PlayStation Pulse Explore

At first glance, Sony's PlayStation Pulse Explore seem like perhaps the strangest in-ears on the market today, whether they are designed for gaming or not. The shape of the case, the shape of the devices, the proprietary PlayStation Link protocol and the so-called "Planar Magnetic Drivers." There's nothing here that's conventional, nor boring.

It's a similar mix of wonder and admiration that PlayStation Portal was met with, but Portal actually managed to turn apathy into sympathy by offering a fairly solid but singular functionality for specific users, so can Pulse Explore do the same?

Okay, so what do you care about most if you want a pair of gaming in-ears? You probably care about good sound, and here the inclusion of the so-called "planar magnetic" drivers is quite crucial. These come from audio manufacturer Audeze, which Sony recently acquired, and they've previously experimented with these drivers in products far, far more expensive than these, but they're generally praised for precision, depth and avoiding some of the classic pitfalls we see in products like Pulse Explore - it also means you get the full benefit of 3D Sound, which a number of third parties, as well as Sony's own PlayStation studios, use in their major flagship titles. There's also virtually no delay via lossless, so that's a plus too.

However, there is an obvious compromise here. The case is gigantic, as in triple the size of traditional Bluetooth-based in-ears, but that's not a big deal when it's not going in your bag every day. What does matter is that the devices themselves are huge, as in enormous. They're so big that it takes away from comfort, and they have to be twisted into place to ensure a good fit. But even though they're big, the battery life is still "only" five hours. Sure, there's another 10 hours in the case, but if you run out while gaming, they're going back in the case no matter what.

There's still Bluetooth, dual connectivity to a smartphone, support for AAC codec and a good set of microphones that ensure reasonably good background noise cancellation, so there's nothing obviously missing, apart from active noise cancellation.

Via PlayStation Link, you can connect directly to your PS5 or your PlayStation Portal without the help of a 2.4GHz dongle, but such a dongle is also included if you want to use a dual connection between a console and a PC, for example.

The primary competitor is probably from Sony itself in the form of inZone Buds, and although these do not support 3D Audio in the same way, and do not have PlayStation Link, they can also perform surprisingly good sound via their Dynamic Driver 8.4mm X drivers, and here we are talking up to 36 hours of battery life instead of 15.

But via Link, Sony is constructing an ecosystem, and if you are already invested in this, then there is a scam in buying Pulse Explore, even at the 1699 that Sony seems to demand. It's a bit too much if you ask me, especially considering the limitations, but the sound quality is hard to argue against.