Speaker 1: Hey folks, so these are B’S new ultra open earbuds and they have one of the most unique and unusual designs of any earbuds I’ve seen over the last several years. They literally clip onto the side of your ears and feature an open design with micro speakers that fire sound into your ears while also allow you to hear what’s going on around you [00:00:30] at $300. They’re rather pricey, but let’s jump right in the review so I can tell you about my experience wearing them and I’m also going to test them out on a few of my colleagues here in the office to see what they think. So stick around for that.
Speaker 1: Now, these aren’t Bose’s first open earbuds. A few years ago it released its [00:01:00] sports open earbuds. They’re among the first ear hook style true wireless buds to feature an open design and despite sounding very good for open earbuds, they kind of bombed because they just weren’t that comfortable and had a clergy charging situation. The Bose seems to have learned from its mistakes. Like I said, the design of the ultra open earbuds is rather unique and the bud has two parts to it. The barrel where the electronics are housed and the speaker driver unit and they’re joined together by a flexible rubber joint. You put the barrel on the back of your ear and [00:01:30] then wrap the rubber part around the side of your ear with the driver element placed over the opening of your ear canal. The rubber joint feels durable, but I just can’t tell you how it’ll hold up over time.
Speaker 1: I do think Bose, which is known for having very good customer service, would probably give you a new pair of buds if it failed. For some reason, Bose says the earbud should sit at a 45 degree angle, but you can slide it up and down your ear until it feels most comfortable. You can also play some music while you’re making the adjustments because the sound [00:02:00] does change a bit with the placement of the bud and you’ll want to optimize both the fit and the sound quality, which is about as good as you’re going to get for open earbuds. I figured out how to get them on and off pretty quickly and after I got used to how they fit, I did find them quite comfortable. They may clip on but they don’t clamp and they are relatively lightweight at 6.35 grams per bud. By comparison, the iPods Pro two way in at 5.4 grams per bud.
Speaker 1: The idea is that once you get them on, you should be able to wear them throughout [00:02:30] the day and kind of forget that you’re wearing them. That said, you may find yourself making little adjustments after wearing them for a while. To alleviate any minor discomfort, there’s a control button on the top of the barrel of each bud and it’s easy to find the button and pause your music with a single click. If you want to have a conversation with someone or answer a call, you click it twice to advance the track or end a call three times to skip back and press it. Hold the button down on the right bud to raise volume or lower it bike holding down the button on the left bud. [00:03:00] Now of course, everyone has different ears and people can be pretty particular about the types of earbuds that they’ll wear and how they fit. These are obviously designed for folks who don’t like having noise isolating buds jammed into their ears and want to keep their ears open to the world. But before I dig into their sound quality and voice calling performance, let’s have some people here in the office give them a try and get their reactions. And don’t worry, I’ve got some alcohol wipes here, so I’ll keep things nice and sanitary. Let’s go.
Speaker 2: This is a very unique design.
Speaker 3: It feels like there’s a bug [00:03:30] on my ear.
Speaker 2: Oh, this takes some finesse.
Speaker 4: Oh, it’s nice. It’s like a little rolling thing to give you the space to put it behind your ear.
Speaker 3: I could feel that it’s open so it doesn’t feel like anything’s plugging up my ear, which is very annoying with a lot of earbuds.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think they’re more comfortable. Nothing in my ear.
Speaker 4: This feels so weird.
Speaker 6: I have piercing up here. It’s not bothering me, it doesn’t touch it. I’m wearing my glasses. It’s not even touching it either. It’s pretty flexible. I’m shaking my head as I do [00:04:00] this. It works pretty well.
Speaker 2: This sounds great and it’s not blocking me from hearing other things, but it’s pretty loud still.
Speaker 5: It almost feels like it’s coming from further away like it’s playing in the room versus just blasting into my ear.
Speaker 3: The sound kind of feels like it’s background music instead of music that’s right there in your ear.
Speaker 4: It’s pretty loud in my ear without it actually being in my ear, which is really dope.
Speaker 1: And you’re talking [00:04:30] loud
Speaker 4: Too, and I’m talking loud. I feel like I’m talking regular.
Speaker 6: I like it. I can jogging it, I can do, I can do box it. It works.
Speaker 2: It’s $300. Something to think about.
