To help us provide you with free impartial advice, we may earn a commission if you buy through links on our site. Learn more
- How do bone-conduction headphones work?
- Are bone-conduction headphones safe?
- Are bone-conduction headphones better for your ears?
- What is the sound quality of bone-conduction headphones like?
- Do bone-conduction headphones leak sound?
- Are there any side-effects to wearing bone-conduction headphones?
- Are bone-conduction headphones waterproof?
- What are the alternatives?
Everyone enjoys listening to music or podcasts when exercising, but filling your ears with headphones in order to do so isn’t always ideal. It cuts you off from your environment, which can be dangerous – especially when cycling or running in public spaces.
Bone-conduction headphones, popularised by brands such as Shokz, can help. Rather than sending sound directly into your ear (and filling your ear canal in order to do so), bone-conduction headphones sit outside the ear on the jaw/cheekbone area of your face, and they send vibrations through your facial bone-structure in order to produce sound. It leaves your ears open to the outside world, which means you’re not isolated from your environment. Which can only be a good thing where safety is concerned.
It’s an elegant and actually quite simple solution to the problem of ambient awareness. Sound is simply vibrations in the air, after all – it doesn’t become sound as we understand it until the bones in your inner ear (the “auditory ossicles”) deliver the vibrations to the cochlea, which allows them to become electrical impulses, which the brain then translates into sound. So if all you need to hear sound is specific vibrations, then why fill your ear with speaker drivers in order to produce them?
How do bone-conduction headphones work?
Unlike regular in-ear headphones that fit into the ear and use silicone or foam tips to seal the ear canal, bone-conduction headphones bypass the ear canal and the eardrum altogether.
Instead, they use transducers that turn the audio signal from your music player into vibrations, and by using these to vibrate the bones of your skull (primarily your cheekbones) the auditory ossicles can be directly stimulated. This leaves the ear open rather than sealed, which means you’re able to hear other, external sounds just as readily as the music you’re listening to.
Are bone-conduction headphones safe?
Yes, they’re safe in most respects. The fact that your ears aren’t blocked by foam or silicone means you’re much more aware of your surroundings – so runners and cyclists can be much more mindful of their environment while they’re listening to music or podcasts.
And the technology that produces the vibrations and transmits them through your bone structure is, if anything, less likely to damage your hearing over the medium-to-long term than traditional in-ear headphones might, especially if you tend to listen to your music very loud.
Are bone-conduction headphones better for your ears?
Because the eardrum is not involved in the bone-conduction process, it’s not vulnerable to damage in the same way as it is when it’s subjected to the stimulus from in-ear headphones.
The benefits for hearing health are obvious in this respect, and it’s also worth considering that the chances for infection, allergic reaction and general skin irritation are much reduced by not filling your ear with silicone or foam eartips.
What is the sound quality of bone-conduction headphones like?
In some ways, the sound of bone-conduction headphones is every bit as good as, if not better than, that of the traditional in-ear alternative. High-frequency information, in particular, can be cleaner and more precise when heard via bone-conduction, and the midrange fidelity of the best bone-conduction headphones bears comparison with in-ear models.
But while improvements are being made all the time, it’s still fair to say that bone-conduction headphones struggle to reproduce low frequencies with the sort of substance and solidity an in-ear design can muster.
Do bone-conduction headphones leak sound?
Yes, much more readily than in-ear headphones. As we know, the production of sound relies on vibrations – and bone-conduction headphones vibrate in order to stimulate the bones in your inner ear – but those vibrations can’t all be perfectly targeted towards the bones in your face.
So there are vibrations moving away from you as well as towards you, which anyone nearby will be able to perceive as sound. As with sound quality, bone-conduction headphones are improving – but for now there’s no getting away from the fact that they are, relatively speaking, quite leaky.
Are there any side-effects to wearing bone-conduction headphones?
Some of the side-effects of bone-conduction headphones are similar to those of in-ear headphones, and that includes hearing damage. Although they do bypass the eardrum, the cochlea is still involved when listening to bone conduction headphones, and if you listen at excessive volume for long periods, strain and damage will still occur.
In addition, some users will discover they dislike the sensation of the vibrations or might find the pressure on their cheekbones uncomfortable.
Are bone-conduction headphones waterproof?
Just as with in-ear headphones, some bone-conduction headphones are more water resistant than others, and you’ll be able to tell which, by looking at the IP-rating. The IP rating (stands for ingress protection) tells you how well any device is equipped to resist dust and moisture; and those that don’t quote an IP rating can be safely considered to be less resistant to moisture than is ideal.
Our favourite waterproof bone-conduction headphones are the Shokz OpenSwim – their mighty IP68 rating means they’re perfectly happy being under water to a depth of 2 metres.
IP ratings stem from a standard implemented by the IEC (international electrotechnical commission) and consist of two numerals, the first denoting protection against solid objects on a scale of 0 to 6, the second indicating resistance to liquids on a scale of 0 to 9. See the table below for details.
| IP ratings: Explained | |
|---|---|
| 1st numeral – solid foreign objects | 2nd numeral – water |
| 0 – No protection | 0 – No protection |
| 1 – Protected against solid foreign objects of 50mm ⌀ and greater | 1 – Protected against vertically falling water drops |
| 2 – Protected against solid foreign objects of 12.5mm ⌀ and greater | 2 – Protected against vertically falling water drops when enclosure tilted up to 15-degrees |
| 3 – Protected against solid foreign objects of 2.5mm ⌀ and greater | 3 – Protected against spraying water |
| 4 – Protected against solid foreign objects of 1mm ⌀ and greater | 4 – Protected against splashing water |
| 5 – Dust protected | 5 – Protected against water jets |
| 6 – Protected against powerful water jets | |
| 7 – Protected against the effects of temporary immersion in water | |
| 8 – Protected against the effects of continuous immersion in water | |
| 9 – Protected against high pressure and high temperature water jets | |
What are the alternatives?
You have more ways to generate sound than just by pushing some speaker drivers into your ears or sending vibrations to your inner ear via your bone structure. Air-conduction headphones, like the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds, which are often referred to as “open-ear headphones”, sit near, rather than in, the ear canal and then use the old ‘vibrations in the air’ method of stimulating the bones of the inner ear.
The fit often doesn’t feel as secure as regular in-ear or bone-conduction headphones, but they can combine the advantages of bone-conduction – an open ear fit and awareness of your surroundings – with the extended frequency response of traditional in-ear headphones. Shokz’s OpenRun Pro 2 takes that idea and, if you’ll forgive the pun, runs with it, combining it with bone conduction tech to create a twin driver approach.
More recently the idea of cartilage-conduction headphones has taken off. Professor Hiroshi Hosoi discovered the cartilage conduction pathway in the ear in 2004, and there are now quite a few models that stimulate the inner ear this way, for example, the Audio Technica ATH-CC500BT2. Obviously, these headphones leave your ears open, but because they fit on a very small area of the outer ear there’s less of the discomfort that’s sometimes associated with bone-conduction headphones.
