The Sony Link Buzz earbuds are a unique and innovative design that offers an open, natural sound well-balanced with good detail and just enough bass. However, like many open earbuds, they don't deliver the same kind of bass response as a set of noise isolating earbuds. Despite this, they have Sony's DSE digital sound enhancing feature that makes your music sound a little fuller.

One of the standout features of the Link Buzz is its adaptive volume control, which automatically adjusts the volume to your environment. This feature is designed to help you hear better in noisy areas, but it may not always get it right. Some users may find that they need to adjust the volume manually to avoid loud or quiet sounds.

The Link Buzz earbuds are also equipped with a quick charge feature that gives you 90 minutes of playback time from a 10-minute charge. This is a convenient feature for on-the-go listeners who want to top off their battery quickly. The case itself is compact and comfortable, making it easy to carry around.

In terms of battery life, the Link Buzz earbuds are rated up to 5.5 hours at moderate volume levels. While this may not be stellar compared to some other earbud options, it's still a respectable amount of time for listening to music on the go. The case provides a couple of extra charges and has a quick charge feature that gives you 90 minutes of playback time from a 10-minute charge.

The Link Buzz earbuds are available in three colors: black, white, and gray. They have a sleek and modern design that's sure to appeal to fans of open earbuds. However, some users may find them a bit pricey at $180.

One of the most interesting features of the Link Buzz is its voice calling performance. Sony won't say how many microphones they have on each bud, but callers report that their voice sounds clear and with minimal background noise. This is surprising given the noisy environment in which some users tested the earbuds.

In contrast to other open earbud options like the Galaxy Buds Live, the Link Buzz earbuds have a more natural sound profile. They're also better suited for Android users who can't take advantage of Apple's spatial audio features on their AirPods. The Link Buzz earbuds come with Google Fast Pair, which makes it easy to connect them to your phone.

However, some users may find that the Link Buzz earbuds lack certain features like wireless charging and a more substantial build quality compared to other Sony options like the WF-1000XM4. Despite this, they're still an excellent alternative to the AirPods, especially for those who struggle with keeping them in their ears.

Overall, the Sony Link Buzz earbuds are a unique and innovative design that offers an open, natural sound well-balanced with good detail and just enough bass. While they may not have all the features you'd want, they're still a great option for fans of open earbuds who want something new and exciting.

The video is a review of the Sony Link Buzz earbuds, in which the reviewer tests them out and shares their thoughts on their sound quality, design, and features. The reviewer is impressed with the earbuds' ability to deliver clear and natural sound, even in noisy environments. They're also excited about the adaptive volume control feature and the voice calling performance.

The video also touches on some of the limitations of open earbuds, including the fact that they can be prone to noise leakage and may not deliver the same kind of bass response as noise isolating earbuds. However, the reviewer notes that these earbuds have Sony's DSE digital sound enhancing feature, which makes your music sound a little fuller.

In terms of battery life, the Link Buzz earbuds are rated up to 5.5 hours at moderate volume levels. The reviewer tests them out and finds that they meet this rating, although there may be some variation depending on the specific device and streaming surface being used.

The video also explores the design of the Link Buzz earbuds, including their sleek and modern aesthetic. The reviewer notes that they're very comfortable to wear and stay in their ears well, making them a great option for listeners who want an open sound without sacrificing comfort.

