Bose Ultra Open Earbuds, Immersive Audio Open Ear Earbuds, Clip on Earbuds for Comfort, Running Earbuds with OpenAudio for Awareness, Up to 48 Hours of Battery Life, Black

The ultra earbuds basically have one primary advantage which is the cuff. If you are worried about your earbud falling out of your ear, this is an innovative solution.- Not very tight, comfortable to wear. They did a good job finding the balance between being secure enough to bike with without turning into one of those paper binder clips. For the airpods, I always have used a cuff tether that runs around my neck. that's fine for preventing loss but it tends to become tangled in my helmet chinstrap. I've also gone running with my airpods only to watch one as it fell from my ear, to my knee and along the ground to a construction site 20 ft below the bridge I was on.- Helps with not turning your ear into a moist cave- You can hear things around you, because your ear canal isn't blocked, but, honestly, the pass through mode of airpods is just as good. Downside is that you're missing the sound dampening mode the airpods offers as well as noise cancellation which is non-existent with the Bose- Sound quality is fine - it can't compete with the air pods due to not covering your canal but it's good- Engineering is just ok - Apple nailed it with volume control on the side surface and their squeeze haptics are amazing. These have a button which is fine but feels like a weak second place. Want to turn the volume down, that's two button presses then hold the button down. That's hold the second button press down...not hold down after the second button press. Remember that when you are trying to catch a flight announcement in a foreign country and you're in a rush.- Bluetooth recognition is pretty slow and if you happen to screw something up where they lose connection (despite still playing audio the button just ceases to function) and you have to have the case handy to reset. Fine if i can stuff the case in a bike bag but if the battery life is all day, I shouldn't have to have the case nearby. I managed to break that connection within 15 minutes of playing around with them. So just don't do that. :)In the end, they are different use cases. Seems like most people have the airpods and, having three generations of them myself, I was struggling to justify an additional cash outlay. I've always lacked that exercise option, however, and I would like to not worry about dropping them under my airplane seat, so I might keep these.

Usually I say they are good for what it’s worth. In this case, for what I paid for them, they are not worth it.Pro’s: the ear clip/cuff design is different and good, the fit is pretty secure and won’t fall off, comfortable, immersive sound is a plus, turning off the immersive sound and they last longer between charges. When running I hardly noticed I had them on my ears. The sound was good when I was running. I noticed as I was running that the music got louder. I think it was because they settled onto my ear lobes and also I turned the automatic volume control.Cons: too expensive, can’t adjust to being closer to ear canal, left me wanting and expecting more from the ear cuff buds. They seem limited when turning them up to 7 or 8 on the flat setting. Should be priced around the sound core and shokz open fit buds price, maybe even pricing them lower like $125-$150 on the high end. For $300 they should have wireless charging, multi point connectivity. Most of all a larger and louder volume level. I’m returning them. My aftershockz aeropex bone conduction headphones do a better job and lasts my whole 10 hour workday without needing to be charged.Maybe another software update with automatic multipoint switching, adjust the eq curve to have more low end and not cap the bass when playing at a higher volume, and drop the price and they would an awesome product.Update 3/12/2024So I returned my first pair of ultra earbuds, and got a set of Shokz open fit earbuds. I tried those on for some time and really like how they performed overall. But somehow I started to miss the bose earbuds, and wanted to compare how they went up against the Shokz offering. The price is still steep, but I had an amazon gift card balance of $157 so I went ahead and bought the Bose to do the comparison.The fit was excellent as before, the sound is excellent, I registered them to get the two year nose warranty as I can see these being replaced sometime in September the future. The Shokz are really good and probably rank them as one of the best hook buds in the market. For me and my ears, the Bose and the Shokz are an excellent buy. They both are light and fitment is excellent, the sound is superb, the call quality I give to Shokz, the update happened to both and somehow the call quality on the bose really improved. I still prefer the physical button over the touch sensitive approach that Shokz went with. I still like the Bose ear cuff design vs the earhook. So which do I prefer. Running and exercising-Bose without a doubt, mountain biking and any sport with a lot of wind noise-Shokz hands down.3/19/2024I started noticing the Bose ultra open buds starting to lose connection when putting them on. The right ear would get the connected prompts, but the left would not connect and when it does connect, it loses drops connection a couple of time more than connects and syncs up with the right ear. I’m going to request for a replacement pair. Overall, these are excellent buys if you have a gift card balance to buy down these buds. The Shokz were on sale so I returned my black pair and got the white pair. I had some Amazon credits and used those credits to buy the Shokz at much lower price.3/29/2024Bose pushed an update to the open ultras (version 1.10.4). The audio sounded clearer, the connection issue seems to have been resolved, I noticed while doing yard work that my Bose lasted approximately 5 hours on the immersion setting. No multipoint connectivity like the Shokz open fits have. Also, I saw that Bose released a wireless charging case on their website for $50. I decided to not get the wireless charging case because I was already used to the usb-c plug approach.