Earfun Clip Review

Introduction

The Earfun Clip joins the growing line of clip-on, open-ear earbuds that have emerged largely since Bose Ultra Open Earbuds ushered the new form factor in 2024.

Along with sitting on your ears in a lightweight and dainty fashion, the Clip promises high resolution audio support, a dedicated mode when swapping podcasts for gaming, all while keeping you in tune with the world around you.

The Clip promises to do all of that for a fraction of the price of Bose’s clip-on buds as well as many more high-profile alternatives. I enjoyed using EarFun’s larger OpenJump earbuds, so was hoping for more good with the Clip.

Price

The EarFun Clip officially launched in June 2025 priced at £79.99, putting it firmly in the affordable, but not quite budget category of open-ear earbuds. It’s already dropped to £59.99 if you buy them directly from EarFun’s website, pushing them a little closer to that budget status.

That makes them cheaper than most other clip-on, open-ear earbuds including the Bose Ultra Open (£250) and the solid-sounding Soundcore AeroClip (£129).

There’s also the Shokz OpenDot One at £179 / $199, so it’s by far one of the more affordable options in this new earbud category.

Design

• Clip-on design with single button controls
• Weigh less than 50g
• IP55 water and sweat resistant rating

As the name suggests, these buds clip to your ears and do so in a similar fashion to Amazfit’s Up buds, albeit the Clip is smaller in comparison. The larger element of the earbud sits behind your ear while a flexible cable positions the air conduction-powered speaker unit just in front of your ear.

These silver grey buds are light at just 5.7g per earbud, which may worry some that they could fly off, but that hasn’t been the case in my testing. I’d say the secureness of the fit overall has been very good, but when I’ve turned to them for workouts and things have gotten sweatier, the larger part of the earbud has the odd tendency to slightly slide down the ear.

As I said, it’s never fallen off, and if you’re sticking to it for listening on walks, at your desk or commutes, then they’re going to be absolutely fine.

In terms of its suitability for more rugged use, the buds do carry an IP55 rating, giving them protection against water and sweat. That doesn’t apply to the charging case, which is thankfully a pocketable size and keep those buds securely locked in place when charging

While not immediately obvious, EarFun does manage to include a single physical button on the top of each of the buds, which can be customised within the EarFun Audio app. That button will let you deliver single or multiple presses to adjust volume, skip tracks, summon your phone’s voice assistant and even re-dial a number for a call you’ve missed.

The controls in most listening scenarios work well, especially if you take the time to customise them. The positioning of them during more intense exercise is a bit more problematic to reach for and it’s the only situation where baking those controls into the outside of the earbuds would’ve been more favourable.

Features

• Up to 10 hours battery life

Dig into the features and head into the companion smartphone app and you’ll find the ability to toggle on a game mode to reduce audio latency, a privacy mode to lower volume and reduce sound leakage, a dual device connection mode and a useful find my headphone mode.

While it’s great to see EarFun hasn’t scrimped on features, I’d have happily taken less for a more memorable overall sound.

Battery life performance is a highlight for the EarFun Clip. They promise up to 10 hours of battery life of a single charge and with a fully charged case you’ll get a total of 40 hours. Switch on the LDAC mode, and that drops to 5.5 hours.

Similar clip-on buds like the Bose Ultra Open range from 4.5-7.5 hours depending on listening mode and the more expensive Soundcore AeroClip musters up to on average 8 hours. I’ve used these Clips for over an hour on numerous occasions at near top volume and battery drop was typically 10%. So those numbers seem spot on.

When you do need to charge them, they’re rapid, topping up from 0-100% in an hour. When the case gets flat, it takes 2 hours to charge in comparison and uses a USB-C-style charging cable to power that case back up.

Sound Quality

• Good but not best in class open-ear sound
• Custom and EQ presets available

Like EarFun’s OpenJump earbuds and many other open-ear earbuds, the Clip relies on air conduction technology to deliver sound. That’s achieved by placing speakers in close proximity to your ears while still keeping them free to hear other sounds in your environment. The biggest advantages of air versus bone conduction is the ability to offer more power and customisation, some of which the Clip delivers on.

I’ve tested many other clip-on earbuds including the Bose Ultra Open, Soundcore AeroClip, Huawei FreeClip and the Amazfit Up and while Earfun talks a big game with the promised sound, but comes up short on most of the competition.

EarFun uses a 10.8mm carbon fiber composite driver to deliver punchy bass, crisp details and that big sound associated with many air conduction open earbuds. These buds also support Sony’s LDAC audio codec to transmit high resolution audio from a compatible device. To use this mode, you’ll need to disable the multipoint connectivity support first and of course have a compatible device to stream that high resolution audio to them.

An in-app equalizer with a pretty sizable collection of presets as well as a custom mode is always good to see to get something that works best for your preferred sound. Whether I was switching between presets or simply settling for the default mode, I found it challenging to get a combination that gives you that sound that better other open-ear earbuds.

On Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy I switched between the dance, hip hop and bass boost preset modes to get something more fitting. What I got was some decent power, a pretty muddy bass profile, mids that were more recessed and the kind of grainy treble I didn’t think made for a polished listening experience.

On Jill Scott’s Golden, it was a similar story. Trebles are grainy and balance just seems a bit off. There’s instances where the Clip does show promise. Sam Cooke’s Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen showcased smoother, more enjoyable mids, but those instances where the Clip truly shined were few and far between. I found them more fitting for listening to podcasts and audiobooks where it does a nice job of bringing the natural warmth of voices to the forefront. It’s a similar story for handling calls via the dual-microphone setup, without ever offering the best in call clarity for open-ear earbuds.

Another key testing ground for open-ear earbuds is just how well they manage to retain what good sound they can offer when there’s more sound around you to contend with. I’d say the Clip does a satisfactory job on that front. I managed to take them out on some pretty blustery, windy outings and those gusts didn’t entirely drown out Spotify or Apple Music sessions. I definitely would’ve taken a bit more power, however going loud does introduce more audio leakage.

Should you buy it?

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