[00:02] about 2 weeks now. Wearing them on bike rides, on runs, for different workouts, and just while I'm working at my desk. And these have one huge new feature that differentiates them from pretty much all other open earbuds, which fixes a huge
[00:15] problem. A lot of open earbuds do a great job of letting you hear your are a little bit too loud, it can be very difficult to hear your music. And these allow you to find the perfect balance between that with active noise
[00:28] later, but it performed a lot better than I expected. Now, Shokz sent these partner up on this video to make an honest review of my experiences. So, in this video, I will be talking about pros and cons throughout the video. We'll
[00:42] can see for yourself. We'll talk about the sound bleed on these. We'll do a microphone test. We'll talk about sound quality, and of course, the uh different know when choosing if you want to buy these earbuds or not. So, let's start
[00:56] themselves are, of course, an open design. That's what Shokz is really well particularly good for working out. You can put these over your ear, and we've got the nice hook right there, so they stay on very securely if you're running,
[01:10] really. It's pretty difficult to get these to fall off. But the real win and the reason people gravitate towards this design for working out is because you can hear your surroundings very well. It's not some transparency mode that you
[01:23] need to rely on. If you're cycling on a road, for example, or running on a road, or anywhere that you need to hear your surroundings, having your ear open is the safest and best way to do that. Now, I'll talk more about the earbud itself,
[01:35] Let's talk about the design of the case first of all. The case is rather slim, the way around the outside. There's two different colors. There's black and there's white. And on the back, you can see a USB type-C charging. This also has
[01:50] on a wireless charging pad. And when you open it up, it has kind of a soft close. Honestly, it's pretty satisfying to open and close it. It's not the smallest footprint in this dimension right here, but you can see when you open it up, I'm
[02:03] not sure how Shokz could actually make the case any smaller. They're kind of restricted by the geometry of the earbuds to this basically being the we've got a button to put these into pairing mode, and of course, we've got a
[02:16] show you if it's in pairing mode or what the battery level actually is. Also, the battery life on these is 12 hours in the earbuds and 50 hours when you include the case. And 10 minutes of charging will give you 4 hours of listening. Now,
[02:31] let's talk about the earbuds themselves. The fit, the comfort, how they work. You that's going to hang right over the outside of your ear. You can see the speaker on the inside. You can see the two nodes for charging. You can see the
[02:44] earbuds each have a button that has kind of a little reddish-orange line on it. feel with your hand, like it makes a lot of sense. You can tell exactly where that button is. Um and it's pretty easy to press. Buttons instead of capacitive
[02:58] touch sensors have an advantage if your hands are wet or sweaty, or if you're a run in the winter. Capacitive touch just wouldn't work. So, buttons are aspect. We'll talk more about the controls in a minute, but you can see
[03:13] of is very flexible and holds this little back piece, which presumably is going to hang behind your ear. And the combination kind of pinches onto your ear in a way that is not really intrusive at all. It's pretty
[03:26] these for a really long time. And because they don't go in your ear, your ears never get hot, they never get stuffy. Um and yeah, they're very easy to forget you even have these in your ears. Some things I wanted to look
[03:40] interact if you're wearing a hat? Fortunately, wearing a hat, it doesn't seem to impact these at all because they are a little bit lower than at least my I'm pretty confident hats should not be a problem. I've even worn like a beanie
[03:54] on this as well if you're running in the winter, which I am right now. And again, it's not a problem at all. They do interact potentially with sunglasses. top could interact with your sunglasses.
