SHOKZ OpenFit for 2023 Open-Ear True Wireless Bluetooth Headphones with Microphone, Earbuds with Earhooks, Sweat Resistant, Fast Charging, 28HRS Playtime (Beige)

I don't often write product reviews, but felt that my experience with the Oladance OWS Pro and Shokz OpenFit might be helpful to others. I pre-ordered the OWS Pro on the day of release and my initial impression was great. They have excellent sound quality and are a truly beautiful design. However, after a week of usage I ended up massively disappointed, and regrettably had to return them - I purchased the Shokz OpenFit instead and am much happier. My use case is for podcasts, audiobooks and quiet music in a home office environment. Unfortunately My OWS Pro had an annoying rapid 'ticking' sound that was constantly there quietly in the background when any audio was active. I could best describe it as the sound an old film projector makes. It wasn't audible in a noisy environment or with loud 'busy' music, but in a quiet home office with podcasts, phone calls, notification sounds, quiet music or music with silent portions, and - ironically enough - their 'Focus Mode', it was constantly apparent. I'd call it a constant hissing/ticking/clicking background sound when any audio stream is active. For example a notification sound would be 'hiss-ticktick-hiss-ticktick<notificaton sound>hiss-ticktick-hiss-ticktick' as the audio circuitry activated and deactivated. I tried it with three different devices. I contacted Oladance support and they told me, and I quote: "The low-level hissing/ticking/clicking sound audible in the background you mention may be white noise, and we'd like to explain to you that white noise is a common problem with all speakers and headphones; it is generated when electronic devices operate. It is a normal phenomenon, not the quality problem of the headset itself, so there is no need to worry". Laughably, some reviewers actually excuse this white noise by describing it as a 'noise cancelling' feature. Absolute nonsense. So after a little research I purchased a pair of Shokz OpenFit instead, as several serious YouTube reviewers noted them for their very low 'residual noise' (the OWS and the Cleer Arc II were rated the worst). The OpenFit has absolutely NO hissing or background static - just a clean pure audio stream - a notification sound is just a notification sound, nothing else is audible. Shokz deserve to be applauded for this. Additionally the OpenFit's comfort and lightweight design is second to none (and I wear glasses). The battery life of the Oladance also gave me problems (left earbud sometimes only charging to 70% and running out much faster than the right). The Shokz by comparison, despite only being rated for 7 hours, have got me through the day (and the battery case is smaller anyway so can more easily be carried with you). I have no doubt the OWS Pro are a great set of headphones for many use-cases, I was initially wowed by them, but for me they proved a major disappointment - despite their excellent audio quality. In addition, the controls proved fiddly and unreliable. I realise they've gone the push-button route for those using them when exercising, but in comparison I've found the OpenFit touch-style controls more reliable and easier to use. I hope my experience proves helpful for you in making a purchasing decision for your use case. I look forward to the next evolution in this product-space as it is rapidly expanding, but I'll be putting Shokz top of my list when buying my next pair - based on this experience I feel they can be better trusted to produce a quality product. UPDATE: Just spent an afternoon sitting in the sun listening to some favourite old tracks on these and have upped my rating from four stars to five. Very happy with the purchase. UPDATE 2 (10/02/24): I just tried a pair of Soundcore Aerofit Pro as they had some attractive features the Shokz do not (longer battery life, LDAC support, detachable headband, on/off switch). Although these features were all desirable, I ultimately returned the Aerofit Pro and kept the Shokz OpenFit. The reason was simple: sound quality. The Shokz have a fuller, more expansive soundstage, and much better bass. Although the AeroFit Pro do indeed have a very clear sound with the LDAC codec, it is more focussed on mids and highs and lacks the bass punch of the OpenFit. In a side-by-side comparison I realised that I *enjoyed* listening on the Shokz more than on the Soundcore. The EQ in the Soundcore app also seemed to have very little effect compared to the changes you can make in the Shokz app. If I can put it this way: the AeroFit sounded like a pair of headphones, while on the Shokz my music sounded like how I would expect it to over a pair of speakers. Hoping Shokz bring improvements in the abovementioned features in their next iteration, but despite their lacking in some areas at the moment, they still win out over everything else for me because of the sound.

