I’m gonna say something a little controversial: I don’t really care if my headphones have noise canceling.
Sure, I might appreciate the isolation on a long plane ride, but for 95% of what I use headphones for, noise canceling isn’t a priority — or it’s straight-up undesirable. Whether walking down a busy street, doing the dishes, or riding my bike through a quiet trail, I prefer music and audiobooks add to the environmental soundscape, not replace it altogether.
I know I’m not unique in this either; it’s the reason some people prefer basic AirPods, which generally don’t form a tight seal, over the AirPods Pro.
Sony’s new LinkBuds are made for people like me, and at $180, they’re clearly trying to capture that entry-level AirPods market too. They’re simply the best headphones I’ve tried when it comes to enabling full ambient awareness — a little ironic, coming from the company that might have the best noise-canceling tech in the business.
I’ve been using the LinkBuds for a couple of weeks now, and they do a whole lot right — but there are some important caveats to keep in mind as well.
What makes them so unique?
The alien-looking earbuds use a ring-shaped driver in order to maintain a hole in the middle that allows sounds to reach your ear with virtually no attenuation at all; you can hear the outside world as clearly as if you weren’t wearing headphones at all.