Overall, the review is a thorough and detailed examination of the Sony Link Buzz earbuds, covering everything from their sound quality and design to their features and battery life.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey there these are sony's new link buds and i gotta say i was a bit surprised when i first got my hands on them for starters they have an actual name you can easily remember and not some funky model number and then there's the whole ring thing kind of weird right let's talk about that so as far as the name goes sony says the concept behind the link buds was to make an always-on product to link your online and offline worlds i'm not quite really sure what that means but the idea is that these buds are supposed to be really comfortable to wear around all the time while not shutting you off from the outside world that's where the ring comes in these are open earbuds like the standard airpods so they allow ambient noise in but in some ways they're more akin to samsung's galaxy buds live earbuds aka the beans because they have a stemless design and although they're not exactly kidney shaped they are elongated they come in two color options speckled white and speckled carbon and sony says both the case and buds are made out of recycled plastic which may be a first for earbuds they cost 180 dollars i'll get into weather i think they're a good value toward the end of the video but they're basically in line with what the airpods third generation and galaxy buds live cost when they first launched i'd say the one big advantage these have over both the airpods third generation and the galaxy buds live is that they're designed to stay in your ears really securely i was actually able to get a good fit with the buds live and a pretty good fit with the air pods 3 but i've seen plenty of comments from people who couldn't get the buzz live to stay in their ears and not everybody can get a secure fit with the air pods which is why you see all those airpods winning accessories selling on amazon the link buds come with five different sizes of fins or arc supporters as sony calls them medium is the default size but there's also extra small small large and extra large the large and extra large worked well for my ears and the thin wedges under that top ridge on your ear and helps lock the butt in place i wouldn't say these lock in quite as well as the beats fit pro but they're arguably more comfortable particularly if you're someone who doesn't like having an ear tip jammed in your ear it's pretty self-explanatory how the buds fit in your ears but the app does have a tutorial that shows you how they're supposed to fit what's interesting is that the way the ring sits in your ear it's partially hidden so people can't really see it from the outside anyway it just looks like you're wearing regular buds you may not totally forget you're wearing earbuds and they may not fit everybody's ears perfectly but i found them quite comfortable to wear from time to time i did make little adjustments to how they sat in my ears and how the ring is positioned in your ear can impact sound quality slightly you can tweak this out a bit in the companion app for ios and android but changing the eq settings doesn't dramatically change the sound profile engaging bass boost for example only gets you a touch more bass these use sony's v1 integrated processor which is its version of a bluetooth system on a chip it's bluetooth 5.2 and like the sony wf-1000x mark iv the link buds unfortunately do not support multi-point bluetooth pairing that feature allows you to connect the butts to two devices at the same time like your smartphone and your computer and easily switch audio back and forth between the devices sony says these have 12 millimeter drivers and the buds are ipx4 splash proof i got some shots of them in the rain was a little worried i might have gotten them a little too wet but after i dried them off they worked fine so you can definitely use them for workouts and runs and they did stay in my ears when i ran with them these are not noise-cancelling earbuds and they don't have a transparency mode because they're naturally transparent if you pause your music it basically sounds as if you're not wearing earbuds the link buds do have a few extra features and a couple of them are pretty cool these have ear detection sensors so when you take a bud out of your ear your music automatically pauses and then resumes when you put the butt back in your ear and yes you can use a single bud for audio listening and leave the other one charging in the case if you want the buds have touch controls and they work just fine but what's cool is if you want instead of tapping on a bud you can tap on your face just in front of your ear sony calls the feature wide area tap and you can turn it on or off in the companion app it's two taps to pause your music and three taps to advance the track you can also set taps for volume controls the link buttons also carry over sony's speak to chat feature found in its wf-1000x mark 4 buds and wh 1000x mark 4 over ear headphones that's the feature where if you start talking to someone your music automatically pauses so you can have a conversation with them music then resumes about 15 seconds after you stop talking if you talk to yourself a lot or maybe talk to your pets too much you might want to turn the feature off in the app it does use up a touch more battery life when you have it on battery life with these guys is rated up to 5.5 hours at moderate volume levels so it's not stellar but the case does provide a couple of extra charges and has a quick charge feature that gives you 90 minutes of playback time from a 10 minute charge how do these sound well good but not as good as the wf-1000 xbox 4 and they fall a tad short of the airpods third generation which offer improved sound from the airpods second generation they have a nice open natural sound well balanced with good detail and just enough bass but like a lot of open earbuds they just don't deliver the same kind of bass response as a set of noise isolating ear buds and while they have sony's dse digital sound enhancing feature that does make your music sound a little fuller there's no support for sony's near lossless ldap codec like there is with the wf-1000x mark iv they also have the same issue that all open earbuds have in noisier environments they let sound in so whatever you're listening to competes with whatever ambient sound you