EarFun Clip 2 Open-Ear Earphones Review: Born To Run

Most earphones these days compete on how well they block out the world around you. Active noise cancellation has become the headline feature everyone’s chasing – and for good reason, if you’re commuting or working in a noisy office.

But if you run, cycle, or spend time in the gym, that same feature can be a liability. Hearing the car coming up behind you, or the instructor calling out across the room, is kind of important.

For those situations, open-ear earphones make a lot more sense – they clip onto your ear rather than going into it, so you can listen to music or podcasts while staying fully aware of what’s happening around you.

The EarFun Clip 2 are built exactly for that. At £69.99, they offer Hi-Res Audio and LDAC support, impressive battery life, and even a built-in AI translation feature.

But open-ear earphones come with real trade-offs, and the Clip 2 are no exception. Whether they’re right for you depends almost entirely on what you’re planning to use them for.

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Who Are The EarFun Clip 2 For?

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, it’s worth taking a step back and asking a simple question: what exactly are the EarFun Clip 2?

EarFun has been quietly building a strong reputation in the budget audio space since 2018, consistently delivering earphones that punch well above their price point.

The Clip 2 are a bit of a departure from their usual in-ear lineup (or rather, a sequel to the departure they took with the first Clip earphones last year).

These are open-ear earphones. That means they clip onto your ear rather than going into it – which makes them a fundamentally different proposition to something like the EarFun Air Pro 4+, or any other traditional in-ear design.

No silicone tips, no ear canal seal, no passive noise isolation. You’re not blocking out the world – you’re adding a soundtrack to it.

That’s not a flaw. It’s the whole point.

The Clip 2 are designed for people who need to stay aware of their surroundings while listening.

Runners who want music but also need to hear oncoming traffic. Gym-goers who want a podcast in the background without losing track of what’s happening around them. People who wear earphones for hours at a stretch and find traditional in-ears uncomfortable over time.

What they’re not designed for is deep listening sessions, commuting on a noisy train, or sitting in a quiet office.

Because just as outside noise gets in, your music gets out – people around you will hear what you’re listening to. That’s simply the nature of open-ear design, and it’s something you need to factor in before buying.

So if you’re after the best possible sound quality or any form of noise cancellation – active or passive – these aren’t the earphones for you. But if you want something light, stable, and comfortable enough to forget you’re even wearing them, while keeping one ear on the world around you – read on.

Using The EarFun Clip 2

Size And Comfort

The EarFun Clip 2 come only in black for now – and they look exactly like what they are: small, sleek ear-clip earphones with a rounded body and a flexible hook that wraps around the back of your ear.

When I first took them out of the case, I’ll be honest – I had to go look at the press photos of someone actually wearing them just to figure out how to put them on.

If you’ve mostly used in-ear earphones, the clip design may not be immediately intuitive, and it takes a bit of trial and error for them to sit right. Even once you’ve worked it out, it still doesn’t feel completely natural at first if you’re used to simply popping earphones into your ears.

But once they’re in place, you forget they’re there.

At just 5.5g each, they’re remarkably light. And because they don’t go into your ear canal at all, there’s none of the pressure or fatigue you sometimes get with in-ear models after a few hours.

The flexible nickel-titanium frame with its soft silicone covering contours to your ear rather than fighting it. The only slight pressure point I noticed was the larger section that sits behind your earlobe – where the battery and button are housed – though how much you feel that will depend on the shape and size of your ears.

They’re also very visible when you’re wearing them, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. People can see you’re listening to something, which in a busy gym or on public transport is its own kind of “do not disturb” signal.

For exercise, these work quite well. I ran for close to an hour without a single issue – they stayed locked in place even while sweating, and there was no shifting or slipping.

I also put them through their paces on a cross-trainer with plenty of jumping and lateral movement, and again, no problems.

The IP55 dust and water resistance rating means rain shouldn’t be an issue either, though surprisingly (for England) I didn’t have to put that particular claim to the test.

Pairing And Controlling The EarFun Clip 2

Pairing is straightforward – open the case, and the Clip 2 go straight into pairing mode. Android users get Google Fast Pair support for an even quicker setup, and once paired, reconnecting is fast and reliable. During my testing, the Bluetooth connection was rock-solid, with no dropouts or crackling.

