Bose Sport Open Earbuds Truly Wireless Headphones Review

The Bose Sport Open Earbuds have an unusual and chunky 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 'Triple Black.'

These are decently comfortable. Once you've 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 wear 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 updated Bose Ultra Open Earbuds Truly Wireless take a completely different approach by swapping the large over-ear hooks for a clip-on design that fits on the bottom of your ear instead. This feels more comfortable and stays out of the way of glasses.

Their controls are alright. They give good feedback with voice prompts when connected, as well as for incoming calls and battery status. The right earbud has most of the controls allocated to a single multi-function button. When using the right side's multi-function button, you can control playback and call functions. You enter pairing mode from powered off with this button, and you can manually turn them on/off with this button, too. The left's multi-function button checks the battery level and activates the voice assistant. To adjust volume, use the touch-sensitive, flat outer surface of the earbuds. The right side's touch surface turns up the volume, while the left side's touch reduces the volume. You can turn off the touch-sensitive function in the app as well.

Right Multi-function button:

• Press and hold: Power on/off.
• Press and hold from powered off: Turn on and initiate Bluetooth pairing.
• Single press: Pause/play, answer call/answer a new incoming call (while you're already on a call).
• Double press: Skip to next track, decline incoming call.
• Triple press: Skip to previous track.

Left Multi-function button:

• Press and hold: Activate voice assistant.
• Single press: Check battery level status.

Right Touch Surface:

• Press and hold: Increase volume.

Left Touch Surface:

• Press and hold: Decrease volume.

These are exceptionally portable, and like most true wireless earbuds, they fit into most pockets. However, owing to their hooks, they're a bit bulkier than conventional true wireless earbuds.

Their case is good. It's made of rubberized plastic with a fabric inner covering and a magnetic closing lid. However, the case is mainly just for storing the earbuds. It won't turn off or recharge the earbuds, so you need to remember to turn them off before putting them in their case.

These headphones have a great build quality. They're made of a plastic composite, which makes them feel sturdy and durable. The earbuds are also rated IPX4 for water resistance against light water splashes. Their charging base is plastic with rubber on the underside to keep it from sliding around on surfaces.

These headphones are impressively stable. Their over-ear hook design ensures they don't come loose during moderate, upright exercises like running. However, depending on the shape of your ears, it can feel like they'll fall off, even if they don't.

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

The Bose Open Earbuds severely roll off the low-end for mid-range and treble-focused tuning. Because they sit outside your ear canal, they can't create a seal for a stronger bass response, which is typical of open-fit earbuds. As a result, they really struggle to reproduce low- and mid-bass, making genres like EDM and hip-hop totally lack a rumbling low-end. That said, unlike conventional earbuds and headphones, the unsealed fit provides an ambient backdrop to your activities rather than focused audio.

Their tuning works well for podcasts or vocal-centric music, such as folk with stripped-back mixes of acoustic guitar and vocals, thanks to their balanced mid-range. The treble range conveys details well, but steep dips make sibilants (S and T sounds) dark and veiled. However, without the balance of bass content to compete for your attention, those dips prevent harmonics from sounding shrill.

These headphones have excellent frequency response consistency. They convey bass consistently. While they appear to have a somewhat inconsistent bass delivery because the frequency response effectively rolls off everything lower than mid-bass, you won't notice a difference between wears in this range. Their treble has small inconsistencies but nothing too impactful between wearers. 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 terrible bass accuracy. Due to their open-ear design, which positions the driver outside the ear canal, they lack a lot of low-bass. Their mid-bass is also severely tapered off, so songs like Music Sounds Better With You by Stardust aren't full-bodied and thumpy in the low-end. However, the high-bass adds boom, although some users may find it a bit muddy.

These buds have excellent mid-accuracy. The response is very flat and neutral, resulting in present, accurate, and detailed vocals and lead instruments.

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

The peaks and dips performance is disappointing. Because of the limitations of their open-fit design, they struggle to control their sound. There's a significant dip in the low-bass, so your mixes lack thump and rumble. The peak in the high-bass adds intense boom and punch to kick drums. It levels off with minor dips and peaks in the mids, which is rather consistent for clear lead instruments. Another peak in the low-treble adds some emphasis to detail to vocals, while a dip in the mid-treble weakens sibilants.

The Bose Open Earbuds have poor imaging. The manufacturer ordinarily has good quality control with conventional headphones, but open-fits tend to have more imaging issues, which doesn't necessarily mean their quality control is poor.

Generally, these results indicate imperfect ergonomics. A few large peaks in their group delay response indicate loose bass. The treble range falls under the audibility threshold, though, ensuring transparent treble. The left and right drivers are well-matched in amplitude, with a slight mismatch in the frequency, which isn't as noticeable as gaps in the stereo image. Their phase mismatch indicates the localization of sounds in the stereo image can skew to one side, although this wasn't noticeable in use. 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 can interact with your outer ear, which helps their soundstage seem open. However, it won't sound very natural or immersive.

They have alright weighted 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 the Bose Open Earbuds. 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 cover the ear or seal your ear canal. This design allows you to stay aware of your surroundings while you run outdoors or walk at night. Due to this, you can easily hear the rumble of bus engines, ambient chatter, and the hum of an A/C unit. Everything you hear without headphones on, you'll hear with these on.

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. If you want a pair of earbuds for use in workplaces, the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds Truly Wireless leak far less of your audio.

Their mic has a good recording quality. The mic system captures your voice clearly, although it sounds a little thin and lacking in body. Overall, it sounds close to real life, even if the audio quality is compressed.

The mic has fair noise handling. It struggles to completely separate your voice from even moderately noisy environments like a busy street. With loud and sudden background noise, the mic is unable to filter out the noise, and it overwhelms your voice even if parts of your speech can still be heard.

The Bose Open Earbuds have satisfactory battery performance. They're advertised as having eight 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.

Unlike most true wireless headphones, these aren't recharged by the case, so they won't juice up in the case when you replace them in the case. You need to use their separate charging cradle, which is inconvenient when you're away from home.

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 like an equalizer. If you want more customizable open-ear headphones, try the Sony LinkBuds Truly Wireless.

These have okay Bluetooth connectivity. They don't support multi-device or NFC pairing. They support AAC and SBC codecs only, which is okay but fairly rudimentary without higher-quality codecs like aptX or low-latency codecs. 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.

If your PC supports Bluetooth, these earbuds can connect via Bluetooth only for full audio and mic support.

These headphones come with a proprietary charging cradle instead of using the case as with most true wireless headphones. Needing a charging cradle can be annoying if you forget it somewhere but need to charge the earbuds. The charging cradle doesn't hold any charges or inputs, so it needs to be connected to power to charge.