encounter for a lot of people that's a feature not a bug for safety reasons you often want to hear the outside world but you should be aware that despite having an adaptive volume control feature that automatically adjusts the volume to your environment some folks may have an issue with how loud these play i paired them with an iphone 13 pro and the google pixel 4 plus and stream music from apple music spotify and quobas there was some variation volume levels across devices and streaming surfaces and i do think how your ear shaped and how the speaker ring sits in your ear can affect volume levels some people may think they play plenty loud while others may not particularly when you're outdoors when you're dealing with competing sounds including wind noise sony is targeting the link buds at jen's ears and i guess it doesn't want to kill younger peeps ears which i do appreciate with my ears anyway the airpods 3 play a little bit louder and had slightly bigger sound overall so did the galaxy butts live but those can distort a bit at higher volume levels as i said sony's wf-1000x mark iv have these beat for sound quality but weirdly the link buds are better for making voice calls sony won't say how many microphones the link butts have i see only one external one on each butt but it says it's improved the noise reduction algorithm and callers told me they thought my voice sounded clear with minimal background noise in the noisy streets of new york city so these in fact have surprisingly good voice calling performance i just hope sony brings that same new algorithm to the wf-1000x mark iv with a firmware upgrade all right so i got some traffic going by here it's pretty noisy in the background hopefully you can lean pretty decently yeah your voice is coming in super clear right now don't really hear much going on i'll finish by saying that i'm generally impressed with what sony has done with the link buzz and that's not just because it gave them a real name open earbuds are difficult to do well and these definitely have an innovative design not only are they very comfortable to wear but they stay in my ears well and even if they don't play quite as loud as i'd like in noisier environments they do sound good for open buds and i am a fan of the speak to chat and wide area tap features these are an excellent alternative to the airpods particularly for android users who can't take advantage of some of the airpods apple only extra features like spatial audio if you just have trouble keeping airpods in your ears they do have google fast pair the link butts are a little expensive at 180 but i do think there's room for some discounting while they feel premium enough they're missing features like wireless charging and both the case and buds don't quite feel as solid and substantial compared to what you get with the wf-1000xmark4 so like the galaxy buds live i think you'll see the street price on these come down fairly quickly but let me know what you guys think does the link buzz design seem appealing to you sound off in the comment section and if you found this video informative at all hit the like button and subscribe if you haven't already if you want even more info there's a link below to my full text review on cnet along with links to all the products mentioned in this video i'm david carney for cnet thanks for watchinghey there these are sony's new link buds and i gotta say i was a bit surprised when i first got my hands on them for starters they have an actual name you can easily remember and not some funky model number and then there's the whole ring thing kind of weird right let's talk about that so as far as the name goes sony says the concept behind the link buds was to make an always-on product to link your online and offline worlds i'm not quite really sure what that means but the idea is that these buds are supposed to be really comfortable to wear around all the time while not shutting you off from the outside world that's where the ring comes in these are open earbuds like the standard airpods so they allow ambient noise in but in some ways they're more akin to samsung's galaxy buds live earbuds aka the beans because they have a stemless design and although they're not exactly kidney shaped they are elongated they come in two color options speckled white and speckled carbon and sony says both the case and buds are made out of recycled plastic which may be a first for earbuds they cost 180 dollars i'll get into weather i think they're a good value toward the end of the video but they're basically in line with what the airpods third generation and galaxy buds live cost when they first launched i'd say the one big advantage these have over both the airpods third generation and the galaxy buds live is that they're designed to stay in your ears really securely i was actually able to get a good fit with the buds live and a pretty good fit with the air pods 3 but i've seen plenty of comments from people who couldn't get the buzz live to stay in their ears and not everybody can get a secure fit with the air pods which is why you see all those airpods winning accessories selling on amazon the link buds come with five different sizes of fins or arc supporters as sony calls them medium is the default size but there's also extra small small large and extra large the large and extra large worked well for my ears and the thin wedges under that top ridge on your ear and helps lock the butt in place i wouldn't say these lock in quite as well as the beats fit pro but they're arguably more comfortable particularly if you're someone who doesn't like having an ear tip jammed in your ear it's pretty self-explanatory how the buds fit in your ears but the app does have a tutorial that shows you how they're supposed to fit what's interesting is that the way the ring sits in your ear it's partially hidden so people can't really see it from the outside anyway it just looks like you're wearing regular buds you may not totally forget you're wearing earbuds and they may not fit everybody's ears perfectly but i found them quite comfortable to wear from time to time i did make little adjustments to how they sat in my ears and how the ring is positioned in your ear can impact sound quality slightly you can tweak this out a bit in the companion app for ios and android but changing the eq settings doesn't dramatically change the sound profile engaging bass boost for example only gets you a touch more bass these use sony's