Can someone break down this marketing-speak for me? Is “multidirectional audio” code for “they play sounds, just like a Bluetooth speaker dock, but there are two speaker docks, and each speaker dock is right by one of your ears”?
@pmarin Your comment reminded me that over the summer, I was a tester for a similar pair of earphones? earbuds? headphones? whatever for a pretty famous manufacturer in this space.
As a tester, I was to wear them every day for a week and share my experience with them. Because the parts touching my head and ears were 100% plastic (vs. a softer (rubberized?) material), pretty reliably after about 10 minutes of wearing, they became so uncomfortably painful that I had to stop wearing them. I kept trying each day, but got the same painful result. My wife tried them and they didn’t hurt her ears/head.
I gave that feedback to the company and they guided me to “flex apart” the two ends of each earbud (as if I was treating each one as a turkey wishbone that I was trying to gently break (and not really break) with both hands) ten times and that did seem to help a little. I could then wear them for an hour or two before the pain would arrive.
Anyway, if you find these OPN ones to be similarly painful, you may want to try the aforementioned flexing move to see if that helps.
At the end of the test, I gave them to my wife and I see that she uses them from time to time. A month or two after I tested it, I saw the actual item show up for sale at a (to me) laughably high price (like nearly $200). (I use a Bluetooth sunglasses model from the same manufacturer (which is probably how I got invited to be a tester) almost every day I walk in my neighborhood and find it to be terrific.)
@andymand My experience to date has been very similar with all of the ones that have a thing that goes up over the top of the ear like these. And earbuds with any stiff plastic part contacting the ear near or in the canal are just intolerable for me. I have managed to make one single-ear Bluetooth phone headset tolerable via making a molded foam custom insert for it, and I have the foam and two pairs of Bluetooth buds that I’m going to experiment with later this month, but nothing off-the-shelf has been in any way useful so far.
@pmarin It’s important to me because I don’t use any ear buds wireless or not. They hurt after about 30 minutes. Ears are not round. I don’t know why the things you stick in your ears are round.
And I don’t particularly like things on my ears either
@andymand I’d really recommend trying the Shokz of any style. They just put a pair like this with the split ears instead of a connected pair, but I can’t have anything in my ears and I LOVE them all
@andymand@pmarin What brand sunglasses.
Sounds like it could be a solution for me except for the fact that I also loathe wearing glasses. At least they don’t hurt. Just make me feel like my face is pressed up against a glass wall.
@pmarin Apple AirPods are excruciating for me. I tried my wife’s several times and couldn’t wear them for more than 10 minutes without them hurting. For some reason, she got me a pair for my birthday and I had to have her return them – unopened – because I can’t use them. Maybe my ears are shaped weirdly?
Are these really speakers sending audio in the ear canal, or are they bone-conducting earphones? Vibrating against the bone in front of the ear to send the sound waves into the cochlea.
@sjk3 I tested a very similar pair and they weren’t bone-conducting; they were just arranged so that the speakers sat above/slightly outside of the ear canal vs. inside (like stick-in-the-ear earbuds). (I also own a pair of Shokz that I freaking love for things like grocery shopping so I can phone home with “what does this mean on the list?” questions. )
@sjk3 I was wondering the same thing - are these basically just knockoff Shokz? - and at first was thinking they are not since they make no mention of bone conduction etc. But I stumbled across this subreddit and now I’m not so sure:
Kind of sounds like they are very similar and Shokz is mostly just marketing hype. Although I do love the one guy u/xhelmsx going balls to the wall to defend them saying there’s no way a company would ever have marketing that’s deceitful. My favorite quote “Maybe If it was the government, then question everything, but a fucking earphone company that specializes in bone conduction technology? Come on. Don’t be dumb.” Don’t you sheeple understand - companies never hype their products!!
Anyway I got a lot of joy out of reading that thread and hope you all do too. Now my “buy” fingers getting itchy…
@benjyhe I, too, am a fan of Shokz products. I’m on my third of the predecessor to the OpenRun headphones. One battery wore out. Another the firmware locked up and stopped working. Third one still works.
However, when I learned of the rebranding and they came out with OpenRun Pro with improved bass, I got that and love it. Works well in situations where I want to listen in private but still be aware of my surroundings.
Be careful with open-air headphones and playing music too loud. Traditional headphones, earphones, and iems block out a lot of sounds so that you can have quiet music and still hear it well but open ear headphones allow in not only the sound of your music but also the environment. You are likely to turn the headphones up to play the music over the environment and that can be dangerous.
Not saying you shouldn’t buy—just saying you should keep that in mind when using.
@gfreek my wife hates earbuds and swears by those Koss over the ear headphones. However they were breaking every 3 months or so. I was repairing some, but eventually I grabbed two pairs, popped them open, and used hot glue to add strain relief to the cable and wires. I think that was about two years ago, but it probably won’t last forever.
