Sony LinkBuds Wireless Open-Ring Earbuds

Edit at the end!

TL;DR : After 13 months (warranty of 12 months), this 250$ pairs of earbuds is basically thrash.

The right bud sounds like the driver is busted, and the left bud has always had trouble charging in the case (the clip inside the case doesn’t hold on tigh to the earbud so it sometimes doesn’t charge or register like the bud has been taken out of the case, so there are problems pairing as well).

I find it so bad that a 250$ piece of tech doesn’t have more than a year of warranty.

The sound was good due to open back design, but comfort will depend from person to person since it depends on your ear shape. For me the right one is super confy but the left hurts if i wear it for more than a couple hours.

I would not recommend this product and unless sony cha ges its warranty, I won’t be buying from them anymore. 13 months of use for a busted driver is unforgivable, especially since i always use at low volume (use in public or before going to sleep).

Edit : after 18 months or so of use, the right bud not only sounds like a busted driver, it wont hold charge properly. It will randomly loose charge and drain case battery overnight, even when plugged in. For all that is good and fair in this world, do not buy this product.

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 classical

Now 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.

Son muy ligeros, muy bonitos, cumplen su función de poder escuchar el exterior además de la música pero eso implica a que el audio no sea tan alto. No es facil acomodar en las orejas, y se debe probar la goma correcta para que no se salgan. Yo he usado las mas grandes y aún así se me han llegado a caer

As someone who has suffered his whole life with pain from wearing earbuds (most types) these are definitely a must have if you are in the same boat.

For some reason I can’t handle iems. If they go in the ear, or even AirPods. My ears have always been so sensitive that any pressure results in pain or swelling. I try to stay away from most in ear styles for this main reason.

A secondary reason is the pressure from the sound isolation has never been comfortable to me. Feeling like I’m underwater, rather than silence. It’s awful.

AirPods 3 were my go to since their release late last year, but they still caused a bit of discomfort. They would also fall out. The convenience of using iOS and AirPods plus the higher than average sound quality made me push through.

Before the AirPods 3 I used the Galaxy buds Live. They were great. Most comfortable I’ve ver used. No issues with comfort. Despite enjoying the ANC implementation whereas it focused on outside lower frequencies like hums and engines (opposed to something like the AirPods Pro which attempt to block all sound). I didn’t like how quiet they were. The sound quality was great in a decently loud room but when I was at work with heavy machinery it got hard to hear without cranking up the sound which caused a bit of distortion.

Enter the Sony Linkbuds. Out of the box these things come with the medium wing tip which to my horror began causing some burning sensations from the pressure. I swapped them out for the small on both ears and voila. Perfect fit. Perfect volume.

It feels like you have nothing in the ear. The Galaxy buds live were close to perfect but they did block sound a bit when you were wearing them. The whole in these Linkbuds make it so that’s a problem of the past.

The auto speech detect works well. Too well honestly that I feel like I’m killing my battery by having it on. Speaking of batter it’s still to be seen how long they last. The app will show one percentage one minute and then it’ll jump down like 20%. I don’t think it updates frequently but it’s jarring.

The extra features like spatial audio and Alexa are cool but I use iOS and those aren’t that well supported. Maybe in the future, but right now don’t buy the buds if you have iOS and want to make use of those features.

The spatial audio is similar to AirPods 3 and pro implementation. It works very well with the supported apps. Seems highly unlikely more will add the feature though.

I’m assuming on android it’s a system wide effect that can be toggled on or off. So if you have an android I’d look for more information elsewhere.

The last thing I want to mention that makes these a must have is the wide area tap. Every time I tap it registers the proper gesture. EVERYTIME! That’s huge. With my Galaxy Buds I would always skip songs, or be unable to accept calls because the tapping was so inaccurate. Most tap to use headphones suck ass and for me, caused me physical pain to use. Here you don’t tap the headphone. You actually tap your temple… sort of. The side of your head. It’s like something out of a sci-fi movie and it works.

Few quirks when using these with iOS but most are now standard fare if you don’t use AirPods. Stuff like sometimes the screen will come on when I use Siri so my thigh will cancel out commands. I don’t use Siri that much anyways. And when I do need an assistant it’s only to do math problems for me that I’m too slow to do on my own. But it is something to be wary about.

Alexa implementation is good and works well, but again, Alexa can’t do as much as Siri: most of the things you’d ask her are like music selections. It’s kind of a non issue for me personally.

Also the app to set these up is kind of annoying to use. Features work, but the menus are confusing to know if they are turned on or not. Certain apps seem like they are required to set up certain features but not really. I spent about five minutes in the soundscapes app wondering how to I use the spatial audio for movies only to realize the app was trying to tell me the soundscapes app is compatible with the buds and that’s the end of the integration.

To use Alexa and Spotify features make sure to go to assign menu and change the left or right settings to the proper apps. Then the rest of the features will work. It’s very confusing at first.

With time as I use these through the warm up period they might get better sounding but the fit and comfort are apparent from the start. If you have sensitive ears please try the xs wingtips. Those are the ones on all the promotional material but for some reason they come with the medium.

This is my first review on Amazon and I just had to let everyone with similar problems to me that we’ve been saved. The perfect earbud is here.

For everyone else you might feel a bit let down. They aren’t as bass heavy as IEM’s and definitely don’t block outside sound. Some people really don’t want to hear anything and these aren’t for those people. For everyone else these are it!!!