Exactly what I was hoping for - earpods that don’t make my inner ear sore. They sit snugly around my ear and seem very secure.Sound is great, linked up to my Apple iPhone no problem. Great value

Use these mainly for the gym and they work well, sound is great but I am no tech expert. Find the touch feature takes a bit of getting use too, sometimes too sensitive and pauses my music by mistake and sometimes not sensitive enough when trying to pause have to repeatedly tap them I like that it pairs with 2 devices so have it paired to my watch and phone, however this caused an issue when I went from the changing rooms where they must have paired with my phone but when in the gym, the music kept freezing and cracking, thought the pods had broken but after a while realised they must still be in range of the phone, so just paused the music and when unpaused, they then connected to my watch and music was now working properly. Also like the spacial awareness. Charges fast, and probably last me a week before having to recharge the case, my only feedback is that it would be good if there was some indication of how much battery % was remaining, only as I have had this feature on a different model, and found it useful. They stay in place when working out which is great as other versions I’ve had kept falling off my ear, even when they were over ear hooks, these have not done that at all and I have tested them a lot with this. I have a few aftershock head phones, so am quite a fan, next set might be the swimming ones.

In the six weeks since I purchased the Shokz Openfit earbuds on 18 November 2023 from Amazon UK (for £152), I have been able to quite thoroughly test them. I am an audiophile, a lover of classical music, with a background in professional recording, and I have been enjoying using Sony’s over-ear noise-cancelling headphones for the last four years, but I wanted a pair of discreet headphones to wear in social environments. Generally, the Shokz Openfit earbuds have impressed me. They are quite simple, they are a bit slow to respond to touch commands, but their speakers are almost as good as those in the Sony over-ear noise-cancelling XMRs, which are almost twice as expensive. Using the "Poweramp" app I have created a setting which increases the Shokz’s bass performance considerably and the Openfit speakers can handle it. The things which I have had to learn in using the Shokz Openfit earbuds are as follows. You switch the Shokz on and off by taking them out of or putting them back in their case. For this reason one ought to pop their little carrying case into a pocket. If you don’t want to switch them off but you want to keep them on your ears but not listen to them for a while, then double-tapping on the top of the left ear-bud will pause performance. When you take the Openfit buds out of the case and pop them in your ears, you only need to enable bluetooth on your phone for the buds to become connected and then start playing by way of your music-playing app. However, if after popping the buds in your ears you open the Shokz app on your phone and allow it, instead, to switch on your phone’s bluetooth then the Shokz app will tell you how much charge is in the earbuds and how much charge is left in the case, and that is helpful information to know at the start of a listening session. Note that the charge information shown in the app does not alter during a session: it only changes when you start a new listening session via the Shokz app. The Shokz Openfit buds reliably respond to touch commands but the responses are a little slower than what I have become used to while using my Sony XMRs. For example, when I double-tap the left earbud to re-start a track, performance does not begin for about a second. However, when I double-tap the right earbud the next track fades in immediately. It took me a while to learn that decreasing and increasing volume depends not upon tapping the left or right earbud, but on holding the finger on the left or right earbud until such time as the volume I want is achieved (each incremental decrease or increase being indicated by a beep in the buds, over the music). So keep your finger on the bud and wait. Remove your finger when the Shokz has reached the volume you want. The Openfit earbuds are delicate little things to handle but on the ears they are perhaps the most visually discreet of all currently available earbuds - and I don't have to worry about them falling off my ears. I think that if they are handled with care they will not break. I always wear glasses, so I was pleased to find that indeed the very thin loops of the Openfit earbuds do not raise the arms of spectacles much or cause any other problem. I think it would have been better for the case to be made of shiny plastic rather than having a satin finish, as the satin finish wears away in places due to friction with the fabric of pockets, and the satin finish is also marred by slight grease or oil marks from one’s fingers, although these can be rubbed away with a damp cloth. I interacted a number of times with Shokz’s customer service via email in order to ensure that I was covered under the warranty, and Shokz’s customer service provided me with satisfactory answers generally within 48 hours. Lastly, my journey to the Shokz Openfit earbuds was quite gruelling. I started off by buying Samsung’s "Galaxy Buds Live", at £69 on Amazon. These interacted brilliantly with my Samsung phone but unfortunately the buds would not stay securely in my ears. Samsung’s Customer Service offered to send me thin silicone sleeves to envelope the lower part of each bud, to stop them slipping out of the oily channels of my ears, but I chose not to try this make-shift remedy. The "Galaxy Buds Live" are most probably wonderful provided you have ears which have cartiledge ridges which will hold the "beans" securely. They were also a third of the price of the Shokz Openfit earbuds. So I next moved to buds with a loop going over the ear, to ensure they would never fall out, and chose the "Nagfak Open Ear Headphones" at £69.99. I thought their four-position arms would ensure that the speakers married with the geography of my particular ears, but in fact I found that everyone has to open them to the fourth position in order for them to sit well on the ear. So the four positions of the arms is just a way of making the buds more compact when in their case. But quite soon I found that the "Nagfak Open Ear Headphones" cannot provide a reasonable bass although they are no doubt fine for listening to spoken programmes. From the "Nagfak Open Ear Headphones" I moved up to the Shokz Openfit buds. I will edit this review if the Shokz buds take a turn for the worse, but so far they have performed well. I hope this review is helpful for others considering the bewildering array of open-ear buds now available. Update: 21 January 2024. I am still very impressed with the sound quality of the speakers in these ear buds. I have also discovered that their receptivity is sensitive enough for them to be able to continue playing a track from my phone when I have moved four rooms along in my house, from where I have left the phone (the walls are all stud-partitions). One downbeat is that after leaving the charging case and ear-buds untouched for seven days I was surprised to return to them and find that the case and the buds had completely lost their charges. I wrote to Shokz about this and they replied saying that this is normal. Well, it is obviously normal for the OpenFit case and ear-bud batteries but it is not normal for some other headphones, such as my Sony XMRs, which lose no charge whatsoever after having been left alone for a month. However, this short battery-life of the OpenFits is not a severe problem, as one just needs to remember that if intending to use the OpenFits again after 7 days or more of non-use they will have to be charged up beforehand.