I have a set of Shokz Openrun that use this bone-conduction-style technology and have to say they were a revelation. I can ride my bicycle and listen to podcasts and stuff while still safely hearing everything around me, it’s amazing! As stated, you won’t get audiophile quality with bone conduction but it sounds plenty good enough for the situation.
These are probably not as good as the Shokz but I bet they’re more than good enough for the price. Buying a coupe of sets to give to friends.
@Chronicle@werehatrack I said the same thing about westeros when I first heard about game of thrones / a song of ice and fire and my professor just looked puzzled and said it is not on earth. It is a fictional universe / made up planet. Maybe something like that is going on here as well, this is just a fictional universe with hallucinated anatomy…
Dammit, if I thought there was half a chance that I could custom foam-fit these to my ears, I’d give it a shot. But I’ve had too many failures, and I have too little need for non-headphones.
/showme a very comfortable person who is still confused because she can’t really hear her podcast and can hear the annoying conversations around her too easily
These just arrived and I’m pretty happy. I have a lot of earwax and normal earbuds can irritate my ears. These leave my ears open without blasting my sound everywhere. The sound quality isn’t incredible but it should be fine for everyday use. Bluetooth multipoint let’s me pair it with multiple devices at once, so I can jump from my phone to my computer easily.
My only problem so far is the fake USB-C port. The connector is USB-C, but it only works with USB-A to USB-C adapter cables (like the one included). I was hoping to use the same charger that I have for my laptop/phone, but it won’t work with those
Specs
Product: OPN Sound Aria Bluetooth Open-Ear Headphones
Model: OS1000BL
Condition: New
What’s Included?
Price Comparison
$83.38 at Amazon
Warranty
Limited Lifetime Warranty
Estimated Delivery
Tuesday, Jan 16
Hear! Hear!
Great - now I’ll get to hear BOTH sides of the conversation that jerk is having in the middle of the store…
/showme an angry penguin wearing earbuds attacking people
@mediocrebot this may be the best one I’ve ever seen!
@mediocrebot
Impressive, very impressive!
@mediocrebot - Uh… Those are not ear buds… Good pic though.
@OnionSoup And apparently angry giant penguins only attack people with normal looking human hands.
Good to know.
@macromeh but not normal looking eyes
Just for the record,
works really well to maintain shape, except I use in washing machine
Can someone break down this marketing-speak for me? Is “multidirectional audio” code for “they play sounds, just like a Bluetooth speaker dock, but there are two speaker docks, and each speaker dock is right by one of your ears”?
@vfrdirk Pretty much.
@vfrdirk Sharing is caring
“+16 hours with charging case”
How do you put the case on your ears?
@hchavers Very carefully and with lots of lube.
Kind-of disturbing that ‘pain-free’ needs to be listed as a product feature. But then again, this is Meh!
@pmarin Your comment reminded me that over the summer, I was a tester for a similar pair of earphones? earbuds? headphones? whatever for a pretty famous manufacturer in this space.
As a tester, I was to wear them every day for a week and share my experience with them. Because the parts touching my head and ears were 100% plastic (vs. a softer (rubberized?) material), pretty reliably after about 10 minutes of wearing, they became so uncomfortably painful that I had to stop wearing them. I kept trying each day, but got the same painful result. My wife tried them and they didn’t hurt her ears/head.
I gave that feedback to the company and they guided me to “flex apart” the two ends of each earbud (as if I was treating each one as a turkey wishbone that I was trying to gently break (and not really break) with both hands) ten times and that did seem to help a little. I could then wear them for an hour or two before the pain would arrive.
Anyway, if you find these OPN ones to be similarly painful, you may want to try the aforementioned flexing move to see if that helps.
At the end of the test, I gave them to my wife and I see that she uses them from time to time. A month or two after I tested it, I saw the actual item show up for sale at a (to me) laughably high price (like nearly $200). (I use a Bluetooth sunglasses model from the same manufacturer (which is probably how I got invited to be a tester) almost every day I walk in my neighborhood and find it to be terrific.)
@andymand My experience to date has been very similar with all of the ones that have a thing that goes up over the top of the ear like these. And earbuds with any stiff plastic part contacting the ear near or in the canal are just intolerable for me. I have managed to make one single-ear Bluetooth phone headset tolerable via making a molded foam custom insert for it, and I have the foam and two pairs of Bluetooth buds that I’m going to experiment with later this month, but nothing off-the-shelf has been in any way useful so far.
I really wish it was different.
@andymand @werehatrack
Maybe you should invest in custom molded iems.
@pmarin It’s important to me because I don’t use any ear buds wireless or not. They hurt after about 30 minutes. Ears are not round. I don’t know why the things you stick in your ears are round.
And I don’t particularly like things on my ears either
@andymand I’d really recommend trying the Shokz of any style. They just put a pair like this with the split ears instead of a connected pair, but I can’t have anything in my ears and I LOVE them all
@andymand @pmarin What brand sunglasses.
