is a senior reviewer covering TVs and audio. He has over 20 years experience in AV, and has previously been on staff at Digital Trends and Reviewed.
The Sony LinkBuds Clip are the company’s first clip earbuds. 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 still maintaining awareness of your surroundings. The clip design has become more popular over the past couple of 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 wrap around your ear helix like an ear cuff. The small spherical speaker enclosure is positioned just outside your ear canal and is connected by a flexible band to a larger capsule-shaped housing that rests on the outside. I like the look of the Clip buds, with their slightly glossy enclosures and selection of subdued color tones, including lavender, green, greige (a grayish beige), and black. Some might prefer a bolder, flashier look, but I like the green sample Sony provided. You can also mix and match five different case covers — black, green, blue, coral, and lavender — to customize them.
The Clip are intended to sit midway up your ear, but since everyone’s ears are different, there could be some adjustment to find the most comfortable spot for you (for me, it’s a little lower on my ear). Once you find the sweet spot, putting the earbuds on is quick and easy, although I found the fit a bit loose. The band isn’t as flexible as the one on the Shokz OpenDots One, which fit more securely around my ear. Instead, Sony includes silicone “cushions” that fit around the band. (Color-matching cushions come with the additional top case covers.) They gave me the secure fit I was looking for, and I was able to wear them for nearly an entire workday without discomfort. I even forgot I was wearing them at times, since they let in ambient sound. Those with larger ears might feel more of a pinch from them, even without the cushions attached.
The Clip earbuds fit around the ear’s helix, with the speaker sitting outside of the ear canal.
The highs and lows of the Clip’s sound performance
While I preferred the fit of the LinkBuds Clip with the cushions, using them affected the sound balance. The cushions caused the speakers to sit just a bit farther away from my ear canal, which resulted in less bass performance. And the Clip — and really every pair of open earbuds — are a bit light on thumping bass. There are three primary listening modes: standard, voice boost, and sound leakage reduction.
Standard mode sounds the most natural, with a clear midrange that doesn’t overpower the higher frequencies. Voice boost added a bit too much vocal presence that became oppressive over longer music listening sessions, but added good clarity for podcasts and news programs. The sound leakage reduction mode cuts out much of the high-end response, limiting potential disturbances to those around you, but it also makes the music sound muffled and dull. And there wasn’t a significant amount of leakage anyway, even in standard and voice boost modes.
The LinkBuds have a USB-C charging port, but do not support wireless charging.
There are some presets in Sony’s Sound Connect app, as well as a 10-band equalizer, if you want to boost or cut a specific frequency range. For some of my more rocking tracks — Soundgarden’s “Spoonman,” for instance — I pumped up the bass and low mids a bit. There’s also Sony’s DSEE, which improves the sound of compressed audio a little bit.
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