Shokz has announced bone-conducting sports headphones for swimmers that will be useful on land as well as in the pool.
Its new OpenSwim Pro headphones stores up to 8,000 songs on the device. This storage is essential as water inhibits wireless transmission. The headphones also features Bluetooth 5.3 which means you can stream music to it from your phone when walking, running or training in a gym on land. That makes it amphibious tech.
Given the open ear design of Shokz buds, the OpenSwim Pro uses bone conducting rather than air conducting which would be impractical in the water.
The 8,000 songs is an estimate based on the 32GB of on device storage. The rub is you need to upload the songs to the device, so you can’t just reply on a normal streaming service for your music.
The US headphone maker has carved a niche by specialising in open ear headphones that project sound into your ear rather than conventional earbuds which slot into ears.
Shokz also offers air conduction variants.
“While air conduction relies on the eardrums to send vibrations to the bones in the inner ear, bone conduction bypasses the eardrums altogether, Shokz says in a length explanation of its technologies.
“Instead of sending sound through the air and the ear canal, bone-conduction headphones send vibrations directly into the bones of the inner ear. When these tiny bones vibrate, they send a message to your brain that is interpreted as sound.”
The company makes a range of headphones around these variants and some include features such as tiny microphones to detect ambient sound, as you find in regular earbuds.
The OpenSwim Pro offers 9 hours of battery life, is IP68 water and dust rated, and uses 8th generation bone conduction technology.
It supersedes an earlier model, the Xtrainerz
An allied company OptiShokz gained interest for its bone conduction audio sunglasses which may appeal to cyclists and others out and about.
