Shokz OpenRun Pro Bone Conduction Sports Headphones, Open-Ear Sports Earphones with Mic, Bluetooth Wireless Bone Conduction Headset, IP55 Waterproof

Love these! A little weird at first as you get used to not having anything in your ears! Comfortable to wear, great sound quality, and I feel much safer whilst out walking as I can still hear my surroundings.

Ripresento la mia opinione (questa è la QUARTA volta, oramai è una questione di principio!) in quanto la precedenti mi sono state segnalate ed oscurate ma confido ancora nella libertà di espressione, ovviamente nel rispetto del linguaggio e delle persone, pertanto ripresento la mia opinione personale al fine di far conoscere ai più come sono realmente queste cuffie.
Questa tipologia di cuffie è denominata a “conduzione ossea” ovvero il dispositivo a contatto con le tempie dovrebbe trasmettere il suono che dovrebbe essere percepito dall’ascoltatore.
Purtroppo la definizione è fuorviante e non veritiera in quanto si tratta di 2 normalissimi micro altoparlanti che posti davanti alle orecchie fanno sentire la musica.
La prova fatta è incontestabile ed inequivocabile: mentre si sta ascoltando la musica se staccate le cuffiette dalle tempie ovvero escludendo qualsiasi tipo di contatto tra gli altoparlanti ed il vostro cranio/tempie la qualità del suono non subisce la benchè minima variazione! Potrete ascoltare la musica sia con il contatto che senza il contatto. Praticamente utilizzando un banalissimo paio di cuffiette ad archetto e ponendolo davanti alle orecchie e non sopra di esse otterrete lo stesso identico e preciso effetto.
Non contesto la comodità delle cuffie come non contesto la loro utilità: sono estremamente comode e si dimentica di averle addosso, lasciano ascoltare l’ambiente circostante perchè giustamente il canale uditivo rimane libero ma questo è tutto, non c’è alcun miracolo tecnologico di conduzione attraverso le ossa temporali tant’è vero che se alzate oltre la metà il volume chi vi sta vicino sente pari pari tutto quello che state ascoltando voi. Pertanto non sono nemmeno adatte per ascoltare qualcosa di personale in privato.
Ecco, questa è la mia contestazione! Sono un prodotto validissimo dal profilo d’uso sportivo data la salda vestibilità e anche la buona durata della batteria, devo dire davvero buona.
Il lato negativo sono la scadente qualità audio che è data dall’unione di 2 fattori: il primo è che sono 2 altoparlanti minuscoli e il secondo è che sono posti davanti le orecchie, non sopra nè all’interno del canale uditivo pertanto dimenticate l’audio corposo o chissà quale qualità sonora.
Per sentire sentite, per carità, ma ripeto, ascoltereste la stessa cosa con un paio di normalissime cuffiette poste davanti le orecchie e non sopra. Non sono cuffie che valgono un prezzo così elevato ma principalmente perchè mi sento preso in giro con la decantazione di una tecnologia che è appurabilmente inesistente.
