Looking for Bose Ultra Open Earbuds that don’t cost $300? This new pair of earbuds will get you a similar experience for just over $50.

Chinese audio company EarFun have been on a role this year. We’ve recently review the Air 2 NC and Air Pro 4 in-ear buds, as well as the Wave Life and Tune Pro over-ear headphones. With a range of headphones, such as over-ear, in-ear and sport-focused open-ear options, as well as speakers, the latest product launched this week are EarFun’s first clip-on earbuds. We’ve seen other companies take on this category, such as Bose with the Ultra Open Earbuds.

Unboxing

The EarFun Clip come in a compact package, with the box containing an instruction manual, short USB-A to USB-C cable and the earbuds themselves housed in the charging case.

Design

The EarFun Clip come in one color – Silver Grey. The charging case and outer edge of the earbuds are a sleek gunmetal gray, while the rest of the earbud is black. The left earbud has a small silver element, while the right has a red element, to help you easily identify the correct orientation at a glance. The charging case has a small LED indicator on the front that displays battery status and a pairing button on the bottom, next to the USB-C port.

The earbuds themselves are tiny and super lightweight at just 5.7g per bud. With the fairly average-sized case, they weight 49.2g. The earbuds feature a C-shaped rubber hook that is flexible. They clip around the outer edge of your ear, holding on strong enough that they won’t fall off, while loose enough to not cause discomfort. This keeps you ear canal free to hear your surroundings. Useful for wearing during exercise or other situations that require open ears. Even a head shake won’t dislodge the earbuds from position. It’s easy to forget the earbuds are there, even after long periods wearing them. Sitting just below my glasses arms, the earbuds do not interfere with glasses.

The earphones are IP55 water and sweat resistant. The charging case is not water resistant.

Set up

The EarFun Clip connect over Bluetooth 6.0, for low power consumption. They support multipoint for connection to two devices simultaneously and quick switching. Google Fast Pair gives Android users one-touch pairing.

When opening the case, the earbuds automatically enter pairing mode, however if your earbuds are brand new, you’ll need to be sure to remove the insulating film between the buds connectors and the charging case, before placing them back in the case to pair. Connection to my iPhone via Bluetooth was easy. Once paired, I opened up the EarFun Audio app, where the new earbuds were instantly recognised. Multipoint can be easily set up in the app and it was a stress-free experience to pair to my Mac. Switching between the two devices was quick and easy as expected. After putting them in and pulling them back out of the charging case, the earbuds instantly reconnected to both of my devices.

There are voice prompts to let you know what mode the earbuds are in. The volume and language for these prompts can be customized in the app.

Sound

The EarFun Clip have a 10.8mm carbon fiber composite dynamic driver in each bud. There’s also LDAC support on Android and they are technically Hi-Res Audio Wireless certified. There are also two AI-enhanced microphones for calls.

However regardless of fancy codecs and certifications, the earbuds sound just how you’d expect $50 earbuds that aren’t actually in your ear to sound. They sound okay. An improvment over phone speakers, but not by much. There is very little low-end, even with ‘BassSurge’ enabled, and are therefore more suited to spoken-word content, such as podcasts and audiobooks.

They get loud enough to hear content over surroundings. I had them on around 80% volume most of the day in the office. I fear they may not be loud enough for particularly noisy environments. There’s a reverse sound wave system that cancels out some of the noise leakage, which does a decent job, even at full volume.

Controls

There is a physical button on what ends up being the top of each earphone when worn. A single press, multiple presses and long press can be customized on each earbud to play/pause, next track, previous track, volume up, volume down, summon the voice assistant, answer/end calls, reject calls or transfer calls.

Unlike some earphones, the EarFun Clip do not play/pause automatically when inserted or removed from the ear.

Battery life

With LDAC disabled, the EarFun Clip last up to 10 hours on a single charge. The case has enough power to charge the earphones from empty to full three times, for a total of 40 hours of playback. A 10-minute quick charge will provide 2.5 hours of listening. The charging case supports USB-C and wireless charging.

App

While the earbuds can be connected and start playing instantly, the app provides more control and customization of certain features.

Game Mode reduces the latency to 50ms for gaming. Theater Mode, described as expanding the soundstage doesn’t seem to do much to the overall sound beyond increasing the volume slightly. Surge Bass slightly increases the low-end at the expense of overall volume. There’s also a Privacy Mode which quickly reduces the volume to reduce leak and hear your surroundings. Under the Equalizer menu, there are many presets to boost and reduce certain attributes, or tune the earbuds to specific genres. There’s a custom 10-band equalizer and a Sound Profile section where you can take a hearing test to boost or reduce centain frequencies. Via the app, you can also customize the controls, setup multipoint, find the headphones by playing noises through either bud, update the firmware, and alter other settings.

There’s a Discover tab in the app, which lets you play and customize white noise for help sleeping or focusing.

Pricing and availability

The EarFun Clip launched this week and are available to order now on Amazon. They are currently listed at $69.99, but a 20% off coupon, plus the discount code ‘EFCPPR01‘ entered at checkout will bring the final price down to $52.49. While they may not produce the thumping bass of in-ear buds or over-ear headphones, the EarFun Clip produce a perfectly adequate sound for their price and design.

The link above is an affiliate link. RouteNote may earn a commission on sales generated. The EarFun Clip were sent to us by EarFun for review. We were not paid to give our opinions on the product.