A new breed of wireless earbuds
Some find wireless earbuds too intrusive, too isolating, and would rather listen to music played out of a phone’s speaker than have to insert even one bud. Help is now at hand though, with Sony’s LinkBuds (WF-L900) offering, like the other ‘open’ styles of wireless earbuds elsewhere on these pages, a twist on the traditional earbud design.
Just a quick look at the Linkbuds’ design will raise eyebrows. Instead of a tip protruding from the earbuds there is a circular section with a hole in the middle. It looks a bit like a smoothed-off Polo mint, though it won’t keep your ears feeling minty fresh. It’s actually the big USP of these wireless earbuds – a 12mm ring driver, designed to slide into the bottom part of your ear from where it fires music out into your ear’s opening. Think of the old-school in-ear headphones you used to get with Sony CD Walkmans back in the ’90s, stamp a hole in the middle and you’re not far off it. Those of you who hate the feeling of silicone or memory foam burrowing into your ears will be delighted to learn Sony has deliberately designed the LinkBuds to not do this. Quite the opposite, in fact. Sony wants you to be able to hear the outside world instead of isolating yourself from it.
Given there’s a lot going on with the design, it’s impressive that the LinkBuds are actually so small, making something like a pair of Bose QuietComfort Earbuds look huge. Sony claims they use 51 per cent less volume than their WF-1000XM4 headphones, and they are 44 per cent lighter, too – something you really notice when one is sat in the palm of your hand.
The LinkBuds are available in grey or white and we’re big fans of the plastic used, which feels nice in-hand. It’s actually made from ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene), a material formed by taking certain car parts made in the US and Japan, recycling and refining them and blending them with mica to get that final finish.
Neatly nestled
Over long listening periods we have no real complaints, comfort-wise, with the ring driver resting gently in but not digging into our ear. Similarly, the actual bud section of the WF-L900 nestles neatly in the upper part of your ear, secured in place by a small plastic earloop (Sony’s accompanying Headphones app offers a helpful video to show you how they are supposed to sit).
The loops are smaller than the rubber wingtips you get with some rivals, and Sony
