- I'm a little confused.
(box thumping)
We just did a video on Sony's LinkBuds,
whose claim to fame is that they've got
this donut shaped hole in the middle,
allowing ambient sound to pass through,
giving them effectively an open-backed sound.
Sony, then followed up on these with the LinkBuds S,
the opposite of that.
The LinkBuds S are an active noise-canceling product
that do not have any kind of open-backed,
sound pass through design.
They just use software
to allow you to hear the sound around you,
just like, well, any other ANC earphones. (laughs)
My questions are two then.
A, Sony, why did you use the LinkBuds name
to describe something so totally different.
And B why should I care about...
Wow. Okay. They're really light.
Sony says these are the smallest and the lightest
true wireless, active noise-canceling earphones.
And they are astonishingly light.
Here's one of our ANC mics.
You can see that right there.
Here's our charging contacts.
Here's the proximity sensor,
so it can tell if it's in your ear.
They've got this cool new software feature
that's kind of like a soundtrack to your life,
they're supposed to know where you are
and what you're doing.
So, right after you get off of a call
they might behave it a certain way.
Or if you put them in your ears
maybe they just start auto-playing music for you.
Right here, that looks like our,
either microphone or microphone array for voice pickup.
These might actually be around the same size
as the AirPods Pros.
I still haven't found something to replace them day-to-day.
The FP8s from LG are so close
but the shape of the carrying case is just not as ideal.
I mean, the LinkBuds are super cool
but I do need ANC, that's a feature I care about a lot.
There's just nothing that beats
the pocketability of this for me.
And you can see even now on the LinkBuds S,
Sony's carrying case is markedly thicker,
but in terms of its X and Y,
it's actually about darn near the same.
The thing is if the not-Apples of the world
were offering substantially more battery life or features
out of this extra bulk it would be a lot easier to forgive,
but in general, they're not.
This one is rated at 20 hours of battery life in the case,
plus six from the earphones themselves,
for a total of about 26, which is solid,
but not groundbreaking.
One thing that's really cool that I'm noticing though
is they've got this kind of ribbed texture
on the silicone eartips that I would think,
I mean this is just intuitively speaking
I don't have any empirical evidence for it,
but I would think would help them stay
in your ears more easily.
Wow, those are...
Man, like I can tell in my hand that they're small
but these are really compact.
I do not anticipate
that there would be any challenges whatsoever,
even sleeping with these in,
and I could not imagine a scenario
where I could get them out of my ears.
They haven't budged at all, not even a little.
Touch-sensitive controls on the side.
So let's just figure out what all the buttons do.
I'm assuming a long press is...
Hey, there we go, I'm in...
Oh, oh, that's the temporary feature
that I screwed up on the XM5 unboxing.
So that's working perfectly fine.
I will say that with an in ear it's not as comfortable
because you're kind of pushing it into your ear.
I mean, I guess...
Okay, it works a little better if you just have
your whole hand against the side of your head,
it's still, I'd say not as comfortable
as if you had an over the ear,
and I'd like to see a bit of a shorter delay on it,
personally, but then I could see running into trouble
where if you are just adjusting your hair
or something like that, you could...
What just happened?
I went like this and it's like, da da da.
Did I just change the mode?
Now it's in transparency mode all the time?
Credit to Sony, they've done an excellent job
of the transparency mode on this
at least as far as my own voice is concerned,
I haven't really heard you guys talk much yet but...
- [Jono] You look pretty good.
- [Andy] Hello.
- Yeah. That's extremely natural sounding.
It's hard to get both right.
It's hard to get the sound of the speaker right
and the sound of the surroundings right.
But Sony has done, to my quick ears,
an excellent job of that.
I never really talked about charging,
the case supports wireless charging
and there's also a USB-C input here.
I like this.
Maybe it's old fashioned
but just gimme a fricking pairing button.
I don't want to have to remember a special dance
for every stupid device in my life.
Just put a pairing button on things,
you hold the button,
they go in a pairing mode, there.
I'm over it.
I do like the whole magical pairing experience thing
but as a backup, I just want that hardware button.
See? Even Apple still does it.
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All right, nerds, normal audio.
Definitely an impressive demo.
It really does sound like the audio's coming from here
and you're in this space
where it's reflecting off all the walls and everything.
But if you pre-record it
getting that kind of imaging into a stereo source
is kind of trivial.
So I don't know if they've actually processed this
from that same original file
or if they're just kind of cheating.
Wow.
I normally try to evaluate this much earlier in the process
for an active noise-canceling headphone,
but never mind the just general hums of the studio
which are completely gone,
I could barely hear you guys talking
from like, I don't know, six, seven feet away?
- [Andy] Hi, Linus. How are you doing today?
- That's really good and I didn't even stop to think
that the active noise-canceling was on
because it doesn't have any kind of pressure feeling,
there's nothing unpleasant about having it activated.
Available operations on the left unit.
Okay.
Noise-canceling, ambient sound.
Hello.
Wow, you've kind of really got a mash on it though,
which to be clear is probably a good thing
'cause you don't wanna be laying on a pillow
or just brushing against it and having it activate.
So I get it.
I will say that compared to a more rounded shape here,
this flatter shape, right along the back here,
is not as comfortable for me.
So when I press, if I were to press on this in my ear
it has more to brace on in the outer part of my ear.
Whereas with this one,
when I press on it to activate something,
I am jamming that thing further into my ear.
- [Andy] Linus? Could you lean back a tiny bit?
- Sorry?
- [Andy] Could you lean back a tiny bit?
- Oh yeah. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Just... (crew laughing)
- [Andy] The noise-canceling works.
- By default, the right side has functions already bound,
tap, double tap, triple tap.
I wish the double and triple tap registered a little faster.
It's amazing what a difference
good active noise-canceling makes
to how loud you feel like you have to turn up your music.
There's a strong argument to be made
for just springing for ANC
just to make sure you're not turning up your music
so loud that you're gonna damage your ears.
Different EQ presets are here.
(upbeat music)
Honestly, these have a more balanced sound
right outta the box than the XM5s did.
Hmm, that's annoying.
That's the thing about touch controls, man.
I do like the stem squeeze on the AirPods Pros.
Touch, anytime you go to adjust them
you're liable to (train horn blaring)
control something.
- [Andy] Did you hear the train?
- Oh.
I don't even have an active noise-canceling on right now.
I'm just in passive mode.
- [Jono] Oh, what?
- Yeah, no, it's just off right now,
'cause they isolate noise well.
That's why I thought the branding was so confusing,
'cause the regular LinkBuds
are all about letting ambient noise through.
Well, let's turn on the noise-canceling.
Like is it doing things?
Yeah, I have no awareness of that whatsoever.
- [Jono] Ooh, that's dangerous.
- We are going to be finalizing which head and torso
we're gonna be using for audio reviews
on LTT moving forward, probably today,
I think we're actually sending back the other one tomorrow.
So we can get you guys real numbers,
but I would bet at least lunch with our new audio guy
that these have extremely strong ANC.
To my ear they also sound excellent
right outta the box as well.
I'm liking them.
At $199, yeah, you got my attention Sony.
Killer.
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(case clicking)