Sony took its time bringing the LinkBuds Clip to India. The earbuds first showed up in North America back in January, and Indian buyers are only getting their turn now. That gap is worth mentioning upfront, because it says something about how Sony is sequencing this product globally, even if the company hasn't explained why.
What you actually get for the wait is a pair of earbuds that skip the whole in-ear seal altogether. Instead of plugging your ear canal, the LinkBuds Clip hooks onto the outer ear and leaves the canal open, so traffic, conversations, and the general noise of a room don't disappear the moment you put them on. It's a niche that's grown a fair bit over the past couple of years, and Sony clearly wants a piece of it.
What It Costs and Where to Buy It
Rs 18,990 is the number Sony has settled on for India. You'll find the LinkBuds Clip on Amazon, Flipkart, and Myntra, plus offline through Croma, Reliance Digital, and Sony's own retail stores and website. Four colours are on offer — Black, Greige, Green, and Lavender — so there's at least some room to match these to your taste rather than settling for whatever's in stock.
The Fit Is the Whole Point
Because these clip onto the ear rather than sitting inside it, comfort during long wear is really what Sony is selling here. The box includes extra fitting cushions, since ear shapes vary enough that one size rarely works for everyone. Sony's also tried to keep sound from leaking outward too much, which is a real issue with open designs — nobody wants their commute playlist audible to the person next to them. There's an IPX4 rating too, so sweat and light rain shouldn't be a dealbreaker, though don't expect these to survive a swim.
Sound Quality and the Software Behind It
Each earbud runs a 10mm driver, and codec support is limited to SBC and AAC — no LDAC here, which is a bit of a surprising omission on a Sony product, though open-ear designs tend to prioritise comfort and awareness over hi-res fidelity anyway. To compensate somewhat, there's Sony's Digital Sound Enhancement Engine working to patch up detail that gets lost when audio is compressed, and a 10-band equaliser inside the Sound Connect app if you want to shape the sound yourself. 360 Reality Audio is supported too, along with something Sony calls a Background Music effect.
There are three listening modes baked in. Standard is just standard — nothing fancy, meant for daily listening. Voice Boost pushes speech forward, which should help with calls, podcasts, or anything where clarity of a voice matters more than bass. Sound Leakage Reduction does what it says, cutting down on the high frequencies that tend to escape open-ear designs the most. On top of these, Scene-based Listening tries to read what you're doing — walking, running, at the gym — and adjusts things automatically without you touching the app.
Calls Get the AI Treatment
For voice pickup, Sony has thrown a fair bit at this: two microphones, its Precise Voice Pickup tech, a bone conduction sensor, and an AI layer processing all of it to separate your voice from whatever's happening around you. The AI model has apparently been trained across a range of voice types and environmental noise patterns, the idea being that call quality should hold up whether you're in a quiet room or standing on a busy street.
Connectivity Basics
Bluetooth 5.3 handles the wireless side, with multipoint support letting the LinkBuds Clip stay paired to two devices at once — useful if you're bouncing between a laptop and a phone through the day. Google Fast Pair speeds things up on Android, Swift Pair does the same on Windows, and either earbud can be used solo if you only need one in. There's also hands-free Google Gemini access if your phone supports it.
Battery Life
Sony's claiming nine hours of playback from the earbuds alone, stretching to 37 hours once you factor in the charging case. A three-minute top-up is said to buy you roughly an hour of listening, which is a handy number if you're always forgetting to charge things overnight. The case itself charges over USB-C, weighs about 42g, and measures 50.4 x 50.4 x 32.6mm. Each earbud comes in at a featherlight 6.4g.
