Mojawa has unveiled a new set of bone conduction headphones at CES 2024, and they’re packed with features including an AI sports trainer.
Together with a companion app, the bone conduction headphones’ built-in AI trainer is said to deliver ‘automatically generated exercise plans’ along with heart rate, pace, step count, calories, swimming lap and distance, and other ‘real-time notifications’. It’s aimed at runners, cyclists and swimmers, like the rest of the best bone conduction headphones, leaving your ears open and free so you can hear sounds around you such as traffic and other pedestrians.
The device is also IP68 water resistant. Along with 32GB worth of onboard music storage, it’s sure to be some of the best waterproof headphones of this year. The onboard storage is ideal for swimmers, as Bluetooth doesn’t conduct well underwater, but it’ll also do well for runners who may not always want to keep a phone on them to stream music from Spotify or have onboard storage on their best running watch.
The device is controlled through 3D pressure-sensitive haptic controls, presumably like the Fitbit Versa 3’s haptic button. The Mojawa companion app will also allow users to “control their music, lighting effects, full sport tracking, adaptive exercise plans, and more” according to the press release from Mojawa. Presumably, there will be a feature similar to Garmin Connect’s recommended workouts here, that uses the statistics of your recent runs and recovery to recommend exercises it thinks you should be aiming for, or to take it easy if you’ve exercised hard recently.
However, the element of AI here is interesting – and slightly concerning – with Mojawa promising to “elevate workouts into complete training sessions with automatically generated exercise plans” with vibration-based training guidance. We’re unsure exactly what this means for your training just yet: does it alter your goals on the fly or generate training plans ahead of time? Will it vibrate to tell you to slow down or speed up, if you have a target pace in mind during an event like a marathon?
The headphones offer eight hours of battery life and a one-hour charge time. The device is available for pre-sale now at $199.99 / £239.99 and will retail for $299.99 in the US sometime in Q1 2024. UK prices for non-preorder purchases, and AU prices for either, are unknown.
Analysis: Great looking headphones, but more AI we may not need
I love a lot about these headphones. Built-in storage? Great. Recommended workouts similar to Garmin? Cool, bring it on. Light-up segments for low-light safety? Excellent. But do we need AI here?
The press release is quite vague on how AI is being used to recommend workouts on the fly, but Mojawa isn’t the first company to bring AI-powered workout recommendations in - Amazfit has already done something similar, Apple is mulling it over, and I had a conversation with another producer at the IFA conference in September, who asked to remain nameless, about bringing AI workout planning into their smartwatches.
I don’t believe AI-powered workout recommendations will bring great improvements to people’s health. An AI doesn’t know about any potential injuries you may have, your desire to leave a run untracked, or particular quirks about your body that may lead you to deviate from a plan. The more sophisticated workout tracking technology becomes, the more an AI can learn about these things, but it’s never something I’ve wanted from my running tech.
In my heart of hearts, I'm quite cynical about AI, and its potential to be used as an invasive data collection tool. However, that doesn’t change the fact that the HaptiFit Terra looks like impressive gear, especially for swimmers, with the onboard storage and haptic controls being great for soundtracked pool work. Expect a full review nearer launch time.
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