Sony LinkBuds Fit review: they fit alright!
The Sony LinkBuds Fit were made to fit any type of picky ears. You can also customize them with different color sleeves, tips, and wings!
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Sony's LinkBuds is probably the only line of Sony headphones that has a comprehensible name. But don't worry — there's still confusion to be had. The very first Sony LinkBuds were a set of open design earbuds, with a hole right through them. They were designed to allow you to always have earbuds on to listen to gentle music or podcasts, while remaining fully aware and connected to the outside world. Thus the Link in LinkBuds, get it?
Or so we thought — the next product in the line was the Sony LinkBuds S, which were... earbuds with silicone tips. And now, there's the Sony LinkBuds Fit — a set of buds that were designed specifically to fit in and lock in various sets of more picky ears. So, to revisit our previous assumption — the LinkBuds line seems to be the one where Sony experiments with different design concepts to suit various specific niche users, and it also helps that it's more affordable than the flagship WF-1000XM5.
So, does the LinkBud fit? (I swear, this pun was not generated with AI)
Sony LinkBuds Fit in a nutshell:
- Buds designed to be fitted with different tips and wings for ultimate fit
- 8.4 mm dynamic driver
- Extra audio customization options in app
- Touch controls
- Sony 360 Reality Audio
- Sony DSEE Extreme audio upscaling
- Bluetooth multipoint for dual device connectivity
- 5 color options, further customizable with the sleeves and wings
- Tiny case
- IPX4 equivalent ingress protection
Sony WF-1000XM5 specs
| Color options | Black, Green, Pink, Violet, White |
|---|---|
| Audio | SBC, AAC, LDAC, LC3 Sony DSEE, 360 Audio |
| Noise cancelation | ANC, Transparency |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth 5.3, multi-device, Fast Pair, Swift Pair |
| Battery life | ANC On: 5.5 hours ANC Off: 8 hours Case charging: USB C only |
| Ingress protection | IPX4 |
The relatively tiny case we have here comes at a price — no wireless charging. Otherwise, the buds can last about 5 and a half hours with noise cancelation on, push it up to 8 hours with it off. As the other recent Sony headphones, these support LC3, which is superior to SBC (voice calls codec) and these make you sound clearer than your average earbuds.
We have the pink variant here, of course, it suits my eyes. Otherwise, they come in violet, green, black, and white. However, the LinkBuds Fit has an extra "feature" that'll allow you further customizing them.
Sony LinkBuds Fit design and colors
We have the pink variant here, of course, it suits my eyes. Otherwise, they come in violet, green, black, and white. However, the LinkBuds Fit has an extra "feature" that'll allow you further customizing them.
They are designed to have different silicone tips, anti-slip sleeves, and lock-in wing hooks attached to them. When fully decked out, you insert a LinkBud in and rotate it to "lock in" with the wing, and these shouldn't fall off — ever.
It's a great solution for joggers or in the fitness for sure. But it'll also be enjoyed by people with picky ears, who have trouble keeping most regular earbuds in.
The LinkBuds Fit do come with matching wings in the box, but since these silicone addons are also sold separately, you can go ahead and mix and match the different colors and accessorize at will.
The stemless design makes them pretty discreet — at certain angles, they can even disappear. The bad news is that playback controls is done by tapping on the headphones, jamming them gently (or not so gently) into your ear. The biggest offender here is volume control — it's done by just repeatedly tapping the right or left earphone for volume up / volume down. You are basically banging into your own ear until the desired volume is achieved.
With that out of the way, I can say that these are pretty comfy. It's great that you don't have to rely on the silicone tips to be the entire "holding force" for the bud to stay in place. I, in particular, have pretty small ear canals, so I need to use an S-sized tip. But then, the bud itself can wobble off. The wings and anti-slip solutions help out immensely here.
The case design is pretty cute. Like a small ring box. No doubt you can fit these in any bag or pocket. Just don't take them out while kneeling to avoid any awkward situations.
Sony LinkBuds Fit sound quality
These sound very crisp and clear. They don't have a lot of meat in the mids and not a very pronounced low end. Still, the bass resonance is tight, and while the mids sound a bit scooped, they don't feel like they've sucked out all the fun out of your music. The high end is sizzly and shimmering — pretty enjoyable, but it's just odd that the highs are so pristine and clear while the mids and bass are a pulled back a bit.
