Customer Ratings & Reviews

The Sony LinkBuds are by far not my favorite earbuds, and for several reasons. Those include a glitchy app, incredibly poor fitment, some poorly executed features and mediocre-at-best sound. I highly do not recommend them. I have been switching back and forth between several wireless earbud sets for a few years, as I am an avid cyclist and spend a lot of time outdoors doing yard work, running, and walking. I value good fitment highly, as the last thing I want to be concerned about are the earbuds falling out of my ears--because on a bike--it means almost certain loss of the earbud. I also like good sound quality, but I understand that something you give up with a small footprint is superior sound. Lastly, I appreciate an app that allows for a good level of customization of the earbud features. I will give Sony credit that these earbuds have a great compact case, a long-lasting battery, and a lot of nice features for customization. For example, they allow for pairing of two devices at a time (but more than two remembered connections), voice control, head gesturing, several equalizer settings, and a pause-to-chat feature. The bi-pairing is something I have on other earbuds, and the functionality on those is far superior to the Sony. For example, if I have my other earbuds paired to my phone and computer at the same time, if I am working on my computer and the phone rings, the earbuds switch to the phone--and then when the call ends, it goes back to the computer. It is seamless. Not with the Sony. I tried the head gesture (that was a disaster--it attempts to sense nodding yes or no), but after a lot of issues with that, I have to physically pick up my phone to make the switch and then physically switch back to the computer. Not convenient. The pause-to-chat feature was even more annoyong. Clearing my throat or anything louder than a whisper would pause my music--even on the less sensitive setting. And if you're one to talk to yourself or hum / sing a line of a song while exercising, it immediately pauses the music. Nice idea, but not for me, so I turned that off, too. The equalizer had several choices, but even the bass boost setting produced a treble heavy sound and really no oomph. I not a booming bass type of person, but I do like my music with some discernable bass. So for music, the sound was mediocre at best--but for voice podcasts, the treble / bass balance was very nice. The tapping feature for pausing, advancing tracks, etc. does not work consistently. I've tried faster tapping, slower tapping, harding tapping, softer tapping, and every permutation of that and nothing works consistently. Very annoying. By far the biggest complaint I have about these earbuds is the fitment. For proper fitment, you insert the earbuds into the ear and then twist them to lock them in. These do not lock into my ears at all--I can pull them right out with minimal force. Just raking the leaves (using a leaf blower and bending over to pick up twigs every now and again), one or both of the earbuds fell out of my ears NINE TIMES in the course of about two hours. There is absolutely no way I would ever wear these cycling or running--I would lose one or both of them in a matter of minutes. With just walking, they stay in fine, but they do loosen up and I have to constantly adjust them. I have never experienced with with any other earbuds meant for an active lifestyle. The app was working well unitl the latest update. Now, I can't access the bluetooth connection settings in the app. It is greyed out. So even though the earbuds are connected to my phone, the app says they are not connected to anything. And that means I also can't switch sources. In summary, these are earbuds I might wear sitting in front of the computer and nothing else. The bi-pairing is not well executed, a lot of the touted features do not work well, the sound is not impressive, the fitment is the worst I have ever experienced (for an active lifestyle), and now the app is also glitchy. Highly not recommended.