Se di conduzione ossea si trattasse dovremmo avvertire quantomeno una differenza tra l’audio emesso con gli auricolari a contatto e con gli auricolari staccati, allargati dalle tempie, lontani da esse… invece no, l’audio è sempre lo stesso perchè parliamo semplicemente di 2 piccoli driver (altoparlanti) , niente di più e niente di meno. Se fossero state pubblicizzate per quello che realmente sono la recensione sarebbe stata molto probabilmente diversa diversa ma qui purtroppo vi è un’amara realtà legata al mondo del marketing.
Ho scelto questo modello perchè tanto pubblicizzato anche da rinomati e famosi youtuber pertanto mi sono rivolto a quello che dovrebbe essere il top del settore ad oggi disponibile.
Ogni youtuber pone nelle sue recensioni i link all’acquisto di questi prodotti dove ammettono tranquillamente di percepire una piccolissima percentuale anche se il prezzo per l’utente finale non cambia… Questa tecnica si chiama “REFERRAL LINK”. Nulla di male se non fosse che facendo un rapidissimo ragionamento se ne evince quanto segue:
1- voi acquistereste un prodotto definito scadente o un prodotto definito eccellente e dalle favolose e sbalorditive peculiarità con l’utilizzo di tecnologie innovative e all’avanguardia? E già questo punto dice tutto.
Punto 2: tutti i produttori offrono in prova (alcuni regalano letteralmente il prodotto) agli youtuber più famosi, quelli che hanno tante recensioni all’attivo e tanti follower. Ovviamente per fare questo devi essere un bravo recensore e rilasciare recensioni “convenienti” per il produttore, non di certo denigrarlo con una scadente recensione, pena non ti mandano niente. Quindi signori i produttori analizzano prima di tutto il profilo dello youtuber e se i follower ci sono e le recensioni dei prodotti sono buone allora elargiscono i loro prodotti in regalo/prova.
Ecco che la mera realtà è che anche youtuber famosi sono di parte e le recensioni sono sempre meno affidabili, tutto gira intorno a pochi spiccioli dei referral link o dei prodotti da ricevere in omaggio.
Nulla è come sembra!
Lo so, sono stato prolisso ma credo educato, pertanto gradirei che la mia opinione non venga oscurata a fronte di segnalazioni per recensione “scomoda”.
Viviamo in un paese dove la verità è scomoda e va impantanata.
Il prodotto in questione non ha nessuna tecnologia magica e l’ho acquistato a seguito di recensioni entusiasmanti di famosissimi youtuber che decantavano il contrario.
Vista l’amarezza e la delusione scrivo attivamente la triste verità al fine che i più possano leggere e comprendere, poi è chiaro che ognuno resta libero di agire nel modo che ritiene più opportuno.
Mi farebbe piacere che la recensione restasse attiva perchè credo molto nel sistema di test fatto dagli utenti e non dai venditori.
Al contempo vorrei che un supervisor di Amazon indagasse attivamente sulla motivazione della censura della presente opinione che sto ripresentando per la terza volta: oramai è diventata una questione di principio, per un servizio che tutti utilizziamo e nel quale riponiamo fiducia oltre che denaro.
La mia vuole essere più di un’opinione, la realtà di fatti che spinge agli acquisti gli utenti e in questo caso ho potuto dimostrare con prove semplici e replicabili che la tecnologia è inesistente pertanto il prodotto è definibile senza calunnia alcuna fuorviante.
Ad maiora!

