Huawei FreeClip 2 Review: Unique design with an asterisk

These earbuds look like alien tech right off the bat. When you open the carrying case, you're greeted with two spheres hanging on wire stems like some exotic flowers. Poke the spheres, and they start trembling as if the mysterious wind of a distant planet has moved their petals.

Poetic interludes aside, the design of the FreeClip 2 earbuds is just great. The buds look like a piece of jewelry, and the way they attach to your ears emphasizes this effect. There are three colors available—white, black, and blue—with a special rose gold option on the way, too.

The charging case also deserves some credit—it's extremely small and compact, square in shape, and measures just 50 x 50 x 25 mm. These numbers become even more impressive when you factor in that the case supports wireless charging.

The case has an LED indicator of the battery level and also plays a sound (which you can customize) when you open the lid. Let's move on to the fit and comfort.

The idea behind open-wear earbuds is to have the driver resting on your ear canal rather than having a silicone tip going inside it. It's godsent for people with sensitive ears, myself included, as most earbuds either fall off my ears or start causing pain after 15 minutes or so.

You place the FreeClip 2 buds in the middle of your earlobe; one part goes behind the ear, and the other one rests on your ear canal. The tension of the wire that connects these two parts holds the bud in place.

It's an interesting choice, and it really feels like nothing else. Each bud weighs only 5.1 grams—you can barely register such weight. Five minutes in and you forget you're wearing earbuds. Now, there's one big drawback to this particular design.

If your earlobe is on the big side, the wire connecting the two parts of the buds might not be long enough for optimal placement. These buds land perfectly on Rad's ear canals, but due to my huge ears, the drivers hang a few millimeters back when I wear the FreeClip 2.

It would've been nice to have a way to adjust the length of the cable to optimize the fit for different ear sizes, but it is what it is. Can you run with the FreeClip 2 earbuds? Yes, you can, but if you try anything involving intensive head movements, these can fall off.

Speaking of sports, the FreeClip 2 buds feature an IP57 dust- and water-resistance rating, so you can sweat all you like, and a jog in the rain won't do any harm as well.

The Huawei FreeClip 2 buds feature 10.8 mm dual-diaphragm dynamic drivers, which is not a small feat considering the small size of each bud. However, due to the unique design, your sound experience may vary wildly. The placement of the driver over your ear canal will determine how punchy and bassy a song will sound.

The overall sound quality is decent, but nothing to write home about. The buds sound clear, and there's enough detail to the sound. There are four sound presets in the app—default, elevate, treble boost, and voice.

On the default setting, the buds sound pretty flat, but when you switch to Elevate, some harmonic distortion creeps in, especially in the low-frequency range. Treble boost makes everything clearer, but there's some harshness at the top of the range.

Luckily, all these sound artifacts can be dialed out by spending a minute in the EQ portion of the app. The 10-band EQ helps a ton, and in my opinion, a custom preset sounds the best. At the end of the day, however, I think competitors in the open-ear design scene, such as the Honor EarBuds Open and the Xiaomi OpenWear Stereo Pro, did a better job when it comes to sound quality.

When it comes to call quality, the FreeClip 2 performs adequately. I was able to hear the other side clearly, and my friends had no trouble hearing me when I called them. There's no noise cancellation of any kind on these buds, so the environment will play a huge role in the quality of your calls (and music, for that matter).