2024 was the year of the open earbud. Traditional wireless earbuds haven’t gone the way of the dinosaur, of course, but it was hard to escape the increasing numbers of open-style designs crowding the market last year which eschewed an in-ear fit for a whole new twist on the humble earbud. The Huawei FreeClip, the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds, the Apple AirPods 4 with ANC; everyone wanted a slice of this rather differently shaped cake.
Sony would be within its rights to take much of the credit for the burgeoning trend. The company’s original LinkBuds (WF-L900) arrived in 2022 and, with their ringed configuration where the driver sits on the ear canal rather than inside it, the novel LinkBuds set a precedent for a brand-new way of wireless listening. Since then we’ve had quite a few products sporting the LinkBuds moniker – the LinkBuds S, the LinkBuds Fit, even a LinkBuds Bluetooth speaker – but the new Sony LinkBuds Open (WF-L910) most closely resemble 2022’s progenitors.
