Our experiences with bone conduction have been mixed; we didn’t have fantastic results with Motorola’s Endeavor HX1 Bluetooth headset but a brief play with music-centric headphones have been more impressive. So we’re holding judgement on the Sanwa 400-HS015 Bluetooth sunglasses until we read a review: they hook up to your cellphone, PMP or notebook and stream stereo audio via the Bluetooth A2DP profile, but use bone-conduction rather than traditional in-ear buds.
Am I the only one who feels a bit grossed out by the thought of bone conduction technology? Yeah? Well if you aren’t grossed out by the thought of the tech and you like to swim, Finis has announced its latest MP3 player for swimming and water sports.
The Bluetooth headset market has split in recent years, with the budget end of the market being served by low-cost, simple devices for $50 or under, and the high-end packing complex noise-reduction and DSP for $100 upward. Into that fray steps Motorola, whose Endeavor HX1 headset packs military-type bone conduction in order – they claim – to completely vanquish background noise. After the cut, check out the full SlashGear review and why we reckon the HX1 isn’t quite ready for the urban battlefield.
Motorola have unveiled a new Bluetooth headset, the Endeavor HX1, which the company claims to be the “only Bluetooth headset to use true bone conduction technology”. That’s likely going to raise some eyebrows over at Aliph, whose Jawbone headset is known for using a vibration-sensing system; in the HX1’s case, a new Stealth Mode shuts off the standard microphone and solely uses a bone conduction sensor in the earpiece.
If you’re in the market for a new pair of headphones to listen to all of your tunes, might I suggest the Audio Bone 1.0 Headphones? They’re safer on your eardrums and provide top-quality audio you’re sure to enjoy.
I’ve seen several headsets recently that use bone conduction to get what was said to you, to you, but they were lacking the voice part that goes on your neck for direct connection to your voice box. Now we have a headset that has the voice box part but some dinky little ear bud for the speaker part, when will they marry the two?
I don’t get the big deal over headphones, earbuds or what-have-you. I’m not a music connoisseur or anything so sound quality is not as important to me as comfort and getting to listen to my music. I also don’t get the people dying because they don’t turn their music down while walking down busy roads or train tracks. The Vibe Body Sound headphones appear to be comfortable and will reduce death.
The Invisio Pro-M promises to transfere your voice and only your voice through its bone conduction microphone. It an in-the-ear headset and was designed for “those who take their communication seriously” such as law enforcement, military and surveillance and intelligence agencies.
This is pretty much as good as it gets for being able to hear your Bluetooth headset. The only issue I can see, is that if you are in a noisy enough environment where you need bone conduction to hear, then there is no way that the person you are talking to will be able to hear or understand what you are saying.
It does have dual mic’s, one directional, one not, which should help with that problem though. And even if it doesn’t, the headset is supposedly still good for those with hearing disabilities as bone conduction works a little differently than sound waves.
Bone conduction. No, not some heinous experiment involving a hot-plate and the contents of your Dad’s underpants, it’s a way of squirrelling sound into your ears by directly vibrating your skull. The key benefits are that you can still hear despite ambient noise – that means you don’t have to turn the volume up – and it’s far more private as eavesdroppers would have to press their faces against yours to hear it. And you’d probably notice them doing that. We’ve seen it before on Bluetooth headsets and mp3 players, but Pantech are perhaps the first to put it directly into a cellphone with their A1407PT.
SlashGear Japan
