Sony LinkBuds S True Wireless Bluetooth Earbuds with Noise Canceling and 23 Hours Battery Life

I've been a fan of Sony's products for a long time (I own the now-discontinued MDR-X75 wired earphones, the WH-1000XM3 over-the-ear NC headphones, and now the Linkbuds S), and consume a lot of music. I also own the RHA TC2, the Soundcore Liberty 3 Pro, and Soundcore Life Note 3 - but somehow felt I was missing something until I got the Linkbuds S - bear with me. I feel it is a perfect mixture of all the audio products I own, of course, with a few compromises - 1. DO NOT get these if you are looking for a bass-heavy sound signature. These are warm sounding with a balanced frequency response 2. Might not be visually/aesthetically appealing - it is made of plastic with the case that has a creaking lid 3. Sloppy features which at times might not work - for example, I had the speak-to-chat feature on, and it constantly paused my movie while I was munching food Now for the good part - 1. Balanced sound signature with good highs, lows and mids - it is important that you get the right eartips to experience the wholeness in the sound (the WF-1000XM4, in comparison, is a lot bass-ier). However, you have custom equilizers that you can tweak to your liking (If you are unsure of your preference, there's threads on Reddit where people post their preferred EQ settings) 2. ANC - I did not expect the ANC to be this good. Again, super important to have the right sized eartips. I had these on during my commute to work, and I could barely hear anything except my music 3. Calls - great call quality except if you are taking calls at a place where multiple people are talking at the exact same time 4. Compact earbuds and pocketable case - the earbuds themselves are super light, and can be used for long hours without irritation (although would advise not to do so). The case is compact in comparison to the others, with a downside being its lower battery capacity 5. Many other cool features such as auto ambient sound control, speak-to-chat (works great sometimes), multi-point connection, Hi-Res audio, etc. at a price half of the 1000XM4 Got the earthy blue variant for ~8.5k INR, and am super happy I pulled the trigger.

I got this for 7.6k during the great Indian sale which is a steal!!! This comes very close to Sony's flagship tws, WF-1000XM4. The audio quality is mind blowing. The ANC is really good. You can say that it comes to about 90% of XM4's ANC capability. The battery life is decent but it doesn't matter to me much as I don't wear it continuously for more than 2 hrs and I put it back in the case after use. The comfort is great unlike the XM4 and you can wear it for a long time. It has a quick charge feature where a 5 min charge gives you 60 mins of playback. As mentioned by another reviewer, don't use the Equalizer in the Sony Headphones app. Install the Wavelet app and use its auto equalizer for Linkbuds S. The difference in quality is huge. Another useful feature is that you can connect to 2 devices at the same time. Do note that the right earbud is the primary unit and it consumes more power than the left one. There will be a slight difference in the battery to about 2 to 6% between both the earbuds. If you see a huge difference to about 12 to 20% or more, one of the earbuds is defective and you need to get it replaced. The only drawback I felt in this device is that during phone calls, the voice sounds mechanical and not natural. When I called my friend via the earbuds, he immediately asked me if I'm using some earphones or headphones as the clarity wasn't great. So if you are buying this device for calls, I will not recommend it. You can look at other premium devices like Samsung Buds 2 Pro, Airpods Pro 2, Bose QC 2, Oppo Enco X2 and the OnePlus Buds Pro 2. The latest Sony flagship, WF-1000XM5, is the best version of the XM4 and the Linkbuds S as it has incorporated all the positives from both devices. If you have the budget, then definitely go for the XM5.