[04:07] you're wearing. Um my sunglasses are still just fine. They do sit like a have, you know, sunglasses that have a good fit on your head, they didn't fall want to be aware of if you're wearing sunglasses. As far as stability with
[04:21] these, if you shake your head a lot, they maybe move like really, really would make them fall off, but they absolutely never fall off. I've done a It's very, very difficult to get these to fall off of my ears. Getting back to
[04:35] was a button right there. The button's pretty intuitive. Like you just reach up, and it's kind of just right at the top of where the silicone meets the kind of firm, solid piece there. And there's a button. It's very easy to press. It
[04:47] has pretty good tactile feel on it. And you can press it once, twice, three they have another one where you can press it once and then press and hold it. So, a lot of different controls. And once we get into the app, you can see
[05:00] what these controls actually do. I think I would like to see a second button on these to do volume a little more intuitively, but at the same time, your fingers need to learn. So, this is
[05:12] button on each side. The sound quality on these, these have five different presets and two custom EQs in the app. Open earbuds always need to be reviewed as well as their own thing, in my opinion. I can't compare these to studio
[05:26] obviously very different things that are made for very different use cases. But for open earbuds, these do offer a ton of volume. I find that I'm often listening to these at like 30% volume. Very rarely do I turn it up above that
[05:41] to a really loud and busy road. So, it's nice that you have that flexibility with these. And they do seem to have better bass than some other models thanks to only thing with open earbuds is sometimes they can be a bit sibilant.
[05:56] say. Like they sound pretty decent, pretty well balanced. And the sound, struggle with is the position of the earbuds drastically affecting the sound. So, with these, the sound is actually very forgiving of the fit since these
[06:10] could theoretically fit on different ears in slightly different orientations. moving them around a little bit, and the sound is pretty much very consistent no matter how you wear them. Unless you push them like way into your ears, then
[06:23] bit louder. But overall, wearing them normally, I think you're not going to well, I shouldn't say who, but some other earbuds in the past, you know, one subtle movement would really change how these sounded. These right here, that's
[06:37] not a problem. I wish open earbuds format allowed for a little bit more detail and high-end control, but I mean, of all the open earbuds I've tried, these certainly sound more than good enough. Plus, I primarily wear these
[06:49] when I'm running and working out anyway. And these have a really cool extra feature in them. So, even though they're meant to hear your surroundings, maybe single sound around you. Maybe you want to cut out like the droning sound, a
[07:02] little bit of like distant traffic and HVAC or something like that. These do really well by having a noise reduction mode, which is basically the same thing as active noise cancellation. It's going to play the inverse wave of the sound
[07:15] coming into your ears to cut out things like, like I said, HVAC or something like that. So, in extremely noisy environments, it doesn't block nearly as much out, obviously, cuz your ears are not plugged. But in modern environments
[07:27] where you have HVAC or outside traffic or other ambient noise, it's actually shockingly impressive. Like it does so much more than I expected it to block so you can go all the way down to reduced, which is just blocking out the
[07:41] there's really no white noise with that. more. You do have a tad more white noise with that. And if you go all the way up to enhanced, it's able to block, like I said, a surprising amount out. Um but it
[07:54] is going to give you a bit more white noise and a bit more pressure in your ears. Um otherwise, I mean, it's very impressive what they're able to do with open earbuds. That's That's honestly crazy. Otherwise, talking about the
[08:06] sound quality overall, baselines come through very cleanly. Vocals are balance is pretty solid for a pair of open earbuds. I um I like it. Now, let's with an indoor test. All right, so this is an indoor microphone test with the
[08:20] Shokz OpenFit Pro. how these sound to you. Obviously, we're inside, so it them. And I have to say, I like that I can hear myself speak very naturally. I don't need to um like yell because my ears are obviously not plugged. But if
[08:36] maybe you're outside and it's windy, you might be taking phone calls out there. So, let's go outside and see how these perform next to a busy road. And as usual, the busy road test. I feel like I'm yelling cuz obviously, I can hear
[08:48] being filtered out for my ears. But let me know how these microphones perform if I were to answer a phone call by a busy road. Can you hear what I'm saying? Next I know is so interesting to me and a lot of other people who are looking at open
[09:02] bleed test. If you're wearing these, how much can other people hear your music or your podcast? How close does somebody have to be in order to hear what you're listening to? So, for the sound bleed
[09:14] at half volume. I'll hold the microphone like a pretty close. Like if somebody hear your music, that'd be very impressive. Uh I'll move it closer in if you can hear it when you get really close. But let's see how it works at
[09:28] volume. I think this is a normal distance to to sit away from somebody, distance to to sit away from somebody, maybe on a subway. Now, if they sat really close, maybe right here,
[09:44] Now, let's go back to this distance, and we'll go up to almost full volume. but I'll do it for the video. We'll go to 100.