I won’t bury the lede here: I returned this item after having used/tested it pretty thoroughly over the course of a week. To be clear, I’m not saying “don’t buy this item”. I’m simply saying “this item wasn’t for me”.

I’ll start by explaining the reason I purchased in the first place, it might add some key context others can relate to. I listen to music/podcasts basically every day, I run a few times a week and walk the dog most days as well. During these activities I’ve always got headphones of some sort on. I used to be a big fan of earbuds – they’re pretty much the perfect solution for me. Or at least, were the perfect solution. I’ve found in recent weeks I’ve started to get slight ear pains and am finding them more and more uncomfortable, whilst being able to wear them for shorter and shorter periods of time. And I’m fairly sure it’s starting to have a very slight impact on my hearing as well. Perhaps not a surprise – I guess jamming bits of silicon into your ear canal and listening to loud music on a daily basis probably isn’t the best from a health perspective. Over-ear headphones are fine around the house but a pretty inconvenient solution when out and about, I find at least.

So that’s when I came across the OpenRun Pro headphones. Bone conduction is a very interesting piece of technology, and offering me the chance to listen without actually having my ears covered was extremely appealing. So after reading many reviews, I pulled the trigged and ordered a pair to try for myself.

Here are my main thoughts:

COMFORT
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I read so many reviews where people said something along the lines of “I forgot I was wearing them at all!”. Wow, I envy these people. Apparently I must have super sensitive ears or something, the first few hours I had them on I found them extremely uncomfortable. To the point they made my ears rather sore. To be fair, this did get better over time, but I still found that wearing them for any significant amount of time would bring back some level of soreness/uncomfortableness. I was CONSTANTLY adjusting the placement on my head, seemingly unable to find the “sweet spot” where comfort was acceptable and sound quality was adequate (more on that shortly). But I could never seem to crack that. Oftentimes, everything would be fine, then I’d move my head slightly and I’d hit “dead spots” of sound where it became slightly muted. Quite frustrating. I couldn’t work out whether it was better to have the band higher up so it was touching the back of my head, or lower down so it was floating freely. In all honestly, it was much of a muchness, but nevertheless I literally couldn’t go a minute or two without adjusting it.

SOUND QUALITY
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Obviously with a product like this, there has to be some compromise. I bought them with expectations that sound quality wasn’t going to be anything like that of earbuds or over-ear headphones – it simply can’t be. However, even with these expectations I was disappointed. The sound quality isn’t average, I’d go as far as to say it’s downright bad. For podcasts, it’s not so much of a problem. For music, it just sounds like you’re listening to a really terrible quality recording. I don’t consider myself an audiophile by any stretch – I don’t mess around with EQ or anything like that, but even I felt the quality was extremely sub-standard.

CONVENICENCE
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So this is where the OpenRun Pro does tick a box. Sort of. I found the fact they don’t actually cover your ears to be quite convenient in certain situations. Mostly, if there is other noise in your vicinity you need to tune into instead, it’s very easy to mute/turn down what you’re listening to and you don’t have to physically take anything off your head/ears. But make note of what I said there – you still have to mute/turn down. I read many reviews saying things like “it just sounds like the music is being played in the background”. Very much not my experience. With podcasts, I could fairly easily understand somebody talking to you from a relatively close distance. With music, no chance whatsoever. It required turning the volume right down in order to to hear them properly. Also if you’re a runner like me, you might be thinking these are going to be brilliant for hearing your surroundings, like cars on the road. Again, not the case for me, unless you’re listening to a podcast. And if your out on a windy day – forget about it. That just becomes a unpleasant mix of wind and poor quality audio.

BATTERY
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This is really good. I charged them once in a week, and on a couple of occasions left them on overnight. I don’t doubt the advertisement they can last 10 hours to be honest.

VALUE FOR MONEY
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You can probably guess my thoughts here based on the rest of the review. Bone conduction technology is very cool, but for me appears like it’s still very immature. £150 for these is just far too much, in my opinion. Yes, they have some conveniences that you just can’t get with alternative products in the market, but that’s not nearly enough to justify the downfalls – the biggest by far and away is obviously the quality of the sound. That needs to come on leaps and bounds to justify a cost like this. Knowing what I know now, I think they’re at least twice as expensive as they should be and probably more than that.

CONCLUSION
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Great idea but not for me. Not yet anyway. I have no doubt future versions will improve many times over. To be fair, if you’re primarily a podcast listener, I think these are a lot better suited for you. But if you listen to music on a regular basis, I really wouldn’t recommend them at all.

good

Solved my problem of ear buds falling out all the time. Surprisingly good volume via the bones near my ear. Not so good in noisy environments such as passenger jets.

I do quite a lot of walking and like to listen to podcasts when doing so. Over the last few years I have finally managed to wear out the 3.5mm headphone jack on my phone (I also wore out more than one set of wired headphones). As such, I was forced to take the plunge and go wireless and I’m glad I did.

This headset is simply ideal for use as a ‘sports’ headset, especially outdoors. It’s light, cordless and so far has been very rugged. To me it is almost a perfect wireless sports headset.

