool. Oh, all right.
Okay. This is actually pretty cool. It's all just cardboard padding. Like it.
Very compact charging case. No wireless charging on the charging case,
but it has a lot of other redeeming qualities. USB-C charging.
There's your pairing button so nice, simple pairing process.
It's really small. Here actually hold on. I've got my AirPods Pros in my pocket.
So you can see it's thicker than the AirPods Pros, right?
But in both other dimensions it's actually substantially smaller.
Like other wireless earphones. The case acts as a charger, holding 12 hours worth of juice
while the earphones themselves hold five and a half for a total of seventeen and a half.
That should be good enough for most people's long day.
And if you want to top up the earphones quickly, Sony quotes, 90 minutes of use
off of a 10 minute quick charge. And then I believe it's 90 minutes total
to fully charge the assembly. Now this is where the similarities to other earphones
pretty much die in a fire.
Look at these things, Brandon. - [Brandon] That's so cool. - They've got kind of this bulbous
almost figure eight shape. And you can see the analogous components, right?
Like here's the part that goes into the canal. And here's the part that sits in the little, like,
you know concave spot in your ear, right?
So relative to the AirPod you can kind of see how it's gonna sit.
But it's got a hole in it.
- [Jono] It's a donut. - This is what I meant when I said they've taken a much more holistic approach.
Get it? Pun very much intended. To making it so that you can hear your surroundings.
The driver is actually a ring shaped driver
around the outside here. So what they've done is they've created a completely
actually open backed in ear headphone.
Okay, I'm gonna put it in. They've got these little silicone loops
to help hold them into place. Hopefully my ears aren't too waxy today.
So it kind of sits like that. One of their priorities for this product was all day comfort
with the being that because they're not cutting you off from the rest of the world,
you are able to wear them all day while still carrying on normal conversations
or safely walking around in the city and not getting, you know, run over by a car or a train
or whatever the case may be. I believe they've actually partnered with Niantic.
And they've talked about Pokemon go as a specific use case for these headphones.
They've also boasted that they have excellent ambient noise rejection
for the microphone. So if you wanna carry on a conversation with someone, we'll have to do a test call with Jono.
You gotta way to record it real quick. Actually okay, I guess I'm not gonna use this phone.
I'll use the one that is preloaded with their application because these aren't released yet
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Crap, Jono, you gotta sign into your Apple ID. I gotta say these typing sounds
are tripping me the crap out. Because I don't feel like I'm wearing headphones.
So you know how with some headphones you get that like inside your skull sensation.
- [Brandon] Yeah. - I'm definitely getting that a little bit.
They're very comfortable. I mean, obviously I haven't spent an entire day with them
and I actually sleep with my AirPods Pros and my Tone Free FP8.
But they're extremely comfortable for me. I don't know if I could say that about these yet.
The XM4's from Sony I found were a little bit too bulky for that.
And the touch would often get activated by lying down on my pillow.
So I wasn't able to do that with those, But these seem at least on first glance,
extremely comfortable cause they don't put pressure on the canal.
It's all up here. They're really light too. Like extremely light.
- [Jono] How are you doing today? - That's really weird.
Just how, how do I describe this?
- [Jono] Is it like I'm right there? - With the typing sounds and with this phone call.
It sounds like you're coming from
like in between my ears. (Jono laughs) - [Jono] I'm in your head
- Now this is interesting. The press deck for this talks about wide area tap.
Whatever that means. And it seems like the guy in the picture
is like tapping his head. Whoa
- [Brandon] That's cool. - [Jono] Whoa - Could you hear that?
- [Jono] Yeah, I can hear that.
(group laughing) - [Jono] I can hear that from here though.
- That's crazy. Yeah. So that was one of the things we asked Sony about.
If I'm on the bus or if I'm in a quiet room, will people be able to hear my music?
The answer is sort of. Because they're in ears,
what sounds loud to you is gonna be pretty quiet for everyone around you,
but because they're open backed there's no isolating layer that will prevent sounds
from leaking out of them. So yes, it's possible.
They're also ridiculously loud right now. This is just the default.
- [Brandon] Then it's not that bad probably. - [Jono] Yeah. - You definitely have to tap with intent.
This is what I would consider to be a reasonable listening volume for me
when I'm not like jamming out, but I'm sitting and working.
