Bose Sport Earbuds review

Our Verdict

The Bose Sport Earbuds is a notable upgrade over the SoundSport Free, just only in a few areas.

For

Bright, counterbalanced sound
Lighter and smaller than the QuietComfort Earbuds
Secure fit
Bluetooth 5.ane

Confronting

Brusque battery life
Extremely limited feature set
Uncomfortable the longer they're worn

Tom's Guide Verdict

The Bose Sport Earbuds is a notable upgrade over the SoundSport Free, just simply in a few areas.

Pros

+
Bright, balanced sound
+
Lighter and smaller than the QuietComfort Earbuds
+
Secure fit
+
Bluetooth 5.1

Cons

-
Curt bombardment life
-
Extremely express characteristic fix
-
Uncomfortable the longer they're worn

Bose had a moderately successful true wireless debut with the SoundSport Free, and now the heritage sound brand has set its sights on creating one of the best workout headphones out there with the Sport Earbuds.

Redesigned for optimal fit and extended functionality, the Sport Earbuds brings more performance to the tabular array than their predecessor. The inclusion of Bose's powerful mic array and Active EQ applied science also gives this model bigger sound and enhanced call quality. Even so, this set of buds is not the game-changer we anticipated, due to shortcomings in primal categories, including features and bombardment life. Go on reading our Bose Sport Earbuds review to know more than.

The best running headphones you lot tin buy
Check out the competition with our Beats Powerbeats Pro review

Despite these flaws, brand loyalists who love Bose's minimalist aesthetic appeal and warm sound will still find some great value out of these relatively affordable fitness buds.

Bose Sport Earbuds: Specs

Colors: Baltic Blue, Glacier White, Triple Black

Battery life (rated): 5 hours, xv (with charging instance)

Size: 0.74 ten 1.05 x 0.83 inches (per bud), 3.5 10 2 x 1.25 inches (charging case)

Weight: 0.24 ounces (per bud)

Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.1

Bose Sport Earbuds: Price and availability

The Bose Sport Earbuds is bachelor for $179 at major online retailers, including Amazon, Best Purchase or directly from Bose.

Bose Sport Earbuds review: Design

It'due south easy to confuse the Sport Earbuds for Bose'due south flagship model, the QuietComfort Earbuds. The matte-finished blueprint with laser-etched Bose logo on the front makes them almost expect identical, though y'all tin identify the sportier version past its smaller form, the minor vents on the front, and two of the aforementioned color options (Baltic Blueish and Glacier White), which the QC Earbuds exercise non come in. Overall, these buds have an understated look that is less of an eyesore than its noise-cancelling sibling.

Structure-wise, the Sport Earbuds is solidly built and will withstand the daily abuse you'll put them through. The frame is built from high-end blended plastic that is tough to penetrate, plus it is IPX4-rated for sweat and weather condition resistance. Every bit bully as this sounds, the reality is most consumers would prefer their wireless sport earbuds come waterproof, particularly at the Sport Earbuds sub-luxury price betoken. We have seen several premium models (such every bit the Jaybird Vista and Jabra Aristocracy Agile 75t) and cheap models (similar the JLab Epic Air Sport ANC) grant this. Why not Bose?

In that location are some small details that bear witness Bose put some thought into developing the Sport Earbuds for practical use. I mentioned the vents on the forepart, but there are also vents placed at the lesser of the casing for the mics, which were done to boost call quality and virtual help back up (more on that later on). You lot'll also discover the thick sensor on the inside part of the bud that automatically detects when the earbuds are removed.

Permit's talk near the charging instance. First of all, thank the heavens that this isn't the monstrosity that is the QuietComfort Earbuds case. This i is lighter, smaller, and more portable. At the same time, it still isn't the well-nigh accommodating travel companion due to its thickness. Merely it is solid, meaning the buds will be stored safely. I as well similar the five LED battery lights and locking clasp on the front end, along with the integrated Bluetooth button on the inside for manual pairing.

Bose Sport Earbuds review: Comfort and fit

The sensor is an extension of the sound port and allows the buds to sit down firmly on the concha. Bose's StayHear Max silicone eartips help to enhance fit, creating a tight seal on the canal, while the flexible wings mold nicely into the folds of the outer ears. You lot will demand to properly accommodate them (a quick twist should do the play tricks) before setting out on your daily 5K runs. There are two actress sets of tips as well for smaller and larger ears.