Ne supportant plus les écouteurs intra-auriculaires je cherchais des écouteurs légers mais non intrusifs... ces écouteurs ne sont pas à conduction osseuses mais sont à technologie dite "DirectPitch". Ils laissent le conduit auditif libre (on entends les bruits extérieurs) mais le son est incroyablement bon (meilleur que sur les casque à conduction osseuse), les graves sont bien présents et les aigus clairs. L'application Shokz permet quelques réglages (égaliseur, paramétrages des boutons gauche et droit, etc...). Évidement il n'y a pas de fonction réduction de bruit, mais ça n'a pas vraiment de sens pour des écouteurs laissant le conduit auditif libre pour justement entendre les bruits extérieurs. Je possède également un casque supra-auriculaire qui lui possède la fonction de réduction de bruit quand j'ai besoin de m'isoler des bruits extérieurs. La charge de l'ensemble (boitier + écouteurs) est relativement rapide (2h de charge pour aller de 10% à 100%). La boite contient un petit sac en feutre pour protéger le boitier lors des transport. Shokz a sorti un version 2 des OpenFit mais pas encore disponible en Europe... vu les différences technique annoncées je n'ai aucun regret compte-tenu de mon besoin (principalement écoute de la musique lors des activités extérieures et musique de fond au bureau). En résumé: ravi des ces écouteurs, tant par la qualité du son, leur légèreté et leur confort (on les oublie rapidement), leur technologie permettant de ne pas s'isoler du monde extérieur.

