Technologies

Sony Pulse Explore Earbuds Hands-On: Absurdly Good Sound

While designed to be used with Sony’s PlayStation 5 gaming console, they’re among the best wireless earbuds for music listening.

Sony’s upcoming Pulse Explore wireless earbuds are weird — but in a surprisingly good way.

Due to ship Dec. 6 and available for preorder now for $200, the buds are ostensibly low-latency gaming earbuds. Somewhat bulky and a little bit strange looking in your ears, they’re designed to be used with Sony’s PS5 gaming console and its new PlayStation Portal remote player, as well as Windows and Mac computers. (The included PlayStation Link USB adapter is required for PS5 and Nintendo Switch use.) Like most other wireless gaming earbuds I’ve encountered, the Pulse Explore can also be paired with your smartphone via Bluetooth.

That they’re very good gaming earbuds isn’t surprising. However, that they’re as good as they are for music listening is a revelation. In fact, after trying an early review sample in advance of the launch, I found that they sound clearer and more articulate than Sony’s flagship WF-1000XM5 earbuds, with tight, powerful bass. That doesn’t necessarily mean they sound better than XM5s, which sound a little fuller. But I wasn’t expecting them to compete at all with the XM5s for music listening.

The reason for that sound seems largely due to the buds’ planar magnetic drivers, which are typically found in high-end over-ear audiophile headphones and rarely in earbuds. Sony recently acquired Audeze, which is known for its planar magnetic drivers and in 2021 made a pair of $1,299 wired planar magnetic earbuds called the Euclid that are currently listed as «sold out.» Planar magnetic drivers are prized for their sonic accuracy and being less prone to distortion. They’re typically larger than standard dynamic drivers found in the majority of headphones and harder to drive.

The Pulse Explore look a little funky but are comfortable to wear

Normally, I’d say that $200 for a pair of gaming earbuds, especially ones like the Pulse Explore that don’t exactly have a premium look and feel, is pretty pricey. (They’re an all-plastic affair and are relatively lightweight for their size.) But that Sony and presumably Audeze have brought this driver technology to a pair of $200 earbuds is kind of wild. And Sony’s upcoming $150 Pulse Elite headset, due to ship on Feb. 21, also features planar magnetic drivers.

To get to that price point, Sony has stripped out some features that you’d find in today’s premium true-wireless earbuds, including its WF-1000XM5 buds. The Pulse Explore have no active noise canceling (aka ANC), no ear-detection sensors that automatically pause your music when you take the earbuds out of your ears, and no companion app with an equalizer or other features (that I’m aware of). These are truly bare-bones earbuds. In fact, the volume control buttons only worked when I was using the buds with my PS5, and there were no controls for skipping tracks forward or back when I was using the buds with an iPhone 15 and Google Pixel 7.

Truth be told, I generally use full-size headphones for gaming and so do my teenage kids, who I usually ask for feedback when testing gaming headsets. As I said, from my limited testing time, they sounded very good and performed well as gaming earbuds. They’re compatible with Sony’s 3D Audio supported games. (I played Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.) Sony says they’ll «enhance your perception in 3D Audio supported PS5 games as audio cues are positioned with an incredible degree of accuracy across all three dimensions.» And microphone performance seemed quite good for multiplayer games.

The Sony Pulse Explore earbuds include a USB dongle

It was simple to connect the earbuds to the PS5. You plug in the PlayStation Link USB adapter to the USB-A port on the PS5, then press the link button on the case while the earbuds are in the case, and you’re quickly connected to the PS5. What’s also nice is that you can simultaneously be connected to your phone via Bluetooth and take a call if it comes in while you’re gaming. While you could pair to a PC via Bluetooth, you’ll likely want to use the PlayStation Link USB adapter with your Mac or Windows PC because it creates a lossless low-latency connection with the buds. With the Nintendo Switch, you’ll need a USB-C to USB-A adapter to plug in the dongle, but no dongle is required for the PlayStation Portal remote player. (It’s a shame you need a dongle for the PS5, as it’s unclear why the technology can’t be built into the unit like it is with the Portal.)

As far as comfort goes, the buds come with four sets of ear tips, so you should find a set that fits your ears well. Overall, I found them comfortable to wear over long periods. (The earbuds are rated for five hours of battery life at moderate volume levels with two extra charges in their fairly larger charging case.) While I was able to get a tight seal with the largest set of ear tips, I ended up switching to another set with a more conical shape that fit my ears even better. (Since I test a lot of earbuds I have a lot of extra ear tips to choose from.)

I spent more time listening to music than gaming with them because I was surprised how good they sound. I asked Sony whether they supported its LDAC audio codec for Bluetooth streaming, but I never got a response. However, it appears they don’t as my Pixel 7 showed that the AAC audio codec was supported for HD audio in the settings for the buds, not LDAC.

