(Sorry if it's a miss, this community looked the most fitting)
After mentioning them somewhere in comments, I actually bought Shokz after years of sitting curious. There are a few brands that do them, so it doesn't matter what's the brand is. I bought what I've heard of and the cheapest model I could find at that.
So, what's the trick? As I'm cycling, walking and running a lot, I needed a headphone solution to be aware of my surroundings. They don't cover ears and don't actually emmit sound - they vibrate and make your bones serve as a membrane.
The obvious minus is that in a bus or other loud setting you can't hear shit. That's by design. And, logically but somehow absurdly, by shutting your ear with a finger, you can make yourself hear it okay. I did a full circle here, returning to the old headphones isolation problem, heh.
But what impressed me more, they do feel like some kind of a cyberpunk prosthetic. You can wear them all day and even the cheapest one that promises 6hr of activity lasts days on the idle. But as you call someone or watch a vid – here they are, with a little to no latency. Honestly, I feel like if there'd be implants, that's one of the basic ones we can try first. It's hands-free device with a bonus of being more stealthy and not isolating you from the world.
As a cheapskate audiophile who stayed with cords for a long time, I can say that the sound is okay. Keeping in mind that producers can't control the skull of a wearer, they can't nail the ideal sound, but I'm impressed with how nice IDM and metal plays on them - something akin to budget Senh, AKG and Audiotechnica. And unlike cheap Sony, they don't put up low freqs, that's a plus. BUT when I shared it with others, people in body reported less effectiveness due to thickness of skin and under-dermal stuff, so it's better to test it if you aren't skinny as a skeleton.
After being so open about plus sides, I'm to talk minuses. Since the software is proprietary, it doesn't have many controls and is very weird sometimes. As I bought a model that was for internal chinese market originally, it talked to me in Chinese, and it can only be switched to another language before any pairing, so only after unpairing I could've chosen English – and the same combination of button presses when paired was reserved to calling the last called number, so I fucked up a lazy weekend morning for a friend of mine calling them 4-5 times, damn it. Ah, and it supports dual pairing with a PC and a smartphone, but as I tested it this function worked weird and I sometimes manually disconnected them. Walking&working distance from a source device is around the second or third room, that fits most office and home listening cases. I could've probably wished for it to have an option to pick lesser distance since I don't usually have even a meter between my smartphones and them.
Ah, and going back to the bus problem - the obvious downside that you want to turn them to 100% volume that you don't feel, but your ears do. After the first day when I needed to move a lot in loud contexts and thus put them on max, I had a headache, because although I didn't register the volume, my head had a first row concert experience. So if you use these, keep that in mind too.
Have you tried them, is there a topic I haven't covered? As you can tell, I'm happy with them, so I would be biased. It's just with VR stuff, even from Apple, I feel like we underlook existing tech that already serves us as expander of our life experiences and powers.
Nice writeup.
I need to replace my aged pair.
A solution to one of the bus problems, is to carry a pair of those mushy ear plugs. If you put them in, you regain isolation, without having to crank the volume and hurt your ears.
One of my gripes is the behind-the-head design. You simply can't wear them comfortably if you're reclining or laying down.
Yep, you are right, also in autumn and winter both the high collar of a jacket and the hat touch it. In a place with a various weather it's harder to forget they are on.
With Shokz especially, it could've been undone if the cord was soft, like in many connected headphones. But for some reason they did it hard bending, although heaphones sit without problems by themselves, even when doing sports. For something like Miami or Krasnodar it's no problem, but for my region of Russia with crazy overnight tilts of weather and states with the same instability, it can be a problem.
The band needs to be a flexible metal so that enough pressure is applied to the ear pads. If they were floppy, you wouldn't hear them very well.
Some have ear attachments (like mono headsets have, but on both ends)
I just tilt them up, wear them like normal headphones.
Bone conduction doesn't care what position or where exactly the transducer is. The sound won't be exactly as intended but it works.
Tilt them up so the band is on the crown of your head instead across the top of your neck. That's what I do when I'm laying down or wearing a stocking cap.