Sony LinkBuds Clips let you hear your music and the outside world at the same time

Sony has announced the LinkBuds Clip, and if you haven’t upgraded your earphones in a few years, this may be a type of pair you’ve never used before.

The Sony LinkBuds Clip are open earphones, designed to let you hear your music and the outside world at the same time, without relying on an Ambient mode that pipes sound through the speaker drivers.

At first glance they may look a bit odd, like a pair of 8-bit video game cherries. But that’s just because of how they fit on your ear. They wrap around the side of your ear cartilage, with one of those cherry blobs sitting over your ear canal, the other around the back of your ear.

It’s actually a super-comfortable way to wear earphones, as there’s nothing invasive digging into your ear canal itself, and these earpieces typically only weigh a few grammes a piece.

Three mode solution

Earphones like the Sony LinkBuds Clip are a bit of a nightmare for the bods that have to tune the things, though, as they can never be sure how much ambient noice the pair will have to contend with.

Sony's solution? Three separate modes. The Standard mode is what you’ll likely use while just listening to music around town. Voice Boost gives the mid-range a bit more pep, in order to make voice-led content like podcasts, audio book and talk radio stations stand out more in noisier spaces.

Then finally there’s the one you might want to use at the office, the Sound Leakage Reduction mode. This tweaks the sound to minimise how much you might annoy anyone nearby. An open design naturally means more sound leakage than a classic pair of IEMs.

You don’t get active noise cancellation with a set of Sony LinkBuds Clip, but they do use some clever techniques to make voice calls made with them clearer on the other end. That includes a bone conduction sensor, which analyses vibrations to help the pair separate the sound of your voice from outside noise.

On the practical front, the Sony LinkBuds Clip are rated for IPx4 water resistance, enough to handle a bit of rain. And they last for a good long while by earbud standards.

You get nine hours per charge of the earbuds, while the charging case can supply an additional 28 hours — a smidge over three charges.

The Linkbuds Clip also have plenty of Sony’s usual techy gubbins, accessible through the Sony Connect phone app, including DSEE audio upscaling and support for Sony’s 360 Reality Audio.

But the more important stuff? The Sony LinkBuds Clip cost £180 and will be available this month in four colours: black, lavender, green and the Dulux-tastic portmanteau Greige.

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