One thing worth noting: the Clip 2 support multipoint connection, letting you pair with two devices simultaneously. Handy if you’re switching between a phone and a laptop.

But there’s a trade-off – you can’t use LDAC (hi-res sound) and multipoint at the same time. It’s one or the other, and the app makes that clear when you try to enable both.

Rather than the touch-sensitive controls you’ll find on most EarFun earphones, the Clip 2 use physical buttons – one per earbud. That’s a deliberate choice, and the right one for earphones aimed at exercise.

Touch controls and sweaty fingers don’t mix well, and accidentally triggering playback while adjusting your earphones mid-run gets old fast.

The button functions mirror what you’d expect from other EarFun models: one press to play or pause, two presses for volume up or down, depending on which side you’re pressing.

The buttons sit behind your earlobe, which means a bit of a reach. It’s not a dealbreaker – they’re easy enough to press once you’ve found them – but it takes a few days to become second nature.

The EarFun Audio app gives you a handful of options to play with. There are three audio modes: Theatre Mode, Privacy Mode, and Game Sound Effects.

In practice, Theatre Mode and Privacy Mode are mostly volume up and volume down, respectively, with some EQ adjustment underneath – though in my testing, the volume difference was the most noticeable effect of either.

Game Sound Effects is designed to enhance audio specifically for gaming, though I wouldn’t call the Clip 2 a natural fit for gaming given their open-ear design.

If you prefer, you can turn off these audio modes and go into the EQ settings, with the usual presets like “Bass Boot” (which didn’t do much), Rock, Classical, etc, or set your own custom EQ settings.

Beyond the audio modes, the app lets you remap the button controls and toggle LDAC on or off, which is about as deep as the customisation goes.

EarFun Clip 2 Audio Quality

Let’s get one thing out of the way first: if you’re buying the Clip 2 primarily for audio quality, you’re probably buying the wrong earphones.

That’s not a criticism – it’s just the reality of open-ear design, especially at this price point.

Without a seal in the ear canal, you lose the bass response and sound isolation that in-ear earphones deliver by default. Physics, unfortunately, doesn’t care about your EQ settings.

With that context in mind, the Clip 2 actually sounds OK – just not in the way a traditional pair of earphones sounds good, or even open-ear pairs that put some more emphasis on the bass.

On the codec front, you’ve got LDAC alongside Bluetooth 6.0, and the earphones carry Hi-Res Audio certification. There’s also an ultra-low latency mode for gaming and video, which keeps things in sync when you’re watching something, though I haven’t had any lip-sync issues even without the special mode.

Under the hood, a 12mm dual-magnetic titanium composite driver does the heavy lifting, with EarFun’s BassSurge technology supposedly adding some extra punch in the low end. Sorry, but the bass did not surge for me.

I put them through a couple of tracks I know well.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears was first up. The vocals and synths come through nicely, with a clean, open sound that suits the track well.

The bass, though, feels a little lighter than I’d like – present, but lacking the depth and weight you’d get from a sealed in-ear design.

Don’t Start Now by Dua Lipa told a similar story. It sounds bright and clean, with good detail in the vocals and the upper frequencies – but the low end doesn’t hit as hard as it should. For a track built around a driving bassline, that’s noticeable.

It’s as if the bass announces itself – but then doesn’t stay around for the party.

The bottom line on audio is this: for exercise, commuting outdoors, or casual background listening, the Clip 2 deliver a pleasant, clean sound that does the job well.

If you’re sitting down for a proper listening session, you’ll want something else.

Phone calls are a similar story. I made a couple of test calls during my review period, and the quad-microphone ENC system does a decent job – the person on the other end came through clearly, and my voice was picked up well without too much background noise creeping in for them.

The limitation, again, is the open-ear design. Just as a passing car competes with your podcast, it’ll compete with your call too. In a quiet environment, calls work fine. In a busy street or a noisy gym, you’ll find yourself straining to hear the other person – not because of any fault in the earphones, but simply because there’s nothing between your ear and the world around you.

