EarFun Clip 2 open-earbuds review: Good sound, but little to stand out

Open earbuds can be purchased for as low as $30, but of course, sound quality and creature comforts would be where you’d have to make compromises. For $80, the EarFun Clip 2 offer good quality audio with clear differentiation between frequencies, and a couple of nifty features to boot. The battery life is solid, and the physical buttons make controlling audio much easier. The form factor mostly prevents them from getting oily or dirty like in-ear earbuds, but the Clip 2 in particular have a tight clip around the ears, which makes long hours of use a bit uncomfortable. The AI translation is nothing special and shouldn’t be why you purchase these earbuds.

Overall, the Clip 2 don’t really offer anything unique in a market that’s flooded with open earbud options from the likes of Baseus, Shokz, Soundcore, and premium offerings from Bose and Sony. That being said, they are capable of competing with the more expensive offerings in terms of audio quality without costing as much.

The EarFun Clip 2 open earbuds are priced at $80, but the company is offering a launch discount of 25% (apply page coupon + code EFC2PR01), bringing them down to $60. They are available via Amazon and the company website. For now, it looks like there is only a single black color option available.

The open earbud design of the Clip 2 earbuds is much like its predecessor, as well as its competitor, the Baseus Inspire XC1. The Clip 2s have a bigger battery in each earbud and are only 0.5 grams heavier, despite being smaller than the Inspire XC1. That, however, introduces a comfort issue in that the Clip 2 earbuds are not as comfortable during long hours of use. They clip onto the ear a bit tighter, and there is no silicon padding on the in-ear side, which leads to slight pain after a couple of hours of use. They no doubt stay in place even with heavy movement, but that comes at the cost of long-term comfort.

Coming to audio quality and features, for the price, the EarFun Clip 2 sound great. Like the EarFun Air Pro 4+ we reviewed, the ‘Rock’ preset offers a balanced listening experience like the default one, but is more pronounced. Overall, the sound output is nothing to write home about, but the 12mm Dual-Magnetic Titanium driver enables what EarFun calls BassSurge, Hi-Res Audio Wireless support, and LDAC. As for BassSurge, the ‘Bass Boost’ preset equalizer that has been tuned for “BassSurge” tones down the highs and mids quite a bit to boost the bass, but there is still no thump. Of course, open earbuds like these can’t deliver the bass levels of in-ear earbuds, but even still, the Inspire XC1 do a much better job at that. Understandably so, since they’re more expensive and have been tuned by Bose.

We faced no issues with calling either. Callers we’re able to listen clearly with very little outside noise coming through. The four mics with noise canceling do their job pretty well.

LDAC works as expected, and we noticed slightly improved audio output when paired with the Pixel 9 Pro XL, and LDAC enabled in the Developer options. With LDAC turned on, dual device connection cannot be used. Speaking of which, pairing with two devices – the Pixel and a MacBook Air M4 – worked as advertised, with the earbuds switching to the source with active audio automatically. However, we noticed that after taking the earbuds out of the case and them automatically connecting to both devices, playing music on the phone didn’t send audio to the earbuds. Disconnecting from the MacBook Air started sending audio from the phone again, which indicates that they were falsely detecting audio input from the MacBook Air even though nothing was playing. Once disconnected and reconnected to the MacBook Air, they worked as they should. But the problem returns often.

EarFun is also advertising integrated AI Translation through the app. In our testing, it didn’t really work as intended, as the translated audio wouldn’t come through the earbuds. Without that, it’s just a translator app, so you’re better off using Google Translate. Also, the Real-time translation mode is only free for a limited time.