How Do Bone Conduction Earphones Work and Do They Worth It?
Feb 06,2023 | Sylvia
Bone conduction earphones are becoming more and more popular. While running and riding, you can see people wearing a new type of music-listening device around their auricle, which is bone conduction headphones. You may be wondering, shouldn’t the earphones be plugged into the ears, or shouldn’t they cover the ears? Why can I hear the sound when I just hang it nearby my ear? Why are bone conduction earphones so amazing? What kind of amazing technology product is it?
What are bone conduction earphones?
Bone conduction earphones are a new type of earphone based on bone conduction technology. It does not need to transmit sound through the air in the ear canal like traditional earphones but transmits sound through the skull. Therefore, when using it, just hang it on the temple, close to the skull, and hear the music. They convert music signals into mechanical vibrations, which are then transmitted to the inner ear through the skull, and finally allow the auditory nerve to perceive the sound.
Bone conduction headphones are not a new technology product. Bone conduction is also a mature technology, which is widely used in the military, fire protection, hearing aids, and other fields. The application of bone conduction technology in the field of electronic products is a matter of recent years, such as bone conduction earphones, bone conduction speakers, bone conduction helmets, etc., are very successful examples.
How do bone conduction earphones?
Bone conduction earphones are earphones based on bone conduction technology. Bone conduction is a sound conduction method with bones as the medium. It converts sound into mechanical vibrations of different frequencies, and transmits sound waves through the human skull, bone labyrinth, inner ear lymph fluid, spiral organ, and auditory center.
Compared with the classic sound conduction method of transmitting sound waves through the eardrum, bone conduction saves many steps of sound wave transmission, and it can achieve clear sound reproduction in noisy environments, and sound waves will not affect others due to diffusion in the air.
In fact, the working principle of bone conduction is not mysterious. Each of us has experienced it in our daily life. When you eat, you hear the sound of the food being bitten off, but others cannot hear this sound, because the vibration of the food is transmitted to your auditory central nerve through the teeth and bones, and finally the sound is produced. This is an example of classic bone conduction. You can also knock your teeth now. Did you hear the sound? This is the sound passing through your skull to the auditory nerve, which also uses the principle of bone conduction.
So,do bone conduction earphones worth it?Yes!They worth your money because of their advantages.
Advantages of bone conduction earphones
The way bone conduction earphones are worn without earbuds brings tangible benefits:
Safer: It does not block your ears when wearing it, allowing you to maintain awareness of the surrounding environment, making outdoor sports safer;
Healthier: it uses bones to transmit sound, and the sound is directly transmitted to the auditory nerve, avoiding damage to the eardrum, and can protect hearing well;
More hygienic: Bone conduction earphones do not need to be worn in the ear, even if worn for a long time, they can keep the ear canal fresh and avoid otitis media, otitis media and other diseases caused by blocked ear canal;
More comfortable: They are very light, and there is no sense of weight when worn. The surface of many bone conduction headphones is made of skin-friendly soft material, which is very comfortable to wear;
Unique appearance: wearing bone conduction earphones with unique design can help you attract more people’s attention;
When keeping in touch with the outside world, you can communicate with friends or colleagues while listening to music, and you will not neglect them because of listening to music.
There are two sides to the coin, bone conduction headphones have many advantages, but it also has some disadvantages. Two of the most common shortcomings are sound quality and sound leakage.
In terms of sound quality, the sound quality of bone conduction headphones is slightly worse than that of traditional noise-canceling headphones. Due to the principle of sound generation and sound transmission of them, when the sound unit vibrates the skull, it also vibrates the air, resulting in sound leakage. These two shortcomings, all bone conduction headphones have, those ones that claim to be completely free from these two problems do not exist.
Of course, the sound quality of bone conduction headphones is not so bad that it is intolerable. The sound quality of some good headphones is very close to that of traditional headphones. You can hardly feel these leaks under normal social distance and normal volume. There are also some brands by structural optimization, and the problem of sound leakage has been greatly improved.
