In-ear visions
True wireless earbuds are everywhere, but here are some newly-launched lug-stoppers with interesting quirks
Sony LinkBuds
£149 / stuff.tv/LinkBuds
Sony’s LinkBuds are quite the chalk to a standard pair of wireless earbuds’ cheese. They can do music – and make a darned good job of it too, thanks to Sony’s new ‘ring driver’ – but those who demand active noise-cancellation should look elsewhere. That’s because the LinkBuds are designed to let the outside in. Why? So you can listen to conversations around you.
In a way, these are the ideal office earphones: no longer do you need to remove your ’phones to take part in watercooler chats – and that’s the same when you need to cross a busy street. You can even choose in the app to auto-pause your music if someone starts talking, though we didn’t find this worked very well, especially outside where wind noise stopped our tunes. Even inside we had problems as it just doesn’t react quickly. Put simply, you’ll turn this off.