Bose Sport Open Earbuds Truly Wireless Headphones Review

The Bose Sport Open Earbuds have an unusual design. They have thick ear-hooks to hold the headphones in place, as the earbud sits just outside of your ear canal. They look a bit bulky, though, and only come in black.

The Bose Open Earbuds are decently comfortable. Once you're placed them correctly, you don't really feel them and they don't move around too much. That said, you won't be able to wear them if you're already wearing glasses or have a mask on. They're also quite big, can put pressure behind your ear, and don't have a very malleable design, so people who have bigger earlobes may find them a bit more tricky to wear.

The Bose Sport Open Earbuds have alright controls. The right earbud has most of the controls. Using the button, you can play or pause audio with one press, skip a track forward with two presses, skip a track backward with three presses, and a long press turns them on, off, or accesses pairing mode. You can also slow tap the touch-sensitive surface to raise the volume. The left bud allows you to check the battery level with one press of its button, activate voice assistant with a long press, and lower the volume by slow tapping the touch surface. Both touch surfaces are responsive and you can also turn them off if it bothers you. The buttons are responsive, and there are voice prompts when connected, as well as a battery level when powered on.

The Bose Sport Open Earbuds aren't very malleable, so we can't properly test them using our rig. However, as their design doesn't really cover the ear, we don't expect them to trap heat and their average temperature difference should be negligible.

The Bose Sport Open Earbuds are outstandingly portable. They're a bit bulkier than traditionally designed truly wireless headphones. They should still fit in most pockets, though.

The Bose Sport Open Earbuds have a good case. It's made of plastic with a fabric inner covering. It has a magnet to keep it closed. However, the case won't turn off or recharge the headphones, so you need to remember to turn them off before putting them in their case.

The Bose Sport Open Earbuds have a great build quality. They're made of a plastic composite, which makes them feel sturdy and durable. They're also rated IPX4 for water resistance, although we don't currently test for this.

These headphones are impressively stable. However, it depends a lot on the shape and size of your ears. While they shouldn't fall off during moderate physical exercise, you may experience the feeling that they could fall off.

• Bose Sport Open Earbuds headphones
• USB-A proprietary charging cradle
• Carrying case
• Manual

As the Bose Open Earbuds sit outside of the ear canal and they have an open-back design, they really struggle to reproduce low-bass, so genres like EDM and hip-hop lack thump and rumble. That said, they have a neutral mid-range, which helps vocal-centric content sound clear and accurate. Unfortunately, they lack any sound customization features to help tweak their sound.

These headphones have an excellent frequency response consistency. While there are small deviations in bass and treble delivery, you should be able to achieve a consistent sound if you take the time to adjust them each time you use them.

The Bose Sport Open Earbuds have bad bass accuracy. They're lacking a lot of low-bass, which is due to their open-back, open-ear design which sits away from your ear canal. Their mid-bass is also underemphasized, so your mixes lack punch and body. However, the high-bass adds boom, although some users may find it a bit muddy.

The Bose Sport Open Earbuds have excellent mid-accuracy. The response is very flat and neutral, resulting in present, accurate, and detailed vocals and lead instruments.

These headphones have good treble accuracy. The low-treble is even and slightly overemphasized, resulting in detailed and present vocals and lead instruments. The mid-treble is a little underemphasized, though, so sibilants like cymbals are dull and lispy.

The peaks and dips performance is disappointing. There's a dip in the low-bass, so your mixes lack thump and rumble. The peak in the high-bass adds intense boom, which can muddy your mix. Another peak in the low-treble adds some detail to vocals and lead instruments while a dip in the mid-treble weakens sibilants.

The Bose Open Earbuds have poor imaging. There are a few large peaks in their group delay response, indicating loose bass. The treble range falls under the audibility threshold though, ensuring transparent treble. While the left and right drivers are well-matched in amplitude, they're mismatched in frequency and phase response, so objects like footsteps may not be accurately placed within the stereo image. However, these results are only valid for our unit, and your experience may vary.

The headphones have a poor passive soundstage. Since they sit outside of your ear canal, they're somewhat able to interact with your outer ear, which helps their soundstage seem a bit more open. However, it won't sound very natural.

The Bose Sport Open Earbuds have an alright weight harmonic distortion performance. There are a few peaks across the range at a normal listening volume, but it's very minor and can be hard to hear with real-life content. At a high volume, the range falls within good limits, resulting in clean and pure audio reproduction.

These are the settings used to test these headphones. Our results are only valid when using them in this configuration.

The noise isolation performance is bad, but that's to be expected for open-ear headphones. They don't really cover the ear, as this design allows you to stay aware of your surroundings while you run outdoors. Due to this, you can easily hear the rumble of bus engines, ambient chatter, and the hum of an AC unit.

The Bose Open Earbuds have a sub-par leakage performance. Since they don't go inside your ears, they leak a lot of audio, especially in the treble range. Although escaping audio sounds thin, if you're listening to audio at a high volume in a somewhat noisy environment like an office, people around you can hear it.

The Bose Sport Open Earbuds have a good recording quality. Their integrated mic can capture your voice clearly, although it sounds a little thin and lacking in brightness.

The Bose Sport Open Earbuds have mediocre noise handling. The integrated mic struggles to separate your voice from even moderately noisy environments like a busy street.

The Bose Open Earbuds have satisfactory battery performance. They're advertised as having 8 hours of playback time with a two-hour charging period. While we measured about 9.5 hours of continuous battery life with a recharge time of just over an hour, battery performance can vary according to usage, so your experience may vary. If you're looking to save battery life, they have an auto-off timer that can be set within their companion app.

The Bose Music app is decent. It's pretty basic and it allows you to check the battery level, update the headphones, turn on or off the touch surface volume controls, and adjust the auto-off timer. You can also access a guide on how to use the headphones and see all known devices. However, this app lacks sound enhancement features. If you want more customizable open-ear headphones, try the Sony LinkBuds Truly Wireless.

The Bose Sport Open have alright Bluetooth connectivity. They don't support multi-device or NFC pairing, and their latency on PC is likely too high to be suitable for gaming or streaming video. Their latency on iOS and Android devices is much lower, though. That said, some devices and apps compensate for latency, so your experience may vary.

These Bluetooth-only headphones can't be used wired. They come with a USB-A to proprietary charging cradle to recharge the headphones.

These headphones come with a proprietary charging cradle, which can be annoying if you forget it somewhere but need to charge them up. It doesn't hold any charges or have any inputs.