Of course, you can use the Sound Connect app to customize them. There's a 5-band EQ — 400 Hz, 1k, 2.5k, 6.3k, and 16k. For the lower frequencies, you just have a single Clear Bass slider, which I presume adjusts multiple bands to increase resonance without making them mushy. Because I couldn't get these to sound mushy.
If you don't like to fiddle with EQs or don't know which band does exactly what — the new Your Equalizer feature is pretty awesome. It lets you pick from 5 no-name, no-graph presets. Just rely on your ears and lock in the one that sounds the best to you. After that, you get to pick from 5 extra tunings for that same preset. At the very end, you get to save the EQ as it was tuned by the app, and you can fine-tune it if you wish.
The EQ may have limited bands, but they are pretty effective. You can hear them boost what they are supposed to boost and cut what they are supposed to cut. While I could dial in a sound to my liking, I still can't combat the driver tuning and acoustics of the buds. Just be aware that these will sound a bit mid-scooped, compared to other buds even in the same segment.
You also have access to DSEE Extreme to upscale lower bitrate audio. I did kind of, sort of hear an improvement when using DSEE Extreme on the higher-end Sony headphones (WF-1000XM5 and WH-1000XM6). Here... I can't say I detected an improvement. However, I did use them with a streaming service. Perhaps dusting off the archive of 128 kbps .mp3s and trying to upscale those might give me better results.
360 Reality Audio is still great, and you still won't use it
Sony was first to the consumer audio scene with its object-based 360 Reality Audio. You probably know of Apple's Spatial Audio, which is more or less the same thing. The reason why Sony's variant is less well-known is because you can only enjoy 360 Reality Audio tracks on a few limited streaming services — Amazon Music, Tidal, and nugs.net. And the tracks need to be mastered for 360 Reality, so that's an ongoing process...
It sounds fine — I like 360 Reality Audio. I don't think it sounds "better", as most music in the world is designed to sound great on 2-channel stereo setups, and engineers have had decades to perfect these mastering skills. 360 Reality Audio sounds "different" and definitely provides a fresh experience if you are looking for one. It's good in its own way, calling it better is a bit of an apples-to-oranges situation.
Sony LinkBuds Fit Noise Cancelation
Sony is well-known for its high-quality Noise Cancelation, and the LinkBuds Fit kind of uphold that. Now, since they are buds that are made for comfort, they don't go in very deep into your ears and may not provide excellent isolation, which is the basis of a good noise reduction. The outside world may come in from time to time, especially in loud environments with higher-pitched sounds. However, for office work, they do cancel out all the humming and brumming.
Sony LinkBuds Fit connectivity
With Fast Pair and Swift Pair, these link up to an Android phone or a Windows laptop pretty effortlessly. For an Apple device — you need to do the whole song and dance of opening the Bluetooth menu and scanning for new devices, but they give us no trouble.
They do support multi-device with two simultaneous connection. The LinkBuds will just switch to the most recent audio source.
Sony LinkBuds Fit battery life
The buds can last about 5.5 hours with ANC on and 8 hours with it off. If you use DSEE Extreme, it is known to also slightly increase battery drain, so if you don't hear a difference — maybe keep it off.
The charging case adds about 16 hours of battery life overall. The case itself has no wireless charging, so you need to plug it in a USB C charger every now and again.
Sony LunkBuds Fit should you buy them?
So, these are for people that put the fit and lock-in features as priority. They definitely do what it says on the tin. It helps that their sound is pretty good, too — not the best Sony sound, but pretty good. The same goes for noise cancelation — not the best from Sony, but pretty good.
At the MSRP of $230, I would've found them a bit harder to recommend. However, these are currently $50 off at Sony's website and Amazon. At that price point, they are almost competing with earbuds like the Nothing Ear and OnePlus Buds 4. While I prefer the sound of the latter, if you have one of these rare sets of ears that literally hit the eject button on most types of earbuds — I can definitely recommend the Sony LinkBuds Fit.
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