Although Bose’s SoundSport Free may not be perfect, thanks to some software upgrades and a price drop, it’s become one of the best — and best sounding — totally wireless earphones.
Pros
- A set of totally wireless earphones
- Offers richer sound
- More secure fit.
- Water-resistant and durable
- Battery life is decent and a charging case provides two extra charges on the go.
Cons
- The buds are big.
- Case is also a little large.
Bose gets the most basic thing right about truly wireless earbuds: they work really well. Marketed as a true sports headphone, SoundSport Free has a couple of advantages over the AirPods. For starters, the buds fit more securely. Yes, a certain percentage of AirPod users can get a snug enough fit to use them while running — they work great for those people.
Apple first announced its AirPods in wireless headphone market, and it may have dominated the true wireless headphone market since their release but some compelling alternatives, including the Bose SoundSport Free, have hit the market in recent months. But plenty of others, including me, can’t run with their AirPods. They simply won’t stay in my ears.
But like SoundSport Wireless, the SoundSport Free are equipped with Bose’s StayHear+ Sport tips. What’s great about them is that they comfortably lock the buds into your ears and seal out a good amount of ambient noise, maximizing sound quality without really jamming the tips into your ears.
Instead of an inline remote, the control buttons, including volume controls, are integrated into the buds themselves. They’re a little small and a touch stiff, but they worked better than I thought they would. I had no problem skipping tracks forward by double clicking on the middle button with my fingernail. The only real design gripe I have is the same one levied at the SoundSport Wireless: The buds stick out from your ears quite a bit and aren’t exactly discreet.
The SoundSport Free also sound better than AirPods ($249.00) and Jabra Elite 65t ($189.93), with more bass and richer sound overall. For those familiar with the “corded” SoundSport Wireless, the SoundSport Free has a similar sound profile. As I said about that model, there’s some clarity missing (the highs are a little recessed), but you get lots of bass and the midrange sounds pretty natural and warm. They also sound pretty open and played plenty loud, for me anyway.
Inside, in a quiet room, the bass can sound a little bloated, which gives everything a slightly dull edge. But when you’re walking around outside, the bass sounds toned down because it’s competing with ambient noise, whether it’s the wind or traffic or whatever. If you didn’t have that extra bass the headphone would sound thin outside. The way it’s tuned, it sounds smoother and better balanced outdoors and in noisier indoor environments (like a gym). I thought they sounded a little bit better than the Jaybird Run totally wireless headphones, which I also like.
Rugged design
Since the earbuds are on the larger side, Bose has been able to equip them with adequate sized batteries. While they don’t have Apple’s custom W1 Bluetooth chip, yet Bose’s claimed 5 hours of battery life at moderate volume levels. The included charging case provides two additional full charges for up to 10 additional hours of battery life. Note that the case is significantly larger than the AirPods’ case and not nearly as lightweight.
The earphones are sweat-resistant, with an IPX4 water-resistance rating. While Bose doesn’t advertise full waterproofing, the buds survived a complete dunking without a problem in my tests. They seem sturdily built.
Thanks to their small, independent nature, thus there’s a perception that totally wireless earphones are easy to lose. They are. To that end, there’s a new “Find My Buds” feature on the Bose Connect App that displays the last time and place they were used to help locate them should they get lost. You also use that app to update the buds’ firmware, a 30- to 45-minute process (it seems like an eternity).
One of the reasons I’m mentioning the firmware is because Bose has issued software updatesthat are intended to fix some small problems that users were experiencing — they mainly involve audio syncing when using certain video apps and the left bud dropping out.
There are some complaints from some people are that the left bud dropping out. (Check out this long support thread on Bose’s site.) From the beginning I had minimal dropouts and interference, but after upgrading his SoundSport Free’s firmware and switching to an iPhone X with the latest software update, the headphones are working perfectly now.
Maybe this remains a problem for some people. With this type of totally wireless earphone, you can expect some dropouts and interference. None of them are perfect, even the AirPods and Jabra Elite 65t, which I liked a lot. But they should occur infrequently, and we only call it out as a problem when we get more than one or two dropouts in a listening session. Those dropouts haven’t materialized in our recent tests of two different SoundSport Free review samples. As I said, the connection has been virtually rock solid.
I’ve also seen some criticism of the way the SoundSport Free acts as a headset: Sound only comes through the right earbud, making it a mono situation. It is a little disappointing that you don’t get stereo sound, but the Free does perform very well as a mono headset. Bose clearly made a tradeoff to get better performance, but the AirPods and many other totally wireless buds will let you make calls in stereo.
Overall
This can be said as one of the best totally wireless headphones out there right now. It fit in ears comfortably and securely, sounded good and has performed well over several months using it as a sports headphone at the gym (and while running) and as an everyday headphone. It’s hard for me to go back to using the SoundSport Wireless — with its wired tether between the buds — after using this totally wireless headphone, which says a lot about how good it is.
Bose SoundSport Free on Amazon.com $199.00