While they may not offer the same sound quality as high-end over-ear planar magnetic headphones, they exhibit some of the same sound traits: well-balanced audio that’s clear, accurate and open (wide sound stage), with bass that goes deep but is well defined. These are earbuds that will make you want to do a deep dive into your music library to hear how they sound with various tracks. While they may be a little harder to drive, I didn’t have any issue with how loud they play using my iPhone 15. (The volume was slightly lower with the Pixel 7.) But the WF-1000XM5 buds do play louder, and, as I said, sound a bit fuller with bigger bass.

I was also impressed with their voice-calling capabilities. Callers told me they did a very good job suppressing background noise while my voice came through relatively clearly — even on the noisy streets of New York. They’re in the upper echelon of earbuds for voice calling.

As noted, they’re pretty lacking in the features department when it comes to what people have come to expect from premium earbuds that cost $200, the street price of Apple’s AirPods Pro 2. But if you get a tight seal, the passive noise isolation is good (a decent amount of ambient noise is muffled) and the earbuds sound great and work well for making calls, which is all that a lot of people are looking for.

I’ll post a full review once I’ve spent more time with the Pulse Explore earbuds, but for now I’ll say they’ve exceeded my expectations. Sure, plenty of people use their gaming headset as everyday headphones, particularly while working at their desk. But the Pulse Explore also make a strong case to be your everyday earbuds despite their decided lack of features.

Technologies

Here’s How a Former Overwatch Pro Made the Support Hero He Always Wanted

Scott «Custa» Kennedy used his experience as a former Overwatch League pro to design one of the game’s most popular heroes in Reign of Talon season 1.

Overwatch’s Reign of Talon season 1 is starting to wind down, and the biggest story has been the five new heroes who joined the roster. A lot of attention has understandably gone to Jetpack Cat, a hero once scrapped in the game’s early design, but resurrected on the cusp of the game’s 10th anniversary. She’s been the subject of bans and memery due to her unique kit that features permanent flight and the ability to fly any other hero through the air with her Lifeline ability.

But another support hero has quietly gone under the radar as one of the most-played characters in the new season: Mizuki.

Mizuki is a complex hero, similar on paper to support heroes Brigitte and Lucio, who mix damage with healing in the radius around them, but with his own unique mechanics. He has a constant healing aura around him, which grows more powerful as he deals damage with his weapon or uses other healing abilities. His main weapon is a projectile that bounces off surfaces. One of his abilities, Katashiro Return, offers a burst of movement, but also the ability to teleport back to your starting point within a few seconds.

That all adds up to a hero design that gives players lots of options but also requires you to carefully strategize to turn the tide of battle. Do you stay with your team to maximize the value of your healing aura? Or do you split from them for a higher-risk, higher-reward play? Do you use your Katashiro Return ability to flank behind an enemy team, or save it to disengage from an unexpected attack?

Despite spending most of my time in Overwatch playing support heroes, including Ana and Kiriko, I found Mizuki challenging early in the season, even as I watched enemy Mizukis pump out damage and secure clutch kills while constantly healing their teams.

This «unlockable challenge» element was an intentional part of Mizuki’s design, as I was soon to learn from chatting with the hero’s creator, a former Overwatch eSports pro.

By and large, support players have embraced this challenge. An Overwatch spokesperson told me via email that «Mizuki is consistently in the top four for all support picks in Season 1, across every region.» He’s one of several elements powering a revival of the game, along with a new ongoing story, weekly faction missions and the promise of more new heroes every season. People have flocked back into the game since the start of Season 1, with its average player count on Steam more than doubling over the past month.

Mizuki’s design was led by Scott «Custa» Kennedy, a longtime presence in Overwatch’s professional scene as both a player and match analyst, and now an associate hero designer. I spoke with Scott at Blizzard’s spotlight event and also spoke with him and Mizuki’s character artist, Melissa Kelly, in early March to discuss how they created one of the game’s most popular heroes.

From professional player to associate designer

After a few years as a professional player and several more as an analyst and caster for the Overwatch League, Kennedy was looking for the next step in his career.

«Overwatch [had] been my life for, like, the last 10 years in many different facets,» he said, but as he reached retirement age in the esports realm, he wanted a change. He spoke with some of the Overwatch developers, including associate game director Alec Dawson, about what it would take to get into game development.

After doing some QA work and hands-on game development («I made the world’s hardest 2D cat platformer in three days,» he said), Kennedy secured an associate hero designer opening for Overwatch, which was a perfect fit with his experience.

When given the task of envisioning the game’s next healer, Kennedy said he didn’t want to make another support designed around «point-and-shoot» mechanics that healed teammates and hurt enemies, like Ana or Juno.

«I wanted [Mizuki] to be more of an AoE healing aura-type hero because I think that’s something that’s been underrepresented in our heroes,» Kennedy said. Instead, he came up with the area-of-effect healing that’s similar to how Lucio and Brigitte heal, but with the added layer of that healing becoming more powerful the better you play in combat.