Speaker 1: Okay, so there you have it. As you can see from some of your reaction, people seem to be pretty impressed with sound. Like I said, when it comes to sound, these are about as good as you get for open earbuds, which typically don’t have the base response of voice isolating earbuds [00:05:00] like Bose’s, quiet comfort ultra earbuds. In fact, from what Bose tells me, these have the same drivers as those QC ultra earbuds. However, that doesn’t mean they sound as good. You’re just not going to get the same powerful base even if you get the drivers to sit at an optimal spot in your ear. But there is ample base, good clarity, and some nice openness to the sound. That said, like other open earbuds, these aren’t going to sound great in noisy environments because your ears are left open. I tried them in the New York City subway, for example, and [00:05:30] yeah, I could hear my music, but it did get a bit drown out by all the external noise.
Speaker 1: Bose has a feature that you can activate in the Bose music app for iOS and Android that automatically adjust the volume to your surroundings. It’s also worth noting that I had no trouble hearing callers when walking around the noisy streets of New York. Bose is highlighting how the buds leak very little sound with open earbuds. If you play them loud, people around you tend to be able to hear what you’re listening to. I use these buds in a quiet room with people sitting about six [00:06:00] feet away and they said they only heard a very faint sound coming from the buds, so that’s a nice feature. To be clear, these are not noise canceling earbuds, but they do feature bose’s immersive audio for music. That’s the same feature found in the QC Ultra Earbuds and QC Ultra headphones, which arguably have the best noise canceling on the market right now.
Speaker 1: Like with those models, these budds have head tracking, so you can set the immersive audio for still mode that fixes the sound or motion mode that follows your head movements engaging. It does enhance [00:06:30] the sound a bit from the standard stereo mode, but I think it makes a more pronounced difference with the quiet comfort models. It’s also worth noting that engaging immersive audio significantly reduces battery life. The ultra open earbuds are rated for up to 7.5 hours at moderate volume levels, but that number drops around 4.5 hours with immersive audio on the charging case, provides an additional 19.5 hours battery life and has a quick charge feature, but no wireless charging option. Well, Bose isn’t marketing these at sports Earbuds. They’re IPX four splashproof [00:07:00] and can be used for running biking and working out at the gym. They really did fit my ear securely and they’re good for those who want to hear traffic around them while running or biking.
Speaker 1: For safety reasons, I could see Bose doing a slightly more ruggedized version of the buds and sportier colors and calling them the ultra open sports earbuds. Regardless of that, we could soon see more color options beyond the black and white versions available. Now, the QC Ultra Earbuds for instance, already come in light blue as an exclusive color on bose.com. Finish [00:07:30] up by talking about the voice calling performance and a few things I’d like to see in the buds but currently aren’t there. As far as I can tell, they have very similar voice calling performance to the QC Ultra earbuds. That is to say it’s good caller said they could hear me clearly, but the background noise reduction could be slightly better. You can judge for yourself from this sample call. Alright, I’m going to test all here with fellow editor Josh Goldman. Josh,
Speaker 7: I’m recording this call through the internet, so there’s a bit of compression, but [00:08:00] I’ve got a lot of cars going on around me. I’m in the streets in New York City here. How do I sound?
Speaker 8: You sound pretty clear. I don’t hear any cars at all except for the occasional horn or something, but overall you sound clear. You sound like you’re in a room and there is some digital compression sound and every once in a while, like I said, there’s a burst of sound, but overall you sound pretty good.
Speaker 1: Finally, here are a few things I [00:08:30] think are missing, like the QC Ultra earbuds. These currently don’t have multipoint Bluetooth pairing, which allows you to pair the buzz to two devices simultaneously. They do a decent job with manual switching between devices, but you expect multipoint in a pair of 300 earbuds and Bose has said it is working on adding the feature to both the QC Ultra earbuds and this model, and I’d expect to see a firmware upgrade later this year for both those buds and these that adds boldy point and perhaps other features along with some performance tweaks. The buds are also missing [00:09:00] ear detection sensors. That means when you take them off your ears, your music doesn’t automatically pause. Can use a single bud independently if you want, but some sort of auto pause feature would be nice. I also think these should have something along the lines of Sony Speak to chat and Apple’s conversation awareness modes when activated, those modes automatically pause what you’re listening to when you start talking to someone for this type of earbud that Bose hopes you’ll wear all day.
Speaker 1: That’s a convenient feature. Aside from those small gripes, my only [00:09:30] complaint would be about the price. $300 is a lot to pay for these buzz. As unique as they are, I do think the price is a bit artificially high and we should pretty quickly see them on sale for $250 and probably less during Amazon Prime days and during the holiday buying season. But lemme know what you think about the ultra open ear buds in the comment section below. I particularly want to know what you think about their design and if you found this video informative at all, hit the like button and subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already. I’m David Connie for cnet. Thanks [00:10:00] for watching.
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