The bone conduction technology is very effective, making for extremely clear spoken word and pretty decent music reproduction. Despite the promotion of the bass capabilities, this is not going to match regular earbuds for deep bass reproduction but in my opinion it is more than ‘good enough’ especially if outdoors and/or doing sports activity. They would not be my first choice for audiophile listening but for activity use, absolutely no quibbles.

The sound doesn’t ‘feel’ all that different from standard headphones … before I first tried them I thought that they might give a sort of ‘disembodied’ sound but really, they could just as easily be normal headphones. I had read people complaining about the transducers ‘tickling’ the temples but I’ve only managed to reproduce this feeling by turning them up to max volume with loud source material. Even then, it wasn’t a particular discomfort. Talking of loudness, they don’t seem to go as subjectively loud as most headphones but they sort of don’t ‘need’ to as the sound is just conducted into your eardrums via your skull. I have no complaints, anyway. Possibly when it comes to loud music they might even be ‘safer’ for the ear than normal phones too but I’m not qualified to give an expert opinion on that.

Because your ears aren’t obstructed, you can hear everything going on around you (unless masked by the audio you are playing). This is very useful for outdoor use if you are cycling or walking/running near traffic and offers a real safety benefit. Also, because the headset is very light you can keep wearing it and still interact with people, unlike say, earbuds that you might have to remove to talk to someone. It’s easy to forget that you are in fact wearing headphones.

This ears-unblocked design also has an interesting ‘inverse’ application where you can use a set of standard, cheap noise blocking earplugs to exclude external noise but still allow you to hear the headphones perfectly. If you are working in a noise-hazard environment where you need to use plugs, this can be useful.

Aside from headphone use, it also supports the functions of a telephone headset. It works really well for this, in fact its my preferred bluetooth headset for hands-free use on my phone because of its lightness and open-ears design, allowing you to wear it for long periods. Speech comes though really clearly on the phones and the microphone has worked well even in relatively noise environments too. There’s a multifunction button on the left transducer which lets you control audio playback and answer calls etc.

Battery life is decent enough – I’ve never run them down from 100% to empty but have had at least 5 hours listening with the battery level remaining ‘medium’ (when you power on the phones you get an audible notification of battery level). I think the claimed life is something like 7 hours or so which seems reasonable. One strange thing is that they don’t seem to have an auto-timeout when you disconnect or if they do, it’s a long time. I guess that could lead to them being inadvertantly depleted of battery if you forget to power them down.

The headphones themselves are very robust – there is a strong, slim ‘band’ (almost like a thick wire) that goes behind the back of your head to clamp the bone conduction units to the area of your temples. For me, this has fitted really well and with the right amount of clamping force. It’s not adjustable though so I guess you might experience issues depending on the dimensions of your head. My guess is that they have targeted the most common head size. In any case, the whole setup feels very robust and seems unlikely to break.

The bone conduction transducers are pretty much sealed (there do seem to be some grills for bass) so they seem a lot more durable than foam pads or rubber tips as typically found on regular ‘phones. There is a degree or water resistance (or sweat I guess) which gives me confidence that they are not going to self destruct if it rains or I get really sweaty. The design makes it really easy to clean the headphones after use – just wipe them down. I absolutely would not want to get them submerged in water, however. The manufacturers do have a dedicated fully waterproof swimming MP3 player based on similar tech which I am probably going to buy too.

There is a fair degree of sound leakage compared to earbuds but not likely to be a problem for sports or when outdoors. Not ideal if you are sitting next to someone or maybe in a small office though.

Overall, I think these are absolutely superb for the purpose of sports/activity, indoors or outdoors. Also great if you want something that you can wear for long periods of time and that doesn’t inhibit your ability to hear the world around you. As I said, they are so good that I will most likely take the plunge and get their swimming mp3 headset for use in the pool. I am only sorry I didn’t take the leap and adopt this technology sooner. Even though they are quite pricey I think they are well worth it and they should last many years.