Shokz OpenSwim Pro Bone-Conduction Headphones

The Shokz OpenSwim Pro make most sense if swimming is part of your week, not the entire definition of your headphones. Their useful trick is combining Bluetooth listening on land with built-in audio playback underwater. You do not have to dedicate a pair solely to lengths, then leave them doing nothing until the next encounter with the changing-room floor.

These are open-ear, bone-conduction headphones rather than earbuds that sit inside the ear canal. That is a meaningful format choice for someone who dislikes having their ears plugged during exercise. It should not, however, be mistaken for a promise of conventional headphone isolation: leaving the ears open is the point, not an oversight. At 27.3g, the hardware itself is light, although weight alone cannot tell you whether a particular fit will suit you.

The central buying decision is less about Bluetooth than what happens when Bluetooth stops being useful. It does not function underwater, so swimming requires MP3 mode and files held in the headphones’ internal storage. Your phone can sit this one out, but so can the spontaneous decision to stream something entirely different halfway through a session. The pool remains stubbornly unimpressed by modern expectations of connectivity.

There is 32GB of storage, with somewhat less potentially usable after system files and data management. More importantly for an existing music collection, supported formats include MP3, FLAC, WAV, AAC, M4A, APE and WMA. Despite the name of the playback mode, you are not limited to MP3 files. This makes the OpenSwim Pro particularly appealing to someone who already keeps their own audio library. For a streaming-only listener, preparing that library becomes an extra task rather than a feature to celebrate.

Battery expectations also need to follow the activity. The listed maximum is nine hours over Bluetooth, but six hours in MP3 mode, so the larger figure is not the swimming figure. Both are useful allowances for exercise sessions without suggesting that charging can be forgotten indefinitely. A full charge takes approximately 90 minutes; the listed ten-minute quick charge provides three hours of listening, a handy rescue when preparation has amounted to locating a towel.

The appeal is therefore quite specific, and stronger for it. These are not simply everyday wireless headphones with a sporty name. They offer a way to keep listening across land-based exercise and swimming, using a different playback method where necessary. If you swim regularly and are happy choosing your audio in advance, that versatility earns its place. If your entire listening life lives inside a streaming app, the underwater half of the proposition asks for a genuine change of habit.