To help us provide you with free impartial advice, we may earn a commission if you buy through links on our site. Learn more
- Amazingly comfortable
- Sound pretty good
- Compact charging case
- Light on bass
- Call quality is mediocre
For most of us, the best wireless earbuds are all about cutting out extraneous noises, shutting out the clamour of our surroundings and creating a bubble of serenity. But some want the opposite: to hear what’s going on around them while listening to music or podcasts, which is why open-fit, bone conduction, and other alternative designs are becoming increasingly popular.
The Huawei FreeClip 2 are the latest to make a bid for your cash, the second generation of what Huawei is calling its “open earbuds” – headphones designed to let outside sound in while allowing you to enjoy what you’re listening to.
Like the first Huawei FreeClip, these are unusual in appearance. In fact, once you’ve clipped them on, they look a bit like earrings from a distance. They’re available in blue, rose gold, white and the black pictured in this review, and although they will divide opinion, I think they look pretty cool. Despite their outlandish appearance, they work superbly, producing clear, balanced audio while allowing you to hear exactly what’s going on around you.
What do you get for the money?
The FreeClip 2 will set you back £180, and they build on the success of the previous model, which Andy White said delivered “fantastic environmental awareness and an incredibly comfortable fit”. The FreeClip 2 work in largely the same way.
Audio is produced by a small sphere, which rests in the lower part of your ears, leaving your ear canals free to pick up other ambient sounds. This sphere (the “acoustic ball”) is connected to a larger bean-shaped component by a semi-circular piece of flexible steel (the C-bridge), and the whole arrangement clips securely in place on each ear like a pair of clip-on earrings – except they’re a lot more comfortable and rest perfectly in place, barely exerting any pressure at all.
Despite looking almost identical to the original FreeClip, there are loads of upgrades here. For starters, Huawei has swapped the rubber coating on the C-bridge with a new “liquid silicone” material that it says is more comfortable. The earphones are lighter at 5.1g each (versus 5.6g), and Huawei has also tweaked the design of the “comfort bean” at the rear to provide a more comfortable, stable fit.
The case is smaller and neater than before, and square rather than oval in shape. And both case and earphones together deliver more battery life, totalling 38 hours (compared with 36 hours in the older model), while the earphones themselves last 9 hours on a single charge, versus 8 hours with the original FreeClip.
There’s also wireless charging, should you want that particular convenience, and there’s support for Bluetooth 6, which delivers multipoint pairing. Automatic left-right detection means it doesn’t matter which way around you wear the FreeClip 2 – they’ll detect which ear each one is in and switch channels accordingly.
Plus, the driver architecture has also been revamped, with a new 10.8mm dual-diaphragm design that delivers double the perceived bass and volume.
Elsewhere, a new slide touch gesture lets you adjust the volume by swiping a fingertip up and down the outside of the bean behind the right ear. That’s in addition to the single, double and triple taps for various functions – all customisable – and head-gesture recognition that lets you answer and reject calls by nodding or shaking your head.
Finally, Huawei has introduced a new companion app: Huawei Audio. Whereas before, you had to use the Huawei AI Life app to manage settings and firmware updates, the FreeClip 2 get an audio app all to themselves.
What do they do well?
The Huawei FreeClip 2’s design means that audio quality will never match earphones that fill our ear canals with silicone or comply tips. Those headphones rely on creating a seal to produce prodigious bass and rich mids.
But that’s not to say the FreeClip 2’s audio quality is bad, far from it. I’ve been wearing these for a month or so on and off, and I’ve found them to be perfectly acceptable for listening to everything from music on my running workouts to podcasts on my commute.
There still isn’t a huge amount of bass, but you get just enough to soften the edges of whatever you’re listening to, and there’s enough volume to drown out external noise, should you need to do that. As I write this, I’m listening to Diana Krall singing All or Nothing at All, and both her voice and the double bass are rendered in a surprisingly convincing fashion. Lots of body and a clearly defined low end. We are not talking a tinny, harsh mess here.
And once I’d got over my initial embarrassment of wearing what amounted to audio jewellery, I completely fell for them: they have to be the most comfortable headphones I’ve ever worn. They hang in your ears but don’t dangle, exert no pressure at all on your ears, and, although I had been worried they’d jiggle around as I moved, the fit was super secure; they didn’t budge when I took them out on a run.
I found these a lot more comfortable to wear while working out than the Shokz around-the-neck bone-conduction headphones I’ve previously used for running, and they feel more secure than – dare I say it – the Apple AirPods Pro 3. I never felt they were at risk of pinging out of my ears, and the IP57 rating means you can be sure they’ll shrug off all but the most violent of weather conditions. The case isn’t quite as weather resistant at IP54, but it doesn’t really need to be.
What’s more, the touch controls and gestures work brilliantly. It’s always good to have volume controls to hand – I hate it when manufacturers omit this – and it’s neat that you can tap anywhere on each earpiece for play/pause, skip and answering calls. There’s even a decent amount of customisation available via the app.
What could they do better?
I feel kinda mean saying it because to do better, the FreeClip 2 would have to subvert the laws of physics, but despite improvements, bass is the FreeClip 2’s Achilles heel.
While I enjoyed listening to the double bass on jazz tracks, the synths on Max Cooper’s classic electronic anthem, Perpetual Motion, just don’t sound great. That isn’t exactly surprising given that track’s reliance on heavy, low-down tones, but even so, I’d prefer a little more warmth and body to the sound.
Another thing to be aware of is that when you pump up the volume to maximum, the EQ profile changes automatically and becomes harder, harsher and the bass all but disappears; frankly, it’s horrible to listen to and I’d caution you to avoid doing this.
The same can be said for the microphone quality, which I was disappointed by. Huawei says it has improved voice pickup through the use of a new NPU (neural processor unit) inside the headphones and the addition of a bone-conduction sensor to help isolate your voice in noisy environments. However, while the headphones pick up your voice clearly enough and cut out background noise with impressive effectiveness, the sound quality itself is scratchy and harsh.
Finally, it should be noted that, while the Huawei Audio companion app is readily available on the Apple App Store and Samsung Galaxy Store, it isn’t on Google Play, so for most Android handsets, you’ll have to go through the faff of downloading an APK and sideloading to get it on your phone.
Should you buy the Huawei FreeClip 2?
Despite this niggle, I feel happy recommending the Huawei FreeClip 2. If you can get past the look of them and you prefer a pair of headphones that let audio in instead of sealing you off from the outside world, they tick pretty much every possible box.
They are incredibly comfortable to wear, they sound pretty good given the restrictions placed on them by their design, battery life is excellent, and the control system they use is both practical and flexible. And while they haven’t inspired me to get my ears pierced, I must say the look of the FreeCip 2 has grown on me over time.
No, they won’t compete with a pair of AirPods Pro 3 or Sony WF-1000XM5 for pure sound quality, and they aren’t the best headphones for wearing on the London underground or a noisy flight. But for workouts, light music listening and podcasts when you’re pottering around the house on your own, they’re the bees’ knees.