In fact, bone conduction earphones are worth buying because they have a lot of advantages,they are safety,healthy,and hygienic.However, how to choose the right headphone is another problem.Here are some excellent bone conduction earphones for you.
1.Wissonly Hi Runner bone conduction earphones
Reason for recommendation:
Wissonly bone conduction earphones insist on technology priority. The team is composed of senior experts in bone conduction technology, they have more than 10 years of technical accumulation in the field of bone conduction. This makes Hi Runner known as “the healthiest Bluetooth headphones” by many professionals.
In order to solve the problem of distortion of the sound quality of bone conduction earphones, Wissonly adopts the new generation of bone conduction technology, and use the world’s best acoustic laboratory to customize an exclusive sound quality output scheme for the unique bone conduction sound transmission method. After 3,051 hours of tens of thousands of adjustments, 21 audiologists bring users the best sound in the field of bone conduction earphones.
In terms of wearing, Wissonly Hi runner has been ergonomically designed to fit the ear to ensure that it does not fall off during exercise. Most importantly, it fits the ear while ensuring that there is no pressure and weight load, which makes it more comfortable to wear.
In terms of product parameters, Wissonly Hi Runner is even more impeccable. It has a Bluetooth 5.0 chip, which connects stably and will not drop. It has a 32G built-in storage that can store 5000 songs. Its battery life is also good, and at 50% volume, you can play music for up to 10 hours.
2. Philips A6606 bone conduction earphones
Reason for recommendation:
Philips A6606 bone conduction sports earphones has a unique night light design, which can help the wearer solve the problem of sports safety in dim environment. It is equipped with Bluetooth 5.2 technology, with an effective distance of up to 10 meters. It has low power consumption, faster connection speed, higher security and stability. A6606 can last for 9 hours on one time charge, which can fully meet the daily needs of users. That is, its waterproof level is not high, it can’t be used in swimming, it doesn’t have built-in memory, and it can’t be used without Bluetooth.
3 AfterShokz OPENRUN PRO bone conduction earphones
Reason for recommendation:
Openrun Pro are ear mounted style headphones. But thanks to the lightweight materials such as titanium alloy used in the basic frame of the headphones, the overall weight of the headphones is only 26g, and there is no feeling of weight when worn. It is worth mentioning that the headphones have an IP67 waterproof and dustproof grade, and that they can be washed and rinsed with water. In addition to benefiting from the plating process on its surface, of course, also because of the overall body design, Openrun Pro have better waterproof characteristics. In addition, they also uses dual silicon microphones. In the right side of the headphones, you can see the microphone cut-out reserved for the microphone. With CVC’s noise reduction algorithm, they can effectively eliminate the impact to calls in complex environments.
4.earsopen SS900 bone conduction earphones
Reason for recommendation:
This bone conduction earphone adopts the ear-clipping mode, and the novel wearing mode also makes it need to be worn with both hands. Moreover, there will be obvious discomfort of ear-clipping when worn for a long time. In the headphones’ body, the pressure control area is adopted, and the headphones can be controlled by clicking and double-clicking, etc. The single ear part weight of 8g basically has no weight sense during wearing. With the bone conduction vibrator technology newly developed by BoCo Company, it has a good performance in the low frequency range, but it has obvious sound leakage in the middle and high frequencies.
5.Nank Runner CC3 bone conduction earphones
Reason for recommendation:
Since the body of the runner CC3 is made of silicone material in the part that fits the skin, wearing it has a feeling of summer coldness, which can fully stimulate the fans of sports.
Its sound quality is not a big problem, and it has built-in 4G storage, which can store 1000 songs. And you could enjoy music in places when meet poor phone signal. The wearing comfort and stability are not bad.
It is that the waterproof level is not high enough, and it is not suitable for rain or water sports.
Among the several bone conduction earphones recommended above, wissonly and aftershokz are my favorite brands. Compared with them, wissonly is more cost-effective and worth buying.