Sounds like it could be a solution for me except for the fact that I also loathe wearing glasses. At least they don’t hurt. Just make me feel like my face is pressed up against a glass wall.
@pmarin Apple AirPods are excruciating for me. I tried my wife’s several times and couldn’t wear them for more than 10 minutes without them hurting. For some reason, she got me a pair for my birthday and I had to have her return them – unopened – because I can’t use them. Maybe my ears are shaped weirdly?
Are these really speakers sending audio in the ear canal, or are they bone-conducting earphones? Vibrating against the bone in front of the ear to send the sound waves into the cochlea.
@sjk3 I tested a very similar pair and they weren’t bone-conducting; they were just arranged so that the speakers sat above/slightly outside of the ear canal vs. inside (like stick-in-the-ear earbuds). (I also own a pair of Shokz that I freaking love for things like grocery shopping so I can phone home with “what does this mean on the list?” questions.
)
@sjk3 I was wondering the same thing - are these basically just knockoff Shokz? - and at first was thinking they are not since they make no mention of bone conduction etc. But I stumbled across this subreddit and now I’m not so sure:
Kind of sounds like they are very similar and Shokz is mostly just marketing hype. Although I do love the one guy u/xhelmsx going balls to the wall to defend them saying there’s no way a company would ever have marketing that’s deceitful. My favorite quote “Maybe If it was the government, then question everything, but a fucking earphone company that specializes in bone conduction technology? Come on. Don’t be dumb.” Don’t you sheeple understand - companies never hype their products!!
Anyway I got a lot of joy out of reading that thread and hope you all do too. Now my “buy” fingers getting itchy…
@benjyhe I, too, am a fan of Shokz products. I’m on my third of the predecessor to the OpenRun headphones. One battery wore out. Another the firmware locked up and stopped working. Third one still works.
However, when I learned of the rebranding and they came out with OpenRun Pro with improved bass, I got that and love it. Works well in situations where I want to listen in private but still be aware of my surroundings.
@benjyhe @sjk3 These are not bone conduction units. They are speakers.
Be careful with open-air headphones and playing music too loud. Traditional headphones, earphones, and iems block out a lot of sounds so that you can have quiet music and still hear it well but open ear headphones allow in not only the sound of your music but also the environment. You are likely to turn the headphones up to play the music over the environment and that can be dangerous.
Not saying you shouldn’t buy—just saying you should keep that in mind when using.
Sensorily,
Damaged Hearing Club
Open Ear Headphones… aka SPEAKERS.
@MrNews Exactly.
Deciding on these or Koss wired KSC75X on ear headphones
@gfreek my wife hates earbuds and swears by those Koss over the ear headphones. However they were breaking every 3 months or so. I was repairing some, but eventually I grabbed two pairs, popped them open, and used hot glue to add strain relief to the cable and wires. I think that was about two years ago, but it probably won’t last forever.
I have a set of Shokz Openrun that use this bone-conduction-style technology and have to say they were a revelation. I can ride my bicycle and listen to podcasts and stuff while still safely hearing everything around me, it’s amazing! As stated, you won’t get audiophile quality with bone conduction but it sounds plenty good enough for the situation.
These are probably not as good as the Shokz but I bet they’re more than good enough for the price. Buying a coupe of sets to give to friends.
@abcde_fz These are not stated as bone conduction units, just standoff ear speakers positioned above the ear canal opening.
/showme open concept ear canals
@Chronicle looks painful … and informative.
@Chronicle disinformative. It’s anatomically bullshit
@Chronicle @werehatrack I said the same thing about westeros when I first heard about game of thrones / a song of ice and fire and my professor just looked puzzled and said it is not on earth. It is a fictional universe / made up planet. Maybe something like that is going on here as well, this is just a fictional universe with hallucinated anatomy…
Dammit, if I thought there was half a chance that I could custom foam-fit these to my ears, I’d give it a shot. But I’ve had too many failures, and I have too little need for non-headphones.
/showme an upset lady ripping her ears off because the earbuds she was wearing were too painful
/giphy klutzy-countless-dinner
/showme a very comfortable person who is still confused because she can’t really hear her podcast and can hear the annoying conversations around her too easily
@PhotoJim This is late but the result given for your prompt was actually really accurate. Heh
For those of you that wanted bone conduction Woot has Shokz on sale today.
These just arrived and I’m pretty happy. I have a lot of earwax and normal earbuds can irritate my ears. These leave my ears open without blasting my sound everywhere. The sound quality isn’t incredible but it should be fine for everyday use. Bluetooth multipoint let’s me pair it with multiple devices at once, so I can jump from my phone to my computer easily.
My only problem so far is the fake USB-C port. The connector is USB-C, but it only works with USB-A to USB-C adapter cables (like the one included). I was hoping to use the same charger that I have for my laptop/phone, but it won’t work with those
Order Dec 31, just getting around to using them. The right one quit working after one use. How do I get a replacement or refund
@dhorton head over to meh.com/support to report the problem. You’re well within the Meh 90-day warranty.