Sony LinkBuds Fit Review: The Best Cycling and Commuting Earbuds

Active noise canceling is great when you are sitting on an airplane or coding in a library. But when you are riding a bike through city traffic, jogging through a park at dusk, or listening for homework questions in a family room, blocking out 100% of the world is dangerous.

Sony’s LinkBuds line takes a radically different acoustic approach: instead of a sealed silicone dome, the speaker driver has a physical hole in the center.

How Physical Open Audio Beats Software Transparency

Most earbuds use external microphones to capture environmental noise and play it back through the speaker in software transparency mode.

The problems with software transparency:

• Wind noise sounds like someone blowing into a telephone receiver.
• Directional localization is distorted: you cannot tell if a siren is behind you or across the street.
• Your own voice sounds muffled due to the bone-conduction occlusion effect.

With the LinkBuds, environmental sounds pass through the physical open doughnut driver. Cars, voices, and bicycle bells sound 100% natural because nothing is obstructing your ear canal.

The Tradeoffs:

• Bass Response: Physics is physics. Without an acoustic seal, sub-bass frequencies below 60Hz are essentially non-existent.
• Noisy Gyms: If you wear these on an airplane or in a loud subway station, you will hear the jet engines directly.

Verdict: The ultimate secondary pair of earbuds for athletics and urban commuting. 8.2 / 10.