v1 integrated processor which is its version of a bluetooth system on a chip it's bluetooth 5.2 and like the sony wf-1000x mark iv the link buds unfortunately do not support multi-point bluetooth pairing that feature allows you to connect the butts to two devices at the same time like your smartphone and your computer and easily switch audio back and forth between the devices sony says these have 12 millimeter drivers and the buds are ipx4 splash proof i got some shots of them in the rain was a little worried i might have gotten them a little too wet but after i dried them off they worked fine so you can definitely use them for workouts and runs and they did stay in my ears when i ran with them these are not noise-cancelling earbuds and they don't have a transparency mode because they're naturally transparent if you pause your music it basically sounds as if you're not wearing earbuds the link buds do have a few extra features and a couple of them are pretty cool these have ear detection sensors so when you take a bud out of your ear your music automatically pauses and then resumes when you put the butt back in your ear and yes you can use a single bud for audio listening and leave the other one charging in the case if you want the buds have touch controls and they work just fine but what's cool is if you want instead of tapping on a bud you can tap on your face just in front of your ear sony calls the feature wide area tap and you can turn it on or off in the companion app it's two taps to pause your music and three taps to advance the track you can also set taps for volume controls the link buttons also carry over sony's speak to chat feature found in its wf-1000x mark 4 buds and wh 1000x mark 4 over ear headphones that's the feature where if you start talking to someone your music automatically pauses so you can have a conversation with them music then resumes about 15 seconds after you stop talking if you talk to yourself a lot or maybe talk to your pets too much you might want to turn the feature off in the app it does use up a touch more battery life when you have it on battery life with these guys is rated up to 5.5 hours at moderate volume levels so it's not stellar but the case does provide a couple of extra charges and has a quick charge feature that gives you 90 minutes of playback time from a 10 minute charge how do these sound well good but not as good as the wf-1000 xbox 4 and they fall a tad short of the airpods third generation which offer improved sound from the airpods second generation they have a nice open natural sound well balanced with good detail and just enough bass but like a lot of open earbuds they just don't deliver the same kind of bass response as a set of noise isolating ear buds and while they have sony's dse digital sound enhancing feature that does make your music sound a little fuller there's no support for sony's near lossless ldap codec like there is with the wf-1000x mark iv they also have the same issue that all open earbuds have in noisier environments they let sound in so whatever you're listening to competes with whatever ambient sound you encounter for a lot of people that's a feature not a bug for safety reasons you often want to hear the outside world but you should be aware that despite having an adaptive volume control feature that automatically adjusts the volume to your environment some folks may have an issue with how loud these play i paired them with an iphone 13 pro and the google pixel 4 plus and stream music from apple music spotify and quobas there was some variation volume levels across devices and streaming surfaces and i do think how your ear shaped and how the speaker ring sits in your ear can affect volume levels some people may think they play plenty loud while others may not particularly when you're outdoors when you're dealing with competing sounds including wind noise sony is targeting the link buds at jen's ears and i guess it doesn't want to kill younger peeps ears which i do appreciate with my ears anyway the airpods 3 play a little bit louder and had slightly bigger sound overall so did the galaxy butts live but those can distort a bit at higher volume levels as i said sony's wf-1000x mark iv have these beat for sound quality but weirdly the link buds are better for making voice calls sony won't say how many microphones the link butts have i see only one external one on each butt but it says it's improved the noise reduction algorithm and callers told me they thought my voice sounded clear with minimal background noise in the noisy streets of new york city so these in fact have surprisingly good voice calling performance i just hope sony brings that same new algorithm to the wf-1000x mark iv with a firmware upgrade all right so i got some traffic going by here it's pretty noisy in the background hopefully you can lean pretty decently yeah your voice is coming in super clear right now don't really hear much going on i'll finish by saying that i'm generally impressed with what sony has done with the link buzz and that's not just because it gave them a real name open earbuds are difficult to do well and these definitely have an innovative design not only are they very comfortable to wear but they stay in my ears well and even if they don't play quite as loud as i'd like in noisier environments they do sound good for open buds and i am a fan of the speak to chat and wide area tap features these are an excellent alternative to the airpods particularly for android users who can't take advantage of some of the airpods apple only extra features like spatial audio if you just have trouble keeping airpods in your ears they do have google fast pair the link butts are a little expensive at 180 but i do think there's room for some discounting while they feel premium enough they're missing features like wireless charging and both the case and buds don't quite feel as solid and substantial compared to what you get with the wf-1000xmark4 so like the galaxy buds live i think you'll see the street price on these come down fairly quickly but let me know what you guys think does the link buzz design seem appealing to you sound off in the comment section and if you found this video informative at all hit the like button and subscribe if you haven't already if you want even more info there's a link below to my full text review on cnet along with links to all the products mentioned in this video i'm david carney for cnet thanks for watching\n"