I’ve Accepted That I Can’t Use In-Ear Earbuds. Luckily, I Found These Clip-On Cuffs

Buying inexpensive earphones was life changing for me. I can’t believe I kept buying AirPods for so long. I love and would happily recommend my $35 headphones from EarFun, but after months of wear, they proved they were not working with my ears, so I began looking for yet another replacement.

Background: I have small ears. Not noticeably small (I think) and I only found out I had small ears from wearing different styles of earrings and ear buds and having them fall out or look preposterous. Even with the smallest silicone cover on my EarFun earbuds, they’d slip out of my ears. I was used to pushing them back in, but then one day somehow me pushing my earbud in set off Siri and she was like “Would you like to call [Hinge date from a year ago]?” which sent me into an immediate panic and I was SCRAMBLING for my phone. Honestly it’s a miracle I didn’t break both ankles racing across the room. That was the day I decided I needed different ear buds, and fast.

I was looking at different types of open-ear earbuds (so the size of my ears wouldn’t actually matter, nothing was going IN my ears), and I decided on a cuff style. This way I could wear my glasses, or a hat, or whatever, and not worry about my earbuds getting in the way. These “Open Ear Clip Wireless Earbuds,” which I just call ear cuffs, were $30 for Prime Day (and they still are as I write this, at the end of July) and they are actually amazing.

I have worn them to clean my house, to do a 45 minute strength workout, and to talk on the phone. They’re great for all of them and they do NOT move. I was up down and around doing a workout and they didn’t move a bit (and they connected to my Peloton easily). Two caveats I’ve found in my few weeks of use: The sound quality on the phone isn’t AS good as other headphones I’ve had, but it’s perfectly usable. And the battery life seems a little iffy, but I could just have a bad pair and I don’t use them enough for it to be a big issue. If you have oddly small ears that can’t hold an earbud to save their life, check out these clip-style earbuds and save yourself from a potentially mortifying accidental phone call.