The latest earbuds from Chinese technology company ACEFAST are an open-style design that clip-on to the outside of your ears.

While ACEFAST are no stranger to open-style earbuds, with models like the ACEFIT Air and ACEFIT Pro sitting around the outside of your ear rather than inside your ear canal, the new ACECLIP Pro take this open design to the next level. As the name suggests, the ACECLIP Pro clip-on to the edge of your ear, a design popularized by the like of Bose. However, unlike Bose, ACEFAST’s take on the design are launching at less than one tenth of the cost of the Ultra Open Earbuds.

Picture them as ‘anti-noise cancelling headphones’. The idea behind clip-on earbuds is to keep your ears clear to help you stay aware of your surroundings. They can also boost comfort, giving the wearer an open sound and feel, ideally without leaking too much noise to those around you.

Unboxing & design

Inside the box you’ll find the charging case, housing the earbuds, a USB-A to USB-C cable and an instruction manual. We’re checking out the light gold and white models. They also come in black. The light gold earbuds and color-matching matte finish case is a really nice cream color in person. Each earbud weighs just 6 grams. They are IP55 waterproof.

Interestingly, while the ‘ACEFAST’ logo is the right way up while the earbuds are in the charging case, due to the way they clip onto your ear, the logo is upside down when placed in your ears. All of the promo material from ACEFAST is AI generated imagery of people wearing them with the logo showing the right way up.

Image Credit: ACEFAST

Odd design choices aside, the design is comfortable and the earbuds do not interfere with my glasses as some open earbuds do. A fair amount of movement is available with the wire arm, however they are solid in place, even for exercise use. I find them most comfortable right on the outside of my ear, but they do sound better the closer to my ear canal and more snug they are.

The charging case is a skinny oval, about as thin as my AirPods 4 charging case, but larger in both other dimensions. With the earbuds inside, the charging case weighs 44g. The earbuds are held in place by relatively strong and satifying magents.

Pairing & setup

To pair the earbuds, you need to open the charging case, remove the insulation sticker between the earbuds and the case and place them back in the case. The buds then automatically go into pairing mode and connected with my iPhone quickly.

While they can be used right away, I installed the mobile app too for additional functionality. The app quickly identified the earbuds and showed the relevant controls.

The earbuds feature multipoint to simultaneously connect to two devices, for quick switching. With no button on the case and no multipoint control in the app, to pair to a second device, you need to turn off Bluetooth on the already connected device, which puts the earbuds into pairing mode, ready to connect to a second device. The ACECLIP Pro connected easily to my MacBook and seemlessly switched devices, based on the one actively playing audio.

Sound quality

Sound on the ACEFAST ACECLIP Pro is powered by a 20x8mm driver, with ACEFAST’s SonoLoop acoustic architecture directing sound to your ear canal. There’s also a microphone on board for phone calls. The earbuds use AI to reduce noise and focus in on your voice during calls.

Image Credit: ACEFAST

The earbuds sound okay. Obviously given their design and price, they’re not meant to compete with in-ear or over-ear headphones, nor more premium headphones, however they do a good job at their precise task. While they lack character when playing music, they sound fine for spoken word content, such as podcasts and audiobooks.

They do a decent job of not leaking too much sound. At a comfortable listening level, I can just about hear them at arm’s length.

Unfortunately one of the buds on one of my pairs buzzes. I tested the other pair and the issue did not persist, so it seems I just got a faulty unit.

Touch controls

The earbuds can be controlled via taps anywhere on either bud. You can assign controls to a double or triple tap on both the left and right earbud. Assignable controls include play/pause, next/previous track, volume up/down, voice assistant, game mode, answer/end/reject/cancel calls or none.

Unfortunately the earbuds do not feature the ability to automatically pause when removed from your ears.

Battery life

The ACEFAST ACECLIP Pro last for a respectable 7 hours on a single charge. This is increased to 28 hours when paired with the charging case too. A 10 minute quick charge provides up to 1.5 hours of additional use.

ACEFAST app

The ACEFAST app gives the earbuds additional functionality and customization. At the top of the app you’ll find the battery percentage of each bud. This is followed by ‘AI‘, which lists several AI tools such as conversation and translation features, but all of the options say I need activation via a code provided by customer service. ‘Outdoor Boost‘ seems to increase the volume of the earbuds. The ‘Equaliser‘ has three presets – ‘Original Sound‘, ‘Vocal‘ and ‘Subwoofer‘, as well as a custom 8-band EQ.

‘Button settings‘ lets you customize the left and right bud’s touch controls. ‘Game Mode‘ reduces the latency between your device and the headphones for a smooth gaming experience. ‘Schedule Shutdown‘ lets you set a timer until the buds switch themselves off, which is useful for those using them to sleep and not waking up with dead headphones. ‘Touch feedback sound‘ lets you toggle whether or not a chime is played when using the touch controls. ‘Find Device‘ plays a loud chime in either side to help you locate missing buds. The app also lets you update the firmware, reset the headphones or show the instructions. You can also find relaxation music and white noise sounds, for those using the headphones to study, work or in bed.

Price & availability

The ACEFAST ACECLIP Pro launched at just $35.55, but currently the coupon price on Amazon bring them down to just $20.65 for any of the three colors. While not perfect, if you need an open-style design, for spoken-word content, at $20 it’s hard to complain.

ACEFAST sent us two pairs of the ACECLIP Pro for review. No money has exchanged hands for our honest opinions. We may earn a commission for sales generated by the Amazon links above.