nice product. highly recommended

I ordered these SHOKZ OpenFit Open-Ear Wireless Bluetooth Earphones ( Black ) a few days ago, and I have just received my order Today. ; I will begin by mentioning that I already have a BOSE SoundLink II On-Ear Wireless Bluetooth Headphones, which are my Current favourite Bluetooth headphones. And I also already have the Apple AirPods 3rd Generation Wireless Bluetooth Earphones, which I am also currently very happy with, and they’re great for commuting, travelling, and vacationing with. Sound Quality between the BOSE SoundLink II On-Ear and the Apple AirPods 3rd Generation are both Comparable, and both Excellent. ; I only just got the SHOKZ OpenFit Open-Ear Bluetooth Earphones today, so I haven’t quite had the chance to fully put it through its paces as yet. Like the Apple AirPods, it comes with a wireless charging case, so you can charge the earphones on the go ( while the wireless charging case still holds a charge ). For me, the SHOKZ OpenFit Earphones Fit quite snugly, steadily, and very comfortably around my ears without any discomfort. They are quite light-weight, so you barely notice you’re even wearing them. Pairing these earphones is easy, simple and straightforward, and is accomplished very quickly, so you can get straight into listening right away. Sound Quality overall is very very good ! In fact, quite better than what I had initially expected. The audio experience is much like AirPod-style earphones, with the sound being directed straight into your ear-canal. Mid-Range and Treble sounds are very clear and very easy to hear. Bass sound response is fairly good, but has noticeable distortion at the very low frequency notes ( a problem not evident on the more superior BOSE Headphones ) [ Amendment : A new Firmware Update is now available and the update much improves the Bass response and the apparent distortion at high volumes is now almost completely Eliminated, enabling a far better audio experience overall ! ; Very Happy with this ! This brings the overall sound quality up much closer to that of the Apple AirPods and BOSE Headphones ! ]. ; The SHOKZ OpenFit supposedly has a Situational Awareness feature which supposedly allows you to stay aware of ambient sounds in your natural environment ( In fact this is the Primary reason I bought them in the first place ! ), but since I have only tested these earphones in my own room and inside a house, I haven’t yet had a chance to fully test whether the Situational Awareness feature works well or not. If I am using these inside my own room ( which is a quiet environment ) with the earphone volume up pretty high, I cannot really hear much ambient sounds outside of the earphones themselves. ; And like the Apple AirPods, the SHOKZ OpenFit Open-Ear Wireless Bluetooth Earphones are compact, and great for commuting, travelling, and vacationing with. ; Even though the overall sound quality isn’t quite up to the same standard as the BOSE headphones, which are definitely more superior, both the Apple AirPods and the SHOKZ OpenFits are both a lot more compact in size and more convenient to carry - an attribute a clear winner for both Apple and SHOKZ over the BOSE headphones, which are bulkier and more space required to carry. The overall sound quality of both the Apple AirPods and the SHOKZ OpenFits are still really good, and good enough for their compact size and convenience for travelling. Oh, and for those also using an Apple MacBook Air M2, such as myself, then YES, I can Affirmatively Confirm that the SHOKZ OpenFits DO work very well and easily with the Apple MacBook Air M2. ; If you are at home, in private, then the BOSE headphones are definitely the clear winner. If commuting and travelling is your thing, then the Apple AirPods would be the choice for Solo travelling. If you need to be able to hear normal ambient sounds from your natural environment, then the SHOKZ OpenFits is the most suitable way to go. ; For me, I’d leave my BOSE headphones at home, and I’d take both the Apple AirPods and the SHOKZ OpenFits Earphones with me when I Travel, and use whichever is the most appropriate at any given period. ; When you commute and/or go travelling, I would also recommend taking a pair of wired 3.5 mm compact earphones ( like the ones Apple used to include with their new iPhone releases ), as backup earphones, just in case your Bluetooth earphones run out of battery. ; I’ll be happy to say that for people who normally wear glasses or spectacles for their eyes ( like I do ), you can still wear them perfectly as normal and comfortably in conjunction with the SHOKZ OpenFit earphones, without either of them getting in the way of each other, and you can continue to comfortably listen to your music with the SHOKZ OpenFit earphones while keeping your glasses on perfectly in place. The SHOKZ OpenFit Earphones themselves, while they are outside of the charging case, they do Not have an Off switch or Off mode, so if they’re not in active use, you Must return them to inside the Charging Case and close the Charging Case in order for the earphones to attain something like an Off mode or Sleep mode, and retain their charge. ; Oh, and also, I gather you might like this about the Shokz OpenFit : Because a) They’re Open-Ear technology, and b) They have the Situational Awareness feature : If you have your music on either Pause/Stop mode or on Silent mode, you can still hold a perfectly normal verbal conversation with other people without having to remove the Shokz earphones from your ears ( and also still be able to perfectly hear other people talk to you ), and then return to your music and continue from where you left off without having to put the earphones back on again. ; [ Just for the record : I’ve even tried Bone-Conduction earphones, and from my own personal experience, I’d say “ Say goodbye “ to Bone-Conduction technology - they’re absolute rubbish compared to traditional headphones and earphones, including the Shokz Open-Fits, which are clearly a million times better than any bone-conduction trash ! Bone-Conduction technology doesn’t do anything for me ! ] ; For the sake of re-iteration, If we’re talking Shokz OpenFits, we’re really talking compact-ness and Portability ( On-the-go ). If you go out or commute and/or travel frequently, my best advice to you would be that in addition to the Shokz OpenFits, get yourself a good pair of Apple AirPods ( or equivalent ), and a pair of good 3.5 mm wired earphones, and take them all with you when you are out of or away from home. ; The SHOKZ OpenFit Earphones : Are they worth the cost ? : Well, AUD $ 289.oo I think initially is a pretty big ask, especially if you haven’t tried them on yet. How important is your music collection ( and your music listening ) to you ? You weigh up the worthiness, and determine for yourself whether my review and advice here would convince you to purchase them. I took a stab in the dark whether they would be as good as others have reviewed them to be, telling myself that I would not know the truth unless I bought them, and tried them out for myself. So far, I am quite impressed ! ; My final score for the SHOKZ OpenFit Earphones, out of 10 : 9.80 , or out of 100 : 98 ; Two thumbs up !

Echt prima zelfs beter dan ik verwacht had. Ben er super blij mee!

Ik gebruik ze iedere dag en vergeet zelfs dat ik ze in heb. Zo prettig zitten ze