The Honor Choice Earbuds Clip 2 Pro cost £100, run for 10 hours on a charge (44 with the case), and use a “reverse” noise-cancellation trick to stop your music leaking to the person next to you – the one thing open-ear buds have never fixed at this price. Honor took them global in April 2026, and Yahoo’s audio desk reported that outward-facing leakage fix as the headline when they reached the market. So is there a catch at £100? Yes – three of them. None are the ones I expected, and only one would stop me buying.
The short version: at £100 the Clip 2 Pro pairs genuinely long battery (10h/44h), a wireless-charging USB-C case and an outward noise-cancellation fix for music leakage that nobody else has nailed at this money. The catches: AAC and SBC codecs only (no LDAC or aptX), no real isolation by design, and UK pricing that was still soft at the April 2026 global launch. For Android users it comprehensively undercuts Apple’s open-ear ambitions; for hi-res or noisy-commute buyers it isn’t the right tool.
What £100 actually buys (open-ear clips)
These are clip-style open-ear buds – they hook onto the ear rather than seal it – and Honor has been unusually generous with the stamina. The company quotes 10 hours of playback from a single charge and 44 hours with the case, a properly long-haul figure for a form factor that usually trades endurance for comfort. Each bud carries a 60mAh cell; the case holds 550mAh and tops up over USB-C or wirelessly. The whole lot – case and both buds – weighs 56.5g, and each bud is just 6.0g, which matters more than it sounds for something clamped to your ear all day.
Connectivity is Bluetooth 5.4, and a wireless-charging case at this price tells you Honor is aiming above its weight. Infinium Tech noted the global rollout sat alongside a clutch of Honor audio launches, but the Clip 2 Pro is the one with the genuinely premium brief: open-ear comfort, long battery, the wireless-charging case, and a leakage fix nobody else has nailed at this money.
The reverse-ANC trick – and why it’s the actual story
Open-ear buds have one chronic, embarrassing flaw: they leak. Because nothing seals your ear canal, the speaker has to push harder, and the person across the train table gets a tinny preview of your podcast. Honor’s answer is to run noise cancellation outwards rather than inwards – cancelling the sound spilling away from your ear so less of it escapes. TechRadar was effusive, calling them potentially the best open-ear buds yet and crediting exactly this for solving its biggest gripe with the category.
That’s the bit that earns the “Pro” badge. Comfort and battery are table stakes now; the leakage problem is the one open-ear makers keep waving away. If Honor has actually dented it at £100, that’s not a budget feature – it’s a category-leading one, and the reason these belong on a shortlist rather than the dismiss pile.
The real test of an open-ear bud isn’t how it sounds to you – it’s how little it bothers everyone else. That’s the problem Honor went after, and at this price nobody else has.
So what’s the catch?
Here’s where the £100 starts to make sense. The codec support is bare: AAC and SBC only. No LDAC, no aptX, no hi-res wireless path of any kind. For most people streaming Spotify or Apple Music on the move that’s a non-issue – AAC is fine, and open-ear buds are not the device you reach for to scrutinise a master recording. But if you’ve talked yourself into thinking £100 buys a do-everything audiophile bud, it doesn’t, and the spec sheet is honest about that even if the marketing isn’t.
The second catch is inherent to the design, not the price: open-ear means open-ear. There is no real isolation here. On a quiet walk they’re a joy; on the Underground or a flight they’re fighting a losing battle against ambient roar, because the whole point is that the outside world stays audible. The reverse-ANC keeps your music in – it does nothing to keep the world out. Buy these expecting cabin-quiet on a long-haul flight and you’ll be disappointed and out of pocket.
The third, smaller catch: UK pricing was still soft at launch. The figures quoted globally were roughly $125 / £100 / AU$200, with exact UK pricing unconfirmed when the range went global. That £100 is the number to hold Honor to – if it drifts upwards once stock settles on UK shelves, the calculus below changes.
Do they really undercut AirPods?
On price, comprehensively. Apple’s open-ear ambitions live a long way north of £100, and you’re paying for the ecosystem polish – instant pairing, spatial audio, the seamless handoff between an iPhone and a Mac. If you live inside Apple’s walls, none of that is trivial, and it’s the honest reason an AirPod still wins for a lot of buyers regardless of the bill.
But for everyone else – and especially Android users who get nothing from Apple’s integration tax – the Clip 2 Pro reframes the question. You’re not choosing the cheap option; you’re choosing the one that solved the leakage problem and threw in a wireless-charging case and ten-hour battery for the money Apple wants before it has even finished its sentence. That’s not a bargain-bin pitch. It’s a better-engineered product at a lower price, which is a far more dangerous thing for Apple to face.
Who should clip these on
If you’re a runner, a cyclist, a desk-worker who needs to hear the doorbell and a colleague, or anyone who finds sealed buds claustrophobic, these are an easy recommendation – the comfort, the battery and the leakage fix line up exactly with how open-ear buds actually get used. If you commute on noisy transport and want your music to drown the world out, walk away now; this is the wrong tool and no price makes it the right one. And if hi-res codecs are a hard requirement, AAC-and-SBC-only rules them out before you start.
The Clip 2 Pro is the first open-ear bud where the headline feature isn’t a gimmick and the price isn’t the only reason to look. I’d back these the moment UK stock settles at the quoted £100 – and the only thing that would stop me is Honor quietly letting that number creep north once the early reviews have done their work. Hold them to a hundred pounds, and Apple has a genuine problem.
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