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- Much-improved battery life
- Louder, punchier audio
- Comfortable, lightweight fit
- Control customisation lacking
- Limited codec support
- Bass still isn’t great in this format
Having been one of the first brands to dabble in air-conduction technology, Shokz has stepped up its game this year by adding two pairs to its lineup: the Shokz OpenFit 2 and OpenFit 2 Plus.
These open-ear alternatives to bone-conduction headphones follow a fairly successful debut, with the original Shokz OpenFit offering a comfortable design and more engaging audio than we were used to from their bone-rattling brethren. I still wasn’t that impressed by the lack of noise isolation, however, and bass felt a little on the weak side.
While the low-end still struggles here, the OpenFit 2 and 2 Plus are a clear improvement over last year in other areas, with louder volume, less ambient sound interference and much better battery life. They’re still no replacement for true wireless earbuds but, if you fancy this format, the Shokz OpenFit 2 and 2 Plus are a fantastic choice.
Shokz OpenFit 2 and 2 Plus review: What do you get for the money?
In a relatively rare move, Shokz has slightly dropped the price of the OpenFit 2, bringing them down to £169 – £10 less than the original OpenFit cost at launch.
The OpenFit 2 operate over Bluetooth 5.4 and, once again, support the SBC and AAC audio codecs. The improved Bluetooth connection is appreciated, but it would have been nice to see Shokz add LDAC or aptX to the codec list.
Design-wise, the buds are mostly the same, with pill-shaped driver units and a silicone earhook that terminates in a battery housing used as a counterbalance. The ear-hook is slightly more rigid this time around, which is probably a better move for stability, but I found the flexibility of the first model’s earhooks offered that little bit more comfort for different ear shapes.
We’ve once again got the choice of two colours – black or beige – but the dust and water resistance rating has been bumped up from IP54 to IP55, meaning that they can handle low-pressure jets of water, so sweaty gym sessions and runs in the rain will be a breeze.
The only other major design difference on the buds is that we’ve now got small circular buttons on the top of each speaker unit. These offer the same basic functions as last year’s tap controls – playing/pausing, skipping tracks, volume adjustment – but they felt more reliable and easy to locate quickly. You still have a touch control sensor on the outside of each bud but they only offer one function, hailing your voice assistant with a long press. This feels a little muddled but both control sets worked well enough in my testing.
The case has had a more radical redesign, adopting a much rounder shape than the first generation. Even better, despite being roughly the same size, it offers significantly better battery capacity than last year. The buds can last 11hrs in-ear by themselves, but with the case included, total battery life skyrockets to 48 hours. That’s a huge improvement over the first gen’s 28 hours. Once depleted, ten minutes on charge should be enough to give you two hours of listening time.
As before, you can monitor the battery life for the case, and each individual bud within the Shokz app. Here, you can also enable multi-point pairing, fiddle with the controls and tweak the EQ. There are four profiles to choose from – Standard, Vocal, Bass Boost and Treble Boost – as well as a five-band graphic equaliser that lets you create your own tuning.
The Shokz OpenFit 2 Plus, meanwhile, only cost £10 more and add everything you get with the non-Plus model, as well as wireless charging and Dolby Atmos support. The Plus give you an extra colour choice, too, with the standard black joined by a light grey variant.
What did we like about them?
The big benefit of this type of headphone is the comfort and extra awareness they deliver over regular in-ear devices. Weighing 9.4g apiece, the Shokz OpenFit 2 aren’t quite the lightweight delights the original models were (8.3g per bud), but they sit so lightly on your ears it’s easy to forget that you’re wearing them.
That goes hand-in-hand with dramatically improved battery life. While I would happily have worn the original OpenFit all day long, the seven-hour in-ear battery life put a hard limit on that. On multiple occasions, however, the Shokz OpenFit 2 Plus have remained tucked around my ears for a whole day at work, and had around 30% capacity to spare when I clocked off.