Bose Sport Open Earbuds review — (Paradigm credit: Regan Coule/Tom's Guide)

Unfortunately, the Sport Earbuds isn't the most comfortable pair of buds to wear. The durable casing presses upward against your ears the longer y'all vesture the buds, and those with a low pain threshold will start to feel some discomfort later almost 45 minutes of wearable; I don't recommend them for casual listening. This didn't bother me much during workouts, though I did feel my ears pulsating a bit when in recovery manner, which forced me to take them off.

Bose Sport Earbuds review: Impact controls and digital assistant

The touch controls on the QuietComfort Earbuds were fifty/fifty and are less favorable on the Sport Earbuds. You're only given access to about four commands and they can simply be enabled either through a double-tap (e.g. play/interruption, respond/finish call) or long-printing gesture (due east.g. enabled virtual assistant). To enable the fourth command, you take to get into the Shortcut setting in the app to toggle and assign information technology; this gives y'all the selection to either hear battery levels or skip forward a runway by double-tapping the left earbud. As with the QuietComfort Earbuds, the lack of single or triple-tap gestures is a missed opportunity.

Ane positive is that the touch panels are responsive, and so you shouldn't accept whatever problem enabling the short list of commands. The Sport Earbuds motion detection is pretty accurate every bit well, every bit music automatically paused whenever I took off i of the buds. There was some small latency when placing the buds dorsum on my ears to resume play; at that place was almost a 2-2nd delay before music turned back on.

You should utilise the digital banana as much as possible to operate the buds because the feature works incredibly well. Thank Bose's powerful mic array for this, which does a fantastic job of picking upwardly vocals, along with the great software integration that allows Siri and Google Banana to annals and reply to voice commands rapidly. Beingness able to spout off inquiries during workouts, from requesting NFL scores to sending vox-to-text letters, was effortless.

Bose Sport Earbuds review: Audio quality

Audio on the Sport Earbuds is satisfying, with Bose's proprietary drivers and Active EQ giving the buds a warm, balanced soundstage that's shut to what you'll hear from the Bose 700. This is pretty impressive, especially for the price. Fifty-fifty though I experience the SoundSport Free's signature delivers more punch, the Sport Earbuds is better balanced, which allowed me to enjoy music fully and hear subtle nuances in recordings.

The growling bass on Travis Scott's "Sicko Style" is an adrenaline shot to your ears and will have y'all mean-mugging when ramping upwards speeds on the Peloton. Reverberation was impactful and smooth, leaving no distortion on the soundscape. Sticking with boomy selections, I went to some 90's hip-hop go-tos for exercising and got plenty of free energy blasting KRS-One's "Outta Hither," as the infectious jazz bassline and pounding snares stimulated a second air current when finishing my run.

Soon after my conditioning, I jumped into some Salsa and loved the frequency control on songs like Willie Colon'due south "Guajiron." Tonality was spot-on, as the buds delivered an authentic rendition of the natural sounds for each musical instrument; bongos hit difficult, and the piano play was strikingly melodic. This showed me the Sport Earbuds could handle orchestral-heavy tracks with ease, which encouraged me to pull upward some Jazz classics. The sense of liveliness on depression-fi recordings similar Thelonious Monk'southward "'Round Midnight" was superb, with the lively sax play and brilliant piano cords feeling similar the musicians are performing in person.

Videos sounded just as good on the Sport Earbuds. When glued to my MacBook Pro screen for the recent 2020 presidential election 2020 updates, I was rewarded with loud, well-baked-sounding vocals that made listening to political commentators on poorly continued Zoom calls tolerable. The level of clarity produced on podcasts was astonishing as well.

Bose Sport Earbuds review: App and special features

If you thought the feature set up on the QuietComfort Earbuds was pretty scarce, then expect greater disappointment with the Sport Earbuds. Outside of the digital assistant, any extended functionality it offers is made available through the Bose Connect app, and it isn't much.

All that you'll detect are a volume adjuster, battery level indicators for both earbuds, music role player controls (when streaming music), tips on how to wear and use the earbuds, and several toggle controls. Of those, you'll only finish up using are the In-Ear Detection toggle, plus the aforementioned Shortcut setting. In that location are no adjustable EQ, music presets, or Find My Earbuds features, nor are there whatever innovative modes like Jabra's Soundscape, which is very useful for recovery and has 12 different ambient noise settings to help you lot relax.

What is more disappointing is that the Transparency and Self Voice modes are missing on the Sport Earbuds. Having no ambient listening mode makes no sense, specially since information technology is considered a standard feature on near mod wireless earbuds, casual or sporty, and provides outdoor exercisers better awareness of their surroundings. Since the buds practice a really good job of isolating noise, you won't exist able to hear what's happening around you lot, which isn't helpful if you're running in heavy traffic areas.

