I love running, and I always run with a pair of headphones. However, it's not often music piping through them: for long periods of monotonous endurance exercise, I use podcasts and audiobooks to keep me entertained. As a massive Lord of the Rings geek, I've slowly, mile by mile, been working my way through a new set of audiobooks recorded by Andy Serkis.
Consequently, I've been keeping an eye on the Prime Day deals in an attempt to pick up a set of the best bone conduction headphones, namely the Shokz OpenRun or Shokz OpenMove. You can check out the deals on those below, in both the US and the UK:
Amazon Prime Day US Bone Conduction Headphones deals
Amazon Prime Day bone conduction headphones deals in the UK
I'm planning on keeping my current earbuds for gym work, where I enjoy listening to more powerful-sounding rock and metal to get me through a tough weightlifting workout. So why does music in the gym, and listening to Gollum himself read me The Return Of The King while I run, merit two different sets of headphones?
The answer lies in the unique properties of bone conduction headphones. Bone conduction headphones sit directly above the ear and send vibrations, not through the air between the headphone and your eardrum, but through the bones in your skull. All sound is vibration, so it's just a different way to transport those vibrations to your inner ear.
Of course, this different form of vibration means that some of the nuances you're used to hearing with the best workout headphones might get lost in translation. You'd be hard-pressed to get a real audiophile to recommend bone conduction headphones over a pair of over-ear cans.
However, bone conduction headphones do excel by transmitting audio while leaving your ears open to the outside world. If you're running, this means you're able to hear important things like traffic, other people, and wild animals. Nobody wants to be running in a national park and not hear the bear in the woods.
In the water, you can pop a pair of earplugs in, creating a tight seal to keep the water out, and still listen to your favorite tunes. Many of the best waterproof headphones offer bone conduction technology, and one of our entries, the Finis Duo, is on offer at Amazon right now:
One thing you do need to bear in mind when wearing bone conduction is the volume limiter on your phone. As you're sending the vibrations into your bones, you can turn up the volume if things are quiet, especially on busy roads or in the water. If your bone conduction headphones are sounding quiet, especially with podcasts and audiobooks rather than music, you should look at turning things up a notch and disabling or bypassing that volume limiter.
Either way, I've been hawkish in my search for late-stage Prime Day discounts on bone conduction headphones. If you're a swimmer, or a runner, and you're sick of buds that tend to fall from your ears or you want to hear the world around you while listening to podcasts or audiobooks, bone conduction are a must-buy.
More bone conduction headphones in your region
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