When you are done any wireless earbuds you’ve bought lately, you’ve probably noticed a new design category popping up everywhere. These are called open earbuds (or open-ear buds, depending on the brand), and almost every audio brand has a pair (or three). They come in many styles, but most anything circles your ears like an old man The buds are beatenor stick on like funky-futuristic earrings. Regardless of style, it’s designed to deliver satisfying sound while keeping your ear canals open to the sounds of the world around you.

Open earbuds are a natural fit for staying informed during outdoor activities such as jogging, hiking, and especially cycling, where the small microphones of traditional buds are rendered useless by the wind. They aren’t as full or detailed as regular earbuds, but the best open earbuds sounds really good.

Buying such a specific item can seem very expensive if buds with noise cancellation and transparency methods work in most scenarios. This is also my position in the first place. Like many things in life: sometimes you have to try something in real life to know if you like it. In the last year or so, I’ve gone from open earbuds to evangelizers—and now I can’t imagine living without them.

That New Voice

Photo: Ryan Waniata

“Occlusion” is often a foreign word outside of audio circles, but it describes the plugged-up feeling you get from traditional earbuds. the best wireless earbuds anti occlusion with ventilation and other design factors, but you can’t completely overcome physics, and most of us get tired of blocking our ear canals after a few hours.

Open the earbuds (with solutions like bone conducting headphones) will fix the problem of occlusion, with a sound that seems to pop in your head like magic. The breezy designs of my favorite pairs from brands like Bose and Soundcore they are so comfortable that I can wear them all day, often forgetting they are there.

Comfort alone wasn’t enough to sell me on an entire genre of buds that you can’t use in loud areas, but as it turns out, that’s rarely a problem. As WIRED’s top open earbuds reviewer, the more time I spend with these buds, the more use cases I seem to have in front of me. From life’s complications to my chronically broken attention span, open earbuds meet me where I live.

My main use case is probably yours too: I like to use it for outdoor activities, from keeping in touch with my neighborhood while having fun Comedy Bang Bang of a dog walking blissfully grooving to my favorite Yacht Rock playlist on a ebikes test ride. But really, it’s just the beginning.