Sony recently announced its latest audio tech and just by the look of it, it might take a while to guess what it does. Introducing the Sony LinkBuds. They’re what Sony is calling a “wearable, always-on sound gateway”. Essentially, they’re in-ears with a hole in ‘em.
The feature that sets these apart from pretty much anything else on the market is the ring-shaped driver and resulting design. The driver part of the bud looks like it’ll lie in your canal and the bulbous bit sits in your concha with the arcs tucking under your antihelix (as seen below).
Usually when you jam some buds in it’s because you want to isolate yourself to focus on your call or music. Sure, most mid- to high-end earbuds have a transparency mode so you can bop to your beats while avoiding cars but that’s always going to sound slightly artificial. Audio is picked up by the embedded mics, processed, and played through the drivers. That’s a lot more steps than what you get here.
With these essentially being open-back in-ears, as with full-sized open-back headphones, you will get some audio leakage. But open-back headphones offer a much wider soundstage so you should expect that with these too.
Hole-y LinkBuds
Sony is marketing these as something you can wear all day. Weighing a fraction more than 4g per bud and with a combined 17.5hrs of battery life, they should get you through a full day on a single charge.
When you do need to charge them, you’ll pop them into the case. The case tops up with the included USB-C cable. There’s no wireless charging here. You’ll get 90 minutes of playback from ten minutes of quick charge if you’re in a hurry, or they’ll take 90 minutes to charge up fully.
You can expect the usual features as well. Google and Amazon assistant support, Google Fast Pair, Spotify Tap, and an IPX4 rating, meaning they’re able to shrug off some light water or sweat splashes, all come standard. You won’t get any noise cancellations with these. Because there’s a hole in them.
If you care about the environment, as you should, you’ll be delighted to know Sony uses recycled car plastic for the buds and their case and isn’t using any plastic in the packaging.
As for sound quality and comfort, their completely new shape and design mean we’ll reserve judgment until we’ve got some in our ears to test properly. Sony might be confident, but we’ve got to be shown.
The LinkBuds will be available in South Africa from 24 April 2022, from all the usual places. At launch, a pair will go for R4,000.