Back in December, Huawei officially launched the FreeClip, its latest pair of premium earbuds that also happen to be open-ear earbuds. With its hefty price tag, the device is competing with other high-end earphones such as the AirPods Pro and the like, so you might be wondering about how they sound and how they function with their unique design.
In case you’re wondering what I’m referring to when I say “unique design”, I’m obviously talking about they look like thick earrings with a big bean at the back. Huawei’s design choice is unconventional, to say the least, but does it actually add value to the product or is it an unnecessary gimmick?
What Is It?
The FreeClip is a pair of open-ear earbuds, meaning that they go the opposite direction of most earbuds these days that advertise complete isolation with highly-engineered active noise cancellation. Instead, they’re meant to let you hear the world around you while you’re wearing them.
Each earbud is made up of three main components, namely the Acoustic Ball, the C-bridge, and the Comfort Bean. The Acoustic Ball contains 10.8 mm dual-magnet driver units to deliver the actual audio to your ears. Meanwhile, the C-bridge connects the ball to the Comfort Bean that rests on the back of your ears, all weighting just 5.6g.
Is It Any Good?
Despite these earphones essentially having zero noise isolation, they somehow manage to get decently loud and the sound quality is on par with other devices at this price point. Whether it’s listening to music or watching videos, I never felt the need to switch to other earbuds the entire time I’ve been testing out the FreeClip.
True to their desired function, you can easily hear everything around you as the Acoustic Ball doesn’t go inside your ear canal or cover it up; it just sits snugly near your ear canal. This means that you can be aware of your surroundings while you’re playing something and when you pause, you don’t even have to take it off to have conversations with people.
For controls, you can double or triple-tap any of the three components to play, pause, end calls, skip songs, and bring up your phone’s voice assistant. All of this can be set up through the Huawei Life app, although you unfortunately can’t make any custom actions.
Another cool feature of the FreeClip is auto-switch left and right. This makes the earbuds interchangeable and they will automatically detect and switch the left and right channels regardless of which orientation you choose to put them in. There is even a low-latency mode for gaming and smart wear detection.
The battery life is a big plus, lasting up to eight hours on a single charge and a total of 36 hours with the charging case, which also supports wireless charging. As for protection, the earbuds are rated at IP54 for dust and water resistance.
One of the main concerns of open-back or open-ear designs is the sound bleeding, as in, “how much can the people around me hear what I’m listening to?” The answer: barely anything. This is because the FreeClip has ANC in a sense, only instead of cancelling out the noises around you, it uses reverse sound waves to cancel out any sound coming from the earbuds to minimise leakage.
I’ve tested this around several people and despite me playing songs at a reasonably high volume, they all said they either couldn’t hear anything coming from the FreeClip or, at most, they could hear barely-audible sounds in quiet environments.
What’s The Catch?
While I’ve been singing praises of the FreeClip, it is far from flawless. The biggest one would be the fact that I don’t see the need for an open-ear design when I can use earbuds that have both ANC and a really good transparency mode. While no transparency mode can beat uncovered ears, there are just moments in my day, such as my train and bus commute, where I want to shut the world out. So yeah, it was annoying not having that option.
Of course, while I may not be its target demographic, there must be a sizeable chunk of consumers out there who actually want to be able to hear cars honking while grooving to Post Malone, or else companies wouldn’t be making these. Regarding its appearance, it’s definitely a product that will make its wearer stand out — which can either be good or bad depending on your fashion sense.
Lastly, while most of its features work flawlessly, its dual-connection is a bit buggy in certain circumstances. It can switch between audio sources just fine when it’s connected to two smartphones, but when it’s connected to a smartphone and a laptop, the switching can be inconsistent at times. On the other hand, the smart wear detection does work just fine, but it takes a beat longer to pause and play than I’m used to.
Should I Buy It?
The Huawei FreeClip is definitely an interesting product that manages to pull off good performance that outshines any hesitancy you might get from its quirky design. They’re surprisingly comfortable to wear all day long to the point where there are times that I forget I’m wearing them even when I’m talking to people.
The comfort combined with the durable battery life and my ears being uncovered lets me put them on in the morning and not really even think about taking them off most of the day. The auto-connection and controls even work well with my iPhone.
While there’s not much I can complain about the FreeClip, the fundamental question you have to ask yourself before grabbing a pair is: do you really want to be aware of your surroundings while consuming content? If your answer happens to be a resounding “yes”, then you can’t go wrong with these. If not, there are plenty of other earbuds with good transparency mode features.
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