Sony LinkBuds (WF-L900)

The Sony LinkBuds are the weirdest true wireless earbuds we’ve ever seen, but the company has taken a well-calculated risk in creating a pair of in-ear headphones that can be worn all day long. A spacious soundstage should keep audiophiles happy, while ingenious controls and an excellent companion app will appeal to techies - bass heads should look elsewhere, though.

Sony has big ambitions for LinkBuds. There's support for Microsoft Soundscape and 360 Reality Audio, Spotify Tap, and a partnership with Ingress and Pokémon GO developer Niantic Labs, with the overall aim of making the perfect earbuds for augmented reality. Most players of the AR Pokémon game, for example, actually go without audio while they're hunting out in the real world, Sony and Niantic discovered. That's in part because traditional earbuds force a choice between game and environmental sounds.

If you want that extra alertness at all times, I’d sooner choose these over a pair of bone conduction earbuds. Sony isn’t about to steal anyone in Apple’s ecosystem away from the AirPods, but with the LinkBuds, Android owners are getting another solid option for open-style earbuds — and I’m glad Sony took a chance on them.

Sony largely succeeded at what it set out to do: It built a set of true wireless earbuds that offers transparent audio by design rather than relying on microphones to pipe in ambient sound. Indeed, the LinkBuds blend your music, podcasts or videos with whatever is going on around you. There are certainly benefits for this, whether it be the ability to be less of a jerk in the office or to stay safe outdoors.

Sony’s LinkBuds deserve a round of applause for their clever design and for offering a different flavour of sound that many will find appealing.

An oddity in the earphones world, the LinkBuds are specifically designed to let the outside world in as you listen to music or make a video call. And for that, they are perfectly suited, coming with an open ring driver design that avoids anything actually going into your ear canal. With that in mind, the sound performance is surprisingly good and the comfort is unparalleled. Just don't expect to be able to watch video on your mobile on a packed train.