Managing that nuance was a learning experience for Kennedy.

«One of the biggest things that I learned is how complexity can be really cool on paper, but when you’re making a hero how quickly that snowballs into making a player overwhelmed,» Kennedy said. But he feels the team ultimately found a good balance, where inexperienced players can still contribute with him, while more experienced and skilled players can benefit even more.

Kelly added that Mizuki was a complicated hero on the design side, too.

«One of the issues is that he was looking kind of like a [damage hero],» she said. «He looked very aggressive for a healer. So we were just trying to soften him up.» Kelly pointed out that Mizuki’s weapon is a mix of a priest’s staff and a sickle, which also blurs the lines a bit between support and damage heroes.

That nuance seems to be a big part of Mizuki’s appeal. Even though I generally prefer the kind of «point-and-shoot» healing hero Kennedy said he wanted to avoid, I’ve found Mizuki to be one of the most interesting additions to the roster, especially among support heroes. His Binding Chain ability, which roots an enemy hit by the chain into place, rewards good aim and timely use, while his Healing Kasa and Katashiro Return abilities let my brain ponder over creative escapes and ambushes.

When I play Mizuki, I’m always thinking while I fight, and I enjoy feeling that kind of active engagement with the game.

Mizuki’s reception and prospects for pro play

Kennedy worried that players would be turned off by how complex the hero is — wondering, «Are players going to try him, not understand him and then be like… ‘I’m just gonna play the cat?'» (The cat, of course, is Jetpack Cat, who was released alongside Mizuki in season 1 and immediately became one of the most popular and most-banned heroes. She has a more intuitive, point-and-heal design, although her launch state also allows for particularly aggressive gameplay.)

Instead, Kennedy has enjoyed watching players stick with Mizuki and later post about how they’ve «unlocked» the hero by figuring out the formula to succeed with him. Kennedy said it’s rewarding to see players grasp his original concept for the hero as it plays out in-game. After that initial, somewhat disastrous first game I played, I started clicking with Mizuki, too.

Players still struggled with parts of Mizuki’s kit, and Kennedy noted some initial frustrations with «intentional design limitations» he and the team placed on the hero. Players seemed to want to use his Katashiro Return ability to go on aggressive flanks, but found it didn’t last long enough to successfully move behind enemy teams. That kind of larger repositioning would go against the design team’s vision for the hero, who is meant to stay near his team and use the ability to return to them quickly.

Now, Kennedy said, «players seem to understand the limitations of the hero, and that’s been cool to see.»

Mizuki has had a strong launch, and has been sitting around a 54% win rate in competitive modes since the start of the season. That’s quite high, ranking just behind last season’s top performer: the damage hero Vendetta. I asked Kennedy how he reads that data — whether Mizuki is overtuned or just a good fit among this season’s most-played heroes.

Kennedy said Mizuki was in a «pretty healthy» spot, but could get pulled down a bit in future seasons. «The numbers that he can put out in terms of healing and damage output are things that really put him above everyone else at this point. So it’s definitely something we’re keeping an eye on.»

But that power won’t necessarily translate to Mizuki being picked up in professional play, at least based on last month’s Overwatch Championship Series Bootcamp. Kennedy said the hero’s kit isn’t as good for staying alive and executing plays as heroes such as Lucio and Kiriko, who have long been must-picks in pro play.

«I could see Mizuki getting more playtime in a world in which we start playing more rush metas [centered around tanks like Ramattra or Orisa],» he said, «but with how fast the game is being played at the highest level, it can be difficult for Mizuki to keep up.»

Kennedy brought up one of Overwatch’s biggest and most inevitable challenges over its decade-long tenure: balancing heroes for both the pro level and the rest of the game, and how the difficulty lies in the fact that certain resources — such as speed boosts, mobility and burst damage — are more valuable at the highest levels of coordinated play. The design team is always working to make sure heroes are never totally out of balance at either skill level, he said.

That work has been on display since the launch of Season 1, with balance patches coming out virtually every week up through the midseason patch on March 10. Those updates mostly focused on the five new heroes but also included some changes to Vendetta, who continues to terrorize the game with a very strong win rate and the ability to cut someone down almost out of nowhere, leaving opponents very little time to react.

Still, the season overall has been a win for the game, thanks largely to the influx of new heroes and the different playstyles they add to the game.

«[I’m] definitely a little overwhelmed with how positive everyone has been with Mizuki — and honestly, the five heroes in general,» Kennedy said. «I think the reception’s been awesome. We couldn’t have asked for anything better.»

Technologies

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Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for March 30, #553

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for March 30 No. 553.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is a tough one. You’ll need to know a little about four very different sports in order to solve it. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Make a racket.

Green group hint: Goooooal!

Blue group hint: Baseball stars.

Purple group hint: Toss the pigskin.