[10:02] definitely yelling. This is really loud to me. Then I back down to a normal listening volume and a normal distance away.
[10:15] I'm listening to? Something that I haven't seen on any earbuds yet, so this is pretty cool to see this on these, is Bluetooth 6.1. And Bluetooth 6.1, I mean most earbuds you see are like 5.4, so much more future-proof with Bluetooth 6.
[10:31] In 6.1, the main benefits are going to be like privacy and especially power getting such a good battery life on app, you can see the earbuds right there. We've got the battery levels of
[10:44] control, as I mentioned, you've got open mode, which is just as it is. You can expect. It's obviously not playing outside sounds cuz that's completely not advantage of them. And noise reduction mode, as I mentioned, you've got a
[10:58] slider with what is that? Like 10 different settings there. And wow, I I of surprising how much these actually are able to block. We're able to optimize this for Dolby Atmos, and they do have head tracking as well. A feature
[11:11] that I personally rarely use on any headphones or earbuds, but if you like listening to music, it's kind of cool that you have that option here. We also Like I said, the different EQ modes.
[11:24] you can also customize it as well on the very bottom. And these do have using them at my desk. You can connect to my my laptop and my phone. But it's a MacBook and a Pixel, so not even the same ecosystem. And it switches between
[11:37] call, even though I'm working on my MacBook, it'll switch over to my phone. when I hang up, it'll switch back to my MacBook. I always love that feature. think I need to have that on a pair of earbuds, and I'm glad these do have
[11:53] that. The controls, as I mentioned, um there are a lot of controls. The touch and then hold, so single click and then long press, I think is really customize every single one of these. So pressing it once, you can choose
[12:06] that one, but say triple click for example, you can choose if you want to you want to do voice assistant, or if you want to disable any one of these. clicking and you accidentally um double click every time, or you can just
[12:20] disable those entirely. Single click and long press will be for volume. Volume is be doing with that. And you can customize these for left and for right. So I do love the full customization of the of the buttons there. And we do also
[12:34] do it while I'm wearing them, but it just Actually, let me take it off. See the microphone, so it gradually gets louder.
[12:46] these in in a room if you drop them on the on the floor or something like that. have smart wear detection, so they know when they're on your head that you take your music or your podcast. Pretty nice to have that. They also have latency
[12:59] using them for gaming for example, you can toggle that on. So the Shokz OpenFit So who are they going to be good for and who are they not good for? I want to start off with who shouldn't buy these. I would recommend anyone who has your
[13:13] main priority to block out sounds, obviously you shouldn't buy these. These lot, you're commuting a lot, you have a lot of really loud sounds, and and you should find some closed-tip earbuds that seal your ear and give you that passive
[13:27] cancellation. Another group that probably shouldn't buy these would be anybody who has the sole priority of the best audio quality possible. If you're like that's your main goal, again, you could find other earbuds for your uses.
[13:42] really appreciate them? I think these solve a huge problem for a very specific running on sidewalks or trails, and you still need to be aware of your surroundings, but you don't want to have all the ambient noise. You don't want to
[13:56] music. These definitely solve a problem there. You can still hear bike bells traffic, but you can hear your music a anyone who's a cyclist. And and by the way, you don't even need to use these
[14:09] If you find that you want to hear more of your surroundings, you can turn that down or even turn it off. So it does give you a lot of flexibility with that. these to is anyone who's working at a desk all day, and you want something
[14:22] very light and comfortable on your ears. You want to hear your surroundings. You sealed off for, you know, risk of infection or whatever reason it might be. Maybe just your ears feel hot. The open style is actually quite nice. And
[14:35] tying into that, lastly, I know a lot of people who just do not like their ears being sealed by earbuds, and these do still give you that active noise reduction to block out HVAC sounds and refrigerator sounds in your house while
[14:47] not plugging your ears. So those are the Shokz OpenFit Pro. I'll have a link in to see colors or pricing or things like that in your area. Thanks for watching, that in your area. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you guys in the next video.