Apple has sold hundreds of millions of AirPods by perfecting a simple formula: tiny sealed buds that disappear into your ears and shut the world out. Open-ear earbuds attack the exact opposite idea. They sit outside your ear canal entirely, beaming sound toward your ears while leaving them physically open. And there is one thing this design does that no AirPods can match, no matter how good Apple’s transparency mode gets.
Watch the video above for the hands-on comparison, then read on for the full breakdown: how open-ear designs work, where each type wins, the best models on the market right now, and who should actually switch.
What open-ear earbuds actually are
Open-ear earbuds come in three main shapes, but they share one principle: nothing enters or seals your ear canal. Clip-on designs like the Shokz OpenFit series hook gently around the outer ear and rest a small speaker near the opening. Cuff-style buds like the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds clip onto the side of the ear like jewellery. Bone conduction models like the Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 skip the eardrum approach further and vibrate sound through your cheekbones, with a neckband connecting the two sides.
Because your ear canal stays open, ambient sound reaches your eardrums naturally, exactly as if you were not wearing earbuds at all. Your music or podcast simply layers on top of the real world. There is no processing, no microphones reconstructing your surroundings, and no battery drain from doing it.
The one thing AirPods cannot do
Here is the core of it: AirPods can only give you the world back artificially. Transparency mode on the AirPods Pro uses external microphones to pipe the outside world into your sealed ears. It is impressive technology, and for quick conversations it works fine. But it is still a simulation. It colours the sound, it adds a faint processing hiss in quiet rooms, it costs battery life, and some people find the sensation of sealed ears with piped-in audio genuinely unpleasant over long sessions.
Open-ear buds do not simulate awareness. They preserve it. A cyclist hears the car approaching from behind with true directional accuracy, not a microphone’s interpretation of it. A runner hears footsteps on the trail. An office worker hears their name called without toggling any modes. There is zero occlusion effect, that boomy “head in a barrel” feeling sealed buds create, because nothing is blocking the ear.
For safety-critical activities, this is not a preference, it is the whole product. Many jurisdictions and race organizers restrict or ban sealed earbuds for outdoor running and cycling for exactly this reason.
Where AirPods still win
Honesty requires the other side. Physics favours sealed ears for sound quality, and it is not close on bass. An open-ear driver radiates sound into open air, so low frequencies dissipate instead of pressurizing your ear canal. The best open-ear buds (Shokz’s flagship, Bose) have gotten shockingly good through large drivers and clever tuning, but side by side with AirPods Pro, the sealed buds deliver deeper, punchier bass every time.
Isolation is the other loss. Open-ear buds leak sound outward, so the person next to you on a quiet train will hear a faint tinny ghost of your podcast, and engine drone on a plane will walk all over your audio. AirPods Pro’s noise cancellation erases that world; open-ear buds surrender to it. If your main listening happens on transit, in open offices you want to tune out, or on planes, sealed buds with ANC remain the right tool.
Ecosystem matters too. AirPods’ pairing, device switching, spatial audio, and Find My integration across iPhone, Mac, and iPad remain unmatched for Apple users. Open-ear buds are catching up on multipoint and app control, but they cannot touch Apple’s vertical integration.
The best open-ear options right now
The pair tested in the video is the Linklike Air Earbuds, an open-ear design. Check the current price of the Linklike Air Earbuds on Amazon. For context on the wider category, the current benchmark is the Shokz OpenFit Pro, with 12-hour per-charge battery (50 hours with the case), Dolby Atmos support, IP55 water resistance, and Bluetooth 6.1. TechRadar rates it the best open-ear pair available, and it is the pick if sound quality matters to you within the open-ear constraint.
On a budget, the original Shokz OpenFit still delivers the core experience (7-hour battery, 28 hours with case) for significantly less, and the Nothing Ear (Open) lands around US$99 with an IP54 rating. For runners who want maximum awareness, the bone-conduction Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 (around US$180, IP55, 12-hour battery) remains the sport specialist. At the premium end, the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds (around US$299) win on comfort with their cuff design but cost more than AirPods Pro.
For context on Apple’s side: the just-launched AirPods 5 (US$149) use an open-style fit without silicone tips but still sit in the ear, and the AirPods Pro 3 (US$249) remain the sealed ANC flagship. Check the Linklike Air Earbuds on Amazon if you want to try the open-ear design from the video.
Who should switch, and who should not
Switch to open-ear if you run or cycle outdoors, work somewhere you need to hear people, wear glasses (no ear-canal pressure competing with frames), or find sealed buds uncomfortable over long days. The all-day comfort is genuinely transformative for people whose ears ache after hours of silicone tips.
Stay with AirPods if you fly often, commute on loud transit, crave bass, or live deep in Apple’s ecosystem and value the seamless device switching. Many people end up owning both: sealed buds for travel and focus, open-ear for workouts and the office. That is not a compromise, it is using the right tool for each job.