Pros & Cons
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- Decent audio for open earbuds
- Almost perfect transparency
- Comfortable and secure fit
- Ample battery life
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- No wireless charging
- LDAC nearly halves battery life
EarFun Clip Open Ear Earbuds, Wireless Clip On Headphones, Adaptive Comfort with Secure Fit, Bluetooth 6.0, LDAC, Hi-Res Specs
| Connection Type | Bluetooth |
| True Wireless | |
| Type | Open-style earbuds |
| Water/Sweat-Resistant | |
| Wireless |
When staying aware of your surroundings matters more than top-tier audio, open-style earbuds shine. The $69.99 EarFun Clip buds clip securely to your ear, channeling audio into your ear canal without isolating you from the world. They handle both energetic workout tracks and podcasts with ease, offering satisfying sound even if they don’t reach audiophile-level precision. With a comfortable fit, long battery life, easy portability, and excellent transparency, they stand out as a reliable running companion. For those willing to spend a bit more, the $129.99 Edifier Lolliclip buds add versatility with effective active noise cancellation, earning our Editors' Choice award for open-style earbuds.
Design: Comfortable and Effectively Transparent
The EarFun Clip buds aren't terribly unique in the realm of clip-on, open earbuds. They conform to a style that places a small bud in the opening of your ear, wraps around the back of your ear with a thin linking arm, and then houses the battery and other elements in a larger section behind your ear. My test model was in silver-gray, and they're also available in white.
(Credit: Mark Knapp)The section of the bud that houses the driver is a small sphere that angles the speaker drivers into the ear canal without blocking the opening, ensuring almost perfect transparency for your surroundings. The linking arm is made of a silicone-coated nickel-titanium alloy. It's very flexible but still feels quite sturdy. It held firm even during testing, even with headbanging, without feeling like it was pinching my ears over time. This made the buds quite comfortable to wear all day.
The pad at the back is a flat oval that helps keep the buds in place. That’s key, because any shift in orientation or position can significantly affect sound quality. If the speaker grille of each bud doesn’t point directly into the ear canal, it can lower the volume and cut out bass frequencies. Unfortunately, this does mean that different ear shapes could get fairly different sound.
(Credit: Mark Knapp)On the rear section of each bud, there is a physical button at the top. With a simple pinch behind your ear, you can activate it for on-device controls. These controls respond to single, double, triple, and long presses.
Each bud fits a 10.8mm carbon fiber composite dynamic driver. This is actually ported on the opposite side to help cancel out some of the noise that escapes the ear, so people around you won’t hear as much of what you’re listening to, though the effect seems minimal. A small grille helps keep debris out of the EarFun Clip buds, which come with a respectable IP55 protection rating. Rain and sweat shouldn’t be an issue.
The charging case isn’t covered by that water protection. It’s a fairly simple little oval case that stows and the buds upright, making it easy to grab them out by their linking arms. The lid doesn’t close very firmly, and the magnetic hold on the buds isn’t strong, so they will eject from the case almost any time you drop it onto the ground. The case supports wired charging, but lacks wireless charging. It indicates charge levels with a small multi-colored light on the front.
The charging case weighs 1.3 ounces, and each bud weighs 0.2 ounces. The case adds 30 hours to the 10-hour battery life of the buds on their own, and just 10 minutes of charging can add 2.5 hours of listening back into the buds. That said, if you want to take advantage of the EarFun Clip’s LDAC support, you’ll be looking at just 5.5 hours of playback, or 22 hours total with the case.
The buds work with the AAC codec otherwise, but don’t support any AptX codecs, Bluetooth LE Audio, or LC3, even though they have Bluetooth 6.0. The buds support Google Fast Pair for quick setup and Bluetooth multipoint, but only when LDAC is disabled. Given that the buds are geared for more casual listening and situational awareness, LDAC's high fidelity doesn’t seem warranted for the EarFun Clip and probably won’t be worth the trade-offs in battery life and multipoint use.
App Experience: All the Basics Are Covered
The buds work with the EarFun app, which doesn’t require an account. The app provides a quick overview of battery levels and control over numerous features of the buds that aren’t available elsewhere. You can activate a lower-latency gaming mode, a mids-boosting Theater Mode, and a volume-reducing Privacy Mode that doesn’t seem to do anything more than lower the volume, which you can of course just use your volume buttons to do.
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The app provides a range of EQ presets. You can create your own custom settings with a 10-band equalizer, or let the My Sound Profile tool help you create a preset by testing your hearing at a variety of different frequencies. I have yet to find this latter feature compelling on an EarFun product, though.
(Credit: EarFun)You can customize or disable on-ear controls, setup multipoint connections, and enable LDAC in the app as well. There are also tools to locate lost buds if they’re nearby and to limit the maximum volume of the buds for hearing health.
This suite of settings and features is fairly typical for EarFun’s earbuds and those of many of its competitors.
Sound: Energetic, But Not Expansive
You won’t get deep sub-bass out of the EarFun Clip. Kendrick Lamar’s “Loyalty” shows the limitations, with a sub-bass line introduced at the 35-second mark that’s very quiet coming out of these buds, and the lowest notes are entirely inaudible. The vocals are loud and clear, and the drums have good punch, though the cymbals lack clarity and sparkle.
The presentation of the mids and upper bass frequencies is where the buds shine. The Knife’s “Silent Shout” is a good showcase of their strengths. The bass triplet, a constant undercurrent in the track, is steady and clear. And when the sub-bass quarter notes come in, they carry a good heft, as they sit just inside the range the buds can handle. The synth melody is energetic coming out of the drivers, as it should be, and the harmonized vocals phase back and forth nicely, both getting a clear presentation. But the upper frequencies are still slightly lacking. The many hissing, sizzling, and clapping sound effects in the track lack brilliance and therefore don’t have the bite that makes them such powerful punctuations to segments of the song.
(Credit: Mark Knapp)Bill Callahan’s “Drover” fits nicely into the frequency range that the EarFun Clip performs well in. His baritone vocals, the acoustic rhythm guitar, the electric guitar, and the fiddle all punch through the mix well. But with the track's weak presence and brilliance, the atmosphere and live feel are lost. The many cymbal hits that normally add some drama to the tune fall flat. And as the track reaches its climax, the mid-bass-heavy presentation can get a little muddy, with the drum boom becoming a bit too dominant.
With the lack of bass depth and high-end clarity, too much of the audio is focused on the middle frequencies. This makes for poor performance in orchestral music, such as John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary. The broad instrumentation becomes harder to distinguish. The strings and horns aren’t sharp enough to stand out, and the deep bass instruments are too muted.
Ultimately, these really aren’t meant to be critical listening buds, and their focus on upper bass and mids makes sense. They serve those frequencies well with plenty of volume, helping ensure you can hear them even against the external sound you’re letting in. This makes them useful for hearing your surroundings while still getting to listen to what you want. I had no trouble hearing a podcast while I ran along on a treadmill in a busy gym, and the parts of music that tend to help you keep rhythm while exercising will come through just fine. And next to basically any headphones or earbuds that cover the ear canal, the EarFun Clip will provide superior transparency.
The mics are surprisingly good, providing clear call quality without overcompressing your voice.