The 11-hour in-ear battery life obviously deserves the most credit here, but also of note is the fact that I didn’t feel the need to have turn up the volume as high on these as I did with the first generation. When sitting on a train or in my bustling office, I’d usually have the OpenFit at around 80% volume, and I was still able to hear those around me. With the OpenFit 2 Plus on my ears, however, I was comfortable listening at around 60-70% volume.
As well as the general volume improvements, audio has noticeably more depth, too. We’ve got a new dual-driver layout, replacing last year’s single-speaker setup, and the sound profile benefits greatly from the extra power, with a more dense mid-range and a greater ceiling for the high frequencies.
I played Rise Against’s Prayer of the Refugees back-to-back on the OpenFit and OpenFit 2 Plus with Dolby Atmos disabled for a more direct comparison, and the difference was staggering. The vocals were much more energetic and impactful on the 2 Plus, with the frantic instruments in the chorus feeling more spread out in a less cramped soundstage.
In fact, it took a while for me to remember that I’d needed to tweak the default sound profile last year to get the best out of the first gen OpenFit. That was due to the trebles feeling quite strangled in places. The OpenFit 2 do not have this problem: high-frequency notes soar much more clearly here, with excellent definition in the whining guitar notes and Emily Armstrong’s powerful vocals in Linkin Park’s The Emptiness Machine.
Dolby Atmos is only worth switching on if you’re using a device that supports it and listening to audio from a service that offers it – otherwise it just adds another layer behind the audio track and makes everything sound echoey.
With the right setup, however, it’s a fantastic inclusion. I booted up Napoleon on Apple TV+ and scrubbed through to the exquisite frozen-lake ambush scene. The thundering of hoofbeats and the roar of infantrymen immediately surrounded me, quickly broken by the crack of muskets and boom of cannonfire, starting off to my left and right before crashing into their targets in the center of the soundstage.
It’s brilliantly immersive when it hits right, but it’s definitely most effective in these chaotic scenes that are packed with action and overlaying noises. In quiet dialogue scenes that have little to no background music, voices have a little too much reverb behind them, like they’re standing alone in an empty room.
What could be improved?
The Shokz OpenFit 2 get an awful lot right, but they’re afflicted with a weakness that most air-conduction headphones are afflicted by: they don’t provide particularly weighty low-end beats.
To be fair, some tones still hit right. The sinister, reverberating bass thrum in Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall rattles along with suitable menace, and it’s an improvement over the first generation. But the fact remains that air-conduction buds just aren’t as well suited to those looking for punchy, thumping low-end notes. Bass-heads will want to stick to in-ear models.
Another issue that returns from the first generation is that the controls still can’t be customised. You have the option to tweak the double-tap, configuring which combination of track skipping you want it to cover, but otherwise there’s no room for personalisation. This is especially frustrating given the OpenFit 2 support both physical and touch controls, which should theoretically give you quite a few different variations to play around with.
My final bugbear is just that – a mostly inconsequential issue that is only mildly annoying. Either Shokz has upgraded the magnets that hold the buds in the case or the introduction of the physical button leaves less space to pinch onto when you’re trying to take them out. Or a combination of both. Either way, it’s more of a pain than last year to remove the buds from the case. Not ideal but, as I say, it’s far from a deal breaker.
Should you buy the Shokz OpenFit 2?
If you’re only mildly interested in the air-conduction format, it’s worth considering saving some money and picking up the first generation OpenFit, which are just £94 at the time of writing.
Even if you’ve never considered air-conduction headphones before, you should. This style of headphones has grown on me since popping up last year, and they’ve quickly become my go-to buds for doing household chores, going on walks and listening to music while at work. The Shokz OpenFit 2 are the best version of this style yet.
They sound much better than their predecessors, last much longer and do it all for £10 less – or the same price, if you want the OpenFit 2 Plus’ wireless charging and Dolby Atmos support. I’d have liked to see support for a greater range of codecs and wear detection would be nice, but even without those things the Shokz OpenFit 2 are fantastic and fully deserving of their five-star rating and Best Buy award.
