FreeClip: Huawei presents its first OpenEar headphones
With the FreeClip, Huawei presents its first open-ear headphones. They do not have noise cancellation, as this design is all about hearing your surroundings.
The Huawei FreeClip are not stuck in your ear canal. They hang from your earlobe and hold their small speakers in front of your ear. The manufacturer refers to them as a "spherical acoustic element". Hidden behind the earlobe is a "bean-shaped element" which contains the battery, among other things. The speaker and bean are connected by the "C-bridge".
No fixed left-right assignment
Each FreeClip earpiece weighs 5.6 grams and is therefore almost as heavy as the Freebuds Pro 3, which come in at 5.8 grams. You don't have to worry about which one you put on which ear. According to the manufacturer, they are the first headphones without a fixed left-right assignment. They automatically find out which one is in which ear.
Source: Huawei
Apart from the special design, the Huawei FreeClip are classic true wireless headphones. They each contain a dual magnet driver unit that is responsible for the sound. Supported by software designed to optimise the sound. The "Reverse Sound Waves System", for example, is an intelligent volume control that suppresses sound waves from a distance, but does not completely block them out. When making phone calls, background noise cancellation ensures that you are easier to understand.
The FreeClip has a battery life of eight hours, which is long for such small earphones. Together with the battery in the charging case, the runtime is up to 36 hours. A full charge, i.e. including the case, should take around 60 minutes via USB-C cable. Wirelessly, the charging time is extended to 150 minutes.
Source: Huawei
The earphones are IP54 water, dust and sweat resistant. They use Bluetooth 5.3 to connect to Android, iOS and Windows devices. They support the following codecs: L2HC, LC3, AAC, SBC.
The FreeClip is operated by touching various points, i.e. the audio element, the bean or the connector.
The recommended retail price for the Huawei FreeClip in Germany is 199 euros.
Cover photo: Huawei
As a primary school pupil, I used to sit in a friend's living room with many of my classmates to play the Super NES. Now I get my hands on the latest technology and test it for you. In recent years at Curved, Computer Bild and Netzwelt, now at Digitec and Galaxus.