Something else that is MIA: multipoint technology. It wasn't featured on the QC Earbuds, therefore, it'due south not really a huge omission, only it would have been nice to have for when you want to pair the buds to two devices simultaneously.

Although, through testing, at that place was a moment where I managed to connect the Sport Earbuds to my Google Pixel 3 Twoscore and MacBook Pro at the same time. But the connectedness dropped on my laptop after a minute and there was a lot of bugginess occurring when streaming Spotify on both devices. Maybe this is a characteristic in beta we stumbled upon that could be available in a future firmware update, only it remains uncertain for now.

Bose Sport Earbuds review: Battery life and charging instance

When officially appear, Bose informed u.s.a. that playtimes on the Sport Earbuds would exist middling: five hours on a unmarried accuse. This is basically AirPods-level battery life and a lot shorter than category leaders like the Elite Active 75t (seven.5 hours) and Powerbeats Pro (9 hours). Seeing as there are no listening modes and that the buds business firm less powerful internals than the QC Earbuds, at that place is no reason for this.

I ended up having to recharge the buds several times, and I noticed the bombardment levels dropped more than rapidly than expected; we're talking 10% to xv% per hour. I managed to squeeze in a few ane-hour workouts when fully charged, though it only took well-nigh three days before I had to toss the buds into the charging case.

Speaking of which, the charging example simply holds xv hours full (3 extra charges) and falls far short of the competition. At least the Powerbeats Pro and AirPods cases get y'all 24 boosted hours, while the Aristocracy Active 75t case is college at 28 hours. If you're but planning to use the Sport Earbuds for workouts, that isn't the worst thing, but this won't cut it on long business trips. Also, the case does not support wireless charging.

Bose Sport Earbuds review: Telephone call quality and connectivity

The QC Earbuds have gear up the standard for phone call quality in the category, and though the Sport Earbuds don't offer the aforementioned results, the model is yet a reliable calling headset, as long as yous don't utilise them in drafty environments. The few calls I took indoors sounded fine, with many of my colleagues maxim I sounded loud and clear, for the most office.

Outdoors was a mixed bag, and I don't mistake the Sport Earbuds completely. I was dealing with heavy winds throughout testing (the joys of living in Florida during hurricane season), so it was difficult measuring quality. My wife barely heard me when running outside in brisk conditions, and though she was able to make out sentences when winds calmed down, the call quality wasn't as super-clear as on the QuietComfort Earbuds.

One of the Sport Earbuds' greatest strengths is wireless performance, which is spearheaded by Bluetooth 5.one. Keep in mind this is 1 of a few models at the moment supporting the latest Bluetooth protocol. This gives users faster, stabilized connectivity and solid range. I didn't feel whatsoever dropout or stuttering when within a 35-human foot radius of my continued device. This immune me to move freely from room to room and continue streaming Spotify in peace, while enjoying my jams uninterrupted out on my run trails.

I can't stress plenty how important the Bluetooth button on the charging example is, particularly if yous're dealing with a finnicky mobile device, much like I did with my Pixel 2 Twoscore (aye, I own a 2 XL and 3 40, this isn't a typo). While re-pairing was instantaneous on all of my other devices, my 2XL would act upward at times, just pressing the Bluetooth button ever fixed the problem.

Bose Sport Earbuds review: Verdict

The Bose Sport Earbuds is a step forward, merely all the same requires more than improvement. Bose certainly fixed some of the issues of the SoundSport Gratuitous, such equally the heavy, unstable design, inadequate dissonance isolation, and poor connectivity. Sound remains solid with Bose'southward warm signature feeding your ears rich bass, and the mics have been strengthened to brand calls and virtual assistant support more serviceable.

But I'g still taken aback past the lack of bombardment life and special features on the Sport Earbuds. In short, they autumn short. I'thousand non saying Bose had to make its buds as characteristic-laden as Jabra or Sony'south models. All the same, the company should have added something as basic as a Find My Earbuds pick or Transparency manner. These are two features that Bose may want to prioritize next firmware update.

If yous're someone who pledges their allegiance to Bose or consistently shops for the brand'south latest releases, and desire sporty headphones to fuel their workouts, then the Sport Earbuds seem like an ideal match. Merely know there are other options out in that location that get you more performance for nearly the aforementioned price or less.

A lifestyle journalist with an analogousness for consumer products, Alex has over a decade of experience and has worked with popular publications such as Circuitous, Thrillist, Men's Health, Gear Patrol, AskMen, and Hoop Magazine. He currently focuses on audio, reviewing the nigh coveted headphones in the marketplace for both Tom'due south Guide and Laptop Mag.