Sony’s latest wireless earbuds have donut holes in them (on purpose)

Enlarge / Sony's latest true wireless earbuds, the LinkBuds. Their drivers are shaped like rings in order to allow ambient sound in naturally, the idea being to let you stay persistently aware of your surroundings. They look like donut holes, so here's an actual donut for scale. (credit: Jeff Dunn)

On Tuesday, Sony announced its newest set of fully wireless earbuds, the Sony LinkBuds.

The earbuds feature a unique "open ring" design built to let in ambient noise alongside your music, with the goal of keeping wearers aware of their surroundings at all times. That puts the earbuds in opposition to Sony's other high-profile wireless earbuds, the more awkwardly named WF-1000XM4, which feature active noise cancelation to block out as much external sound as possible.

The LinkBuds cost $180 and are available to order starting today, with shipping beginning on February 17. I've had the earbuds on hand for a few days now; here are some impressions from my testing.

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