Can you guys hear it? - [Jono] No. - [Brandon] No.
- No, okay. This is like, I'm cleaning the house and I need energy.
- [Jono] I think like a little bit. (indistinct) - These sound great.
- [Brandon] Better than the XM4's? - They're different from the XM4's.
So the thing about the XM4's is that like most earphones they're a closed back design.
So even though you can run them in a transparent mode, right?
That's always gonna be artificial sounding and there's always gonna added background hiss
or added artifacts from doing it that way.
Whereas these are allowing ambient sound
so I can hear the person who opened the door over there. Hi, how you doing?
- [Denniss] Hello. - [Jono] Denniss. - But the music also has a more open and natural sound.
That's one of the key benefits of open backed headphones when we're talking about full size headphones as well.
So if you like an open back sound
these are just gonna completely change your world.
They sound really good. Oh, for crying out loud,
you will not be able to listen to music while I go for through the app here.
Speak to chat. You can start conversations while wearing the headphones
simply by starting to talk. Yeah. I wanna experience that.
Try saying things like hello while music is, oh, okay. So it pauses your music.
Oh, that's really cool. It will resume while you are speaking
and will close if approximately 15 seconds passes after you finish speaking or you've operated the headphones.
I would make it less than 15 seconds. That seems like a lot.
Although I guess if you're going back and forth with someone. They've got some EQ presets here.
Pretty cool. And then I believe you can also edit it.
Very nice. I wouldn't mind if these were a little more granular.
This is cool. The ear shape analysis thing, I've run this with previous Sony products before.
It actually does appear to make a small difference.
- [Brandon] You know honestly I almost can't tell your wearing headphones, with your hat.
- Yeah. Cool, right? And they actually have what, I think a really cool look to them.
Like I could see these being a conversation starter when someone does notice that you're wearing them.
They've got support for adaptive volume control. So if the ambient sound gets louder,
they will try to overpower it, If you're into that. Personally I think you should always
control volume yourself to keep it at a safe level.
Wide area tap. Super cool. That was on by default. And you can actually configure the tap operations.
So there's no single tap because obviously that would cause problems, right?
If you just, you know, accidentally slapped yourself
for example, that might start playing music. So it's only double and triple tap.
That is one drawback could see to this product is that you can't have as many different functions,
but because you can program the left and the right individually I think you can kind of overcome that.
Four functions is a fair bit. I'm gonna turn the screen recording off now
cause I wanna listen to a little bit more music on this puppy.
Man. Other earphones try to get this sound.
With if like digital sound processors and you know
adding like an auditorium effect or like a open sound stage wide sound stage effect.
Nothing is ever quite right. But an open backed earphone.
Now to be clear there are far more open back earphones.
The regular AirPods, for example have a much more open back sound than the AirPods Pros.
But this is more open than I've ever experienced before. I can say that definitively.
There's a hole in it. It's open. I'm just talking to you.
And what's interesting about that. Is that actually carrying on a conversation with you
is not as easy as an earphone like this
in a specific transparent mode because they're using like voice detection
to find voices around you and amplify them for you and they're plumbing them right into your ears.
But this is more natural. These sound great for $179.99.
- [Brandon] 179 US? - Yeah. They're like reasonable actually
- [Brandon] Oh Man, I'm tempted. - Man, I'm not gonna be able to daily drive them.
Because ANC is actually a lot of what I use my earphones for.
A lot of the time I'm not even listening to anything. I just have the ANC on
because I find my life a little overwhelming.
But if it was just about the music, boy are these ever cool?
- [Brandon] What about gaming? - Gaming's a tough one because I would say that gaming is more about immersion
than a lot of the other things that I do. But the funny thing is that
I actually use open back headphones for gaming. I use Sennheiser HD 600's
because when I'm gaming, when I'm in my computer room
I don't have to worry about distractions or anything like that. I want the best possible sound.
And for me, open backed is a more natural, better sound.
So I would absolutely use them for gaming
but maybe when I'm out in public where there's distractions all over the place
where I want to dial in. Your mileage may vary though.
Maybe you're on the bus and you like, need to hear the next stop or the train, right?
So you guys can check them out. We're gonna have the link down below and you can subscribe to ShortCircuit
where we do first impressions videos just like this one.