I am a deep user of bone conduction earphones and I love this new product. I wear them both for running and cycling. Obviously, they’re already part of my body and give me a lot of motivation when I’m exercising. However, since this year, I have discovered some bad phenomena, that is, there are many fake bone conduction earphones on the market. They are cheap and of poor quality. This has me stuck when it comes to gifting my girlfriend’s birthday. She thought that what I sent was cheap and inferior products, and we almost had a relationship crisis. Therefore, in this article, I want to talk about how to distinguish between real bone conduction earphones and fake bone conduction earphones, the principles, advantages and disadvantages of them, and so on.

How to distinguish real bone conduction earphones from fake ones?

bone conduction earphones rely on bones to transmit sound. Fake ones are actually air-conduction headphones that rely on air to transmit sound. There is a big difference in the way of sound transmission. Fake bone conduction earphones (that is, air conduction headphones), emit sound from two external speakers, and the sound transmits sound through the air into the ear. Therefore, under normal social distance, the sound played by fake bone conduction earphones can be heard by everyone, while with real ones, within the same distance, other people can’t hear the sound at all.

You can do a test and put on the headphones. If you wear real bone conduction earphones, you will find that the sound is louder and clearer after the ears are blocked. And if you wear fake ones , the sound becomes smaller after you block your ears.

In order to help you better understand the difference between real bone conduction earphones and fake ones, the following will introduce the working principle of them

How do bone conduction earphones work

To understand how bone conduction earphones work, we must first understand how we hear sound.

Simply put, sound is a vibration, and the source of sound can cause air, liquid, and solid to vibrate. The sound we hear everyday is this vibration into the ear, so the eardrum vibrates. The vibration of the eardrum passes through the ear ossicles to the part behind the ear called “cochlea”. The cochlea then transmits sound information from the cochlea to the brain center, and finally we hear it. The process by which we hear sound includes both air vibration and solid (bone) vibration.

The principle of bone conduction earphones is that they transmit sound not through air vibrations, but all through solid (bone) vibrations. The sound unit is usually attached to the temple, and emits mechanical vibrations. The skull transmits the vibrations to the cochlea that in turn transmits the sound information to the brain center, so the sound is heard.

The sound transmission path of bone conduction earphones is that: sound waves, skull, bone labyrinth, inner ear lymph, spiral organ, auditory nerve, cerebral cortex auditory center. Compared with our traditional way of hearing sound (that is air conduction method), their transmission path is shorter, where air and the eardrum are no longer needed. So they can play a significant protective role to the eardrum, and are a very healthy kind of headphones.

In addition to being healthy, bone conduction earphones have many advantages, such as safety, comfort, high waterproof level, etc. Therefore, they are worth buying.Next, I will recommend some better bone conduction earphones for you.

1.Wissonly Hi Runner bone conduction earphones

Reason for recommendation:

Wissonly is a headphone brand that attaches great attention on health, and that does not hurt the ears. Their team is also the first one to design non-in-ear headphones that are used to listen to songs. They began to explore the application of bone conduction technology to Bluetooth headphones as early as 10 years ago. After 10 years of accumulation, they have made great progress in the sound quality improvement and sound leakage reduction of bone conduction earphones. And these technologies are applied to their Wissonly Hi Runner headphones, their flagship product.

In order to solve the problem of sound leakage of bone conduction earphones, Wissonly developed full closed sound leakage reduction technology. They comprehensively improved the vibration of the headphones, body design, software optimization and other directions. They finally reduced the sound leakage by 90%.

In terms of sound quality, most of the bone conduction earphones have average sound quality, but the sound quality of Wissonly Hi Runner is undoubtedly better in bone conduction field. They used a large-sized vibration unit, and through structural optimization, and finally increased the effective vibration area, so that the sound range was wide. The official claimed sound quality reach the HIFI level, but I don’t think that they reached. They are just close to the HIFI sound quality, which is enough to satisfy me.

The excellent performance of these two characteristics, sound leakage reduction and sound quality, makes Wissonly Hi Runner have the basic conditions to become an excellent bone conduction headphone. Their other configurations are also very good. They are with a built-in 32GB of memory, and can play music even without connecting the phone. You can use them as an MP3 player. They support IPX8 waterproof level in swimming, even in underwater scenes that do not support Bluetooth, they can be used with MP3 function.

2. Philips A8606 bone conduction earphones

Reason for recommendation:

The most peculiar point of Philips is that it is equipped with LED night running lights at the rear end of the fuselage, and the A8606 is also the same. The back of both sides of the headphones has rain-shaped lights flashing, wearing it at night can make people around you alert to your location. And turning on them during exercise can improve the safety factor, and night travel can also achieve the effect of not being collided. The Bluetooth version of 5.0 can maintain the smoothness of listening to songs at a short distance, and the 13.3mm vibrator makes it have a good performance in sound quality.

3.AfterShokz OPENRUN PRO bone conduction earphones

Reason for recommendation:

Openrun Pro bone conduction earphones have IP67 waterproof rating, they are waterproof, sweatproof, and dustproof. They are no problem to get caught in the rain or splashed with water. Even in outdoor sports, when encounter bad weather, you will be not afraid at all, they let you enjoy the fun of sports all the time.

In addition, the headphones do not need to be plugged into the ears. Their comfort is just amazing. Their is no need to poke the ear like a drill any more. And you do not have to worry about that after you wear them for a long time, your ear canal will itch and be uncomfortable, and as well as breed bacteria. The whole body surface is silicone material, their net weight is 28g, and they are comfortable and lightweight.

4.Earsopen SS900 bone conduction earphones

Reason for recommendation:

With the support of AVV’s precise vertical vibration technology, the vibration intensity and frequency of SS900 is improved, which makes up for shortage of sound quality caused by small sound producing area of 10mm small size vibration unit, and makes the low frequency sound more full. The 7.5g body weight is better with the clip-on ear type, which makes it more portable. However, the clip-on ear type makes the ears uncomfortable after wearing for a long time, which is its disadvantage.

5.Nank Runner CC3 bone conduction earphones

Reason for recommendation:

Runner CC 2 bone conduction earphones adopt a combination of soft and hard to reduce sound leakage. The entire headphones adopt a seamless design, even the headset mic is wrapped in silicone. The unique sound leakage cancellation technology can greatly reduce the leakage phenomenon.

It uses magnetic charging, after each use, you only need to put the magnetic tip in the buckle position of the headphones. Compared to traditional headphones, Runner CC2 bone conduction earphones has no holes in the entire body, and it has a certain waterproof effect.

It is generally a good entry-level bone conduction headphone. But the waterproof level is not enough, it is are not suitable rain or water sports.

It should be noted that among the five products, Wissonly and Philips are my favorites. Philips is a big brand, and its cost performance will be a little poor. I have used Wissonly for a long time. It works very well. The key is that it is very cost-effective and worth buying.