Late last year Huawei held an event for the Middle East and Africa region where it announced three new devices – a laptop, a tablet, and a wearable. The laptop, the MateBook D 16, has already landed on our shores, and more recently it was the turn of the Huawei FreeClip.

The FreeClip is a pair of wireless earphones unlike anything that Huawei has officially launched to date. This thanks to what it calls the C-Bridge design. Added to this is what Huawei calls open-ear, which is distinctly different to that of over-ear, on-ear, or in-ear, wireless earphones we have encountered in the past.

It remains to be seen whether this new wireless earphone design will be imitated by other wearable makers, but to see whether this new offering is any better or worse than some of the Chinese company’s FreeBuds, we received a pair of Huawei FreeClip earphones to review.

You can keep an eye out for the review later this week, but in the interim we’ve decided to unbox this new offering from Huawei to see precisely what you get for R3 999 (RRP).

Scroll further to see some pictures, as well as read our initial thoughts of the Huawei FreeClip, what it’s packaged with, and how to set it up.

Outside of the aforementioned C-Bridge design, which we will touch on shortly, the FreeClip features most of the elements that the FreeBuds models do.

The full range of specifications for the Huawei FreeClip earphones are as follows:

In terms of what’s in the box, outside of the earbuds and charging case, a USB Type-C charging cable and usual literature are present, along with your warranty card.

It should also be noted that the charging case supports wireless charging too, with the battery life of fully charged earphones estimated at up to eight hours. This is bumped up to 36 hours in conjunction with charging case, according to Huawei.

Now for the C-Bridge, which connects a Comfort Bean to an Acoustic Ball, with both elements being touch-enabled for gestures and music playback controls. The latter also houses the 0.8mm dual-magnet high-sensitivity driver units that deliver the sound on these wireless earphones.

It is the connector, which is made of something Huawei calls Ni-Ti shape-memory alloy, that curves around the outer portion of the ear.

As for the fit, it does take some getting use to. We did find ourselves readjusting quite often in the first couple of hours of wearing, trying to see how we could strike the best placement as the Acoustic Ball did not fit inside of the ear itself.

Huawei says there is a reverse sound waves system built inside the Acoustic Ball in order to ensure there is little to no sound leakage, but we still need to get a few more days under our belt before we can attest to its efficacy in that regard. The same goes for the voice call functionality, which we’re still testing out.

What we can comment on, however, is the frustrating experience of Huawei’s AI Life app, which can be used to drill down into the deeper settings and functions of the FreeClip earphones. Our problem with it is mainly around connectivity, as it often struggled to connect in-app compared to normal Bluetooth connection, which was quick and easy to accomplish.

We’ll be sharing our thoughts on this latest wearable from Huawei, but our initial reactions are that it is an interesting looking piece of kit that comes with its own quirks that you’ll need to get used to.