Batband Ear-Free Wireless Hearable
- What it says it is: a bone-conducting headphone alternative that frees up your ears so you can stay tuned into the real world.
- What it is: a cross between a bluetooth speaker and an airplane pillow that’s well-built but ineffectual.
- It is not great.
- This Unbox Therapy video tells you just about everything you need to know.
- Model: Batband 1.0 (Reader, there probably won’t be a 2.0)
Honesty Is The Best Policy
There’s a classic trope in comedy that I’m sure you’ve seen: the secretly crummy therapist. They’ll wear a turtleneck or flowy blouse and academic-looking glasses and sit with tightly crossed legs. The room they work out of will be beautifully appointed with bookshelves and tasteful furniture. While the client talks, the therapist will occasionally let escape subtle grunts of acknowledgement and jot down notes, or so we think. Then comes the over-the-shoulder shot and we see what’s actually on the notepad: doodles. In other words, the therapist looks professional, but has done nothing he or she promised.
You can probably intuit why this is an apt metaphor for the Batband, but in case you’re not following, I’ll spell it out.
The Batband is a bone-conduction headphone alternative. Basically, the claim is that you can put it on your head without having to cover your ears, thus allowing you to play music or podcasts or whatever you want, without shutting out all noise from the outside world. Sounds pretty cool, right? And it looks pretty cool too. In fact, everything about it–from its sleek website, to its packaging, to its build-quality–screams: this is a good, cool, exciting product.
And it would be, if it weren’t for one small problem: it doesn’t actually do any of what it claims.
It’s hard to hear unless you turn the sound way up, at which point it’s easier to hear… for everyone: you and anyone who’s in the same room as you. There is no evidence that it’s really doing conduction via your bones. It has an app that gets terrible reviews. On the app, you can change the sound settings. None of them sound at all different from them. (For a more complete breakdown, check out this super helpful video).
So yes, we have them. Yes, we’re going to sell them. But we want to make sure you understand just what you’re getting yourself into. There’s a reason we can offer them at a tenth of what their original list price (they really did try to sell these for $250). Maybe you need a prop for your sci-fi photoshoot. Or maybe you just like having a bunch of weird gear around. Or maybe you buy failed products hoping that, one day, one of them will become rare enough that you can sell it for a lot of money online.
Really, any reason for buying the Batband is fine, as long as it’s not because you think it’s going to be good at what it says it’s good at.
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