Our reviews are 100% organic. We do not accept payment for reviews or bundle with advertising budgets. In most cases, the brand is providing the product to our reviewers free of charge. Warm weather and longer daylight hours often inspire us to expand our activity profile, including water sports. For dedicated runners who are accustomed to using audio gear during workouts, water sports present a rather significant obstacle for keeping the music rolling. Waterproof headphones have been around for a little while, but many of them are either cumbersome to use or deliver substandard audio quality.
Shokz headphones are great for trail use thanks to their combination of comfort, functionality and sound quality, and their OpenSwim Pro model provides a compelling option for runners who routinely explore the land as well as water. We have tested them all summer for regular trail running, as well as regular (2-3 days/week) swim workouts in the pool and open water, and standup paddleboarding with the occasional splashdown. The OpenSwim Pro combines the ease of operation of Shokz’s OpenRun and OpenRun Pro models and adds 32GB of MP3 storage for water playback (Bluetooth doesn’t conduct underwater).
Operationally, the OpenSwim Pro mirrors the Shokz OpenRun and OpenRun Pro models, with power and volume controlled on the right side, and a multi-function button on the left to pause, skip or repeat music and answer phone calls. All buttons are prominent enough to find easily, with a crisp tactile feel when pressing that is easy to use with gloved fingers when running in the cold or in the middle of a flip turn in the pool. On the OpenSwim Pro, the multi-function button also toggles between Bluetooth and MP3 mode with a short press-and-hold. The headphones always turn on in Bluetooth mode, so even if you use them exclusively in the pool, you have to manually click to MP3 mode each time. In MP3 mode, your stored songs can be played in top to bottom sequence (from the order of file storage when they were uploaded), or in shuffle mode. One playback quirk is that the shuffle mode is a true randomized shuffle, meaning that the same song may come up more than once during extended listening, as opposed to a Spotify-style shuffle playback that plays every song from the playlist without repitition.
Used as running headphones, the OpenSwim Pro are a notch below Shokz’s run-specific headphones in some aspects of sound quality, but the differences are quite minor. Shokz uses generational nomenclature to categorize the various advances in its bone conduction audio technology and sound quality with their headphones. The OpenSwim Pro uses eighth generation technology, which is the same as the company’s OpenRun headphones, but behind the top-of-the-line OpenRun Pro 2 released last year which uses 10th generation technology. (The original OpenRun Pro used ninth generation.) Bass notes aren’t quite as rich as the OpenRun Pro 2, and there’s slightly more vibration at max volumes, but the overall quality of the OpenSwim Pro is still very good. Bluetooth and MP3 modes both have basic equalizer settings that can be adjusted on the headphones or in the app. We found the equalizer to be most useful in MP3 mode, where the standard setting actually seemed excessively bass-heavy underwater, but the “swimming” mode incorporated the higher end sound profile effectively.
In almost every spec capacity related to its build, the OpenSwim Pro is comparable to the OpenRun headphones. Their material construction, overall weight and charging mechanism are the same. As you would expect, the OpenSwim Pro has better water resistance than the OpenRun, and it somewhat surprisingly has longer battery life in Bluetooth mode. The MP3 playback inherently requires larger battery demand than Bluetooth operation, but we have exceeded the 6-hour spec life in the pool by keeping volumes moderate. The quick charge capability is great if you forgot to do a full charge the night before a swim, as a 10-minute top-off is all you need to get through the next workout.
A primary consideration for any headphones marketed for water sports are their security of fit. In the pool, we wear the OpenSwim Pro without securing them under a cap or goggles, and they stay in place very well on flip turns and all stroke styles. For outdoor water sports, you need to be more careful. We wear these headphones paddleboarding without concern, as a fall from the board tends to be somewhat soft. We would be less certain with surfing, where wipeouts can be more violent and topsy-turvy, so in those circumstances, we would secure them under a scuba hood or some kind of elastic sunglass-style leash. Shokz doesn’t offer this as an accessory, but we have seen some from other companies that would do the trick.
For general-use cross training, having waterproof capacity makes the OpenSwim Pro a great multi-purpose device in a lot of convenient ways. We often listen in Bluetooth mode on our way to the pool deck, then switch over to MP3 mode for music in the water. Or, if you aren’t quite finished with a podcast when your workout is over, just keep the headphones on in the shower without worry. For athletes who transition from water sports to land activity on a regular basis, these headphones can be a constant companion.
Shokz OpenSwim Pro headphones are available at www.shokz.com.
Features:
- Shokz eighth generation bone conduction technology
- Dual audio sources: Bluetooth V5.4 or MP3 storage (32GB)
- ENC and DNS noise reduction technology
- Frame: nickel-titanium alloy with silicone plastic coating
- Battery life: 9 hours with bluetooth, 6 hours with MP3
- Recharge capacity: 1.5 hours to full recharge, 10-minute quick charge for 3 hours of playback
- Magnetic 4-pin charging cable
- Water resistance: IP68
- Weight: 27g
- MSRP: $180