Shokz OpenSwim Pro Bone-Conduction Headphones

The Shokz OpenSwim Pro makes most sense when your week includes both swimming and listening somewhere that is not a pool. Its central trick is not simply being wireless: it combines Bluetooth headphones with a self-contained music player. Those are two different jobs, and here the distinction determines whether your music follows you into the water or stays metaphorically on the deck.

On dry land, Bluetooth provides the connected listening mode. Underwater, Bluetooth does not function, so the OpenSwim Pro plays files from its internal storage instead. This is the essential buying decision, not a footnote. If you already keep a music library, it is a practical arrangement. If your entire collection consists of things you have saved inside streaming apps, expect a change in routine rather than an effortless extension of it. A favourite playlist and a folder of playable audio files are not the same possession.

The built-in player has 32GB of storage, with somewhat less potentially available after system files and data management. More usefully, its format support extends well beyond the MP3 label: FLAC, WAV, AAC, M4A, APE and WMA are supported too. That gives people with existing file collections some flexibility without requiring everything to be converted into one format. The appeal is autonomy: once your audio is stored on the headphones, underwater playback has no need for a live phone connection.

The physical proposition is also distinct from conventional earbuds. This is an open-ear, bone-conduction design weighing 27.3 g, rather than a pair of speakers inserted into your ear canals. That is a meaningful format choice for someone who specifically dislikes in-ear listening. The weight is modest on paper, though a number alone cannot tell you whether this particular shape will suit your head.

Battery planning depends on which half of the product you use. The listed maximum is nine hours over Bluetooth, falling to six hours in MP3 mode—the mode that matters for swimming. A full charge takes approximately 90 minutes, while a ten-minute quick charge is listed to provide three hours of listening. That is a useful provision for discovering, shortly before leaving, that yesterday’s organised version of yourself never plugged it in.

The strongest reason to choose the OpenSwim Pro is that its two modes serve genuinely different settings. It is not the right answer for someone who wants streaming underwater, and maintaining stored music is a small but real chore. For a swimmer comfortable owning audio files, though, that older-fashioned requirement buys something useful: listening that does not ask a Bluetooth connection to do a job it cannot do.