EarFun Clip 2 AI Translation

This is probably one of the most eye-catching features on the Clip 2’s spec sheet (though surprisingly, it’s not even mentioned on the box), and honestly, it’s more impressive than I expected – with some caveats.

The AI Translation feature lives entirely in the EarFun Audio app, and works in two modes: Face to Face and Real Time.

Face to Face is the more practical of the two for actual conversations. You select the two languages involved, then each person takes a turn: your conversation partner speaks towards the phone, and the translation comes through your earbuds.

When you speak, your words are translated and played through the phone’s speaker for the other person to hear. Everything also appears on screen as text in both languages, which helps fill in the gaps when the audio isn’t quite clear. It’s a back-and-forth system – press once per speaker turn – rather than anything hands-free or simultaneous.

Real Time mode works for a single language direction continuously, which makes it better suited to listening scenarios – following a foreign-language video or a one-sided conversation – rather than a true back-and-forth exchange.

A few important things to know going in. First, you’ll need to manually select the spoken languages on each side – the app doesn’t detect languages automatically.

Second, an internet connection is required. Third – and this one’s worth flagging – there’s a small banner in the app noting the real-time mode is available free for a limited time, which suggests it could become a paid add-on down the line.

I tested it with another person and with some foreign-language videos on YouTube. The speed is not bad – fast enough to follow a conversation, though there’s still a natural pause between someone speaking and the translation coming through. It’s not the instant universal translator of science fiction quite yet.

Accuracy is decent but not flawless. In the languages I could verify, there were mistakes – sometimes minor, sometimes more significant. You can follow the general gist of a conversation comfortably, but you wouldn’t want to rely on it for anything where precision matters.

Even so – and I mean this – just a few years ago this would have seemed like something out of a sci-fi film. And yes, this is already available in some mobile apps, but having it right there in your earbuds improves convenience.

For casual conversations, travel, or breaking the ice with someone who speaks a different language, it’s a useful tool. Just go in with realistic expectations.

EarFun Clip 2 Battery Times

Battery life is one of the Clip 2’s stronger suits. You’re looking at up to 11 hours on a single charge with LDAC off, and up to 40 hours total with the case – which is great for earphones at this price.

After using them almost every day for a couple of weeks, the case still had charge left in it, which tells you something about how far that combined battery goes in real-world use.

The caveat is LDAC. Switch it on for higher-quality audio, and that 11 hours drops to 6 – and the total with the case falls from 40 hours to 22. That’s a significant trade-off, and worth keeping in mind if you’re planning to use LDAC regularly. But for casual listening or exercise, LDAC off is perfectly fine – and your battery will thank you for it.

If you do run low, the quick charge feature is useful: just 10 minutes plugged in gives you 2.5 hours of playback. The case charges via USB-C or wirelessly, with a full charge taking around 2 hours via USB-C. The earbuds themselves take about an hour to top up fully.

Bottom Line: Are The EarFun Clip 2 Earphones Worth It?

The EarFun Clip 2 are a good pair of earphones – but only if you know what you’re buying. Get that wrong, and you’ll be disappointed. Get it right, and you’ll wonder how you ever ran without them.

These aren’t for critical listening or long office sessions. The open-ear design means sound leaks out, the world leaks in, and the bass will never hit as hard as a sealed in-ear.

That’s not a failure – it’s a trade-off that comes with the open-ear format, though it’s worth knowing that some pricier open-ear options do manage better bass and sound quality. At £69.99, you’re not getting the best open-ear sound money can buy – but you’re not paying for it either.

For exercise, they’re excellent. Light enough to forget you’re wearing them, stable enough to survive an hour’s run without budging, and comfortable enough for hours of wear without fatigue.

The physical buttons are the right call for sweaty workouts, even if they take a few days to locate naturally.

The AI Translation is a bit of a gimmick – but also a nice surprise – imperfect, yes, and not quite the universal translator of your dreams, but impressive enough that you’ll want to show it off. Just note that it may not stay free forever.

At £69.99, the Clip 2 sit at a fraction of the price of rivals like the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds. If open-ear earphones are what you’re after, these are a very strong option at the price.

Note: The earphones were supplied by the manufacturer for this review. As always, this did not influence my unbiased opinion of the product.