TL;DR – Aftershokz Aeropex is an awesome product. If you train outdoors in any capacity whether it’s lifting, running, cycling, hiking, etc. and you enjoy listening to your favorite music, podcast, audiobook, etc. at the same time, but also want to be aware of your surroundings, buy them. Click the image below to get yours:
Full Review
My preference has always been to training outside if possible. Chock it up to summer conditioning season leading up to the fall sports season back in high school. To me, it just feels more visceral. Like I’m training in the actual environment that I would have went hunting to harpoon a deer and bring it back to my tribe (I’m sure that’s exactly how all this worked back in the day). Plus, it’s good to get some sun.
Being outside does have its downsides. You’re in a much less controlled environment than your go-to commercial gym. In an indoor gym, you’re most at risk of getting the random “gym bro” trying to pick up your number or correcting your form with their master’s degree in bro-science. However, being outside you need to watch out for everything: cars, runners, crosswalks, traffic lights, stop signs (and the people that ignore them), off-leash dogs, mosquitos, construction, and the list goes on.
Aftershokz has an answer to this, they dropped the Aeropex on June 17 this year (2019). My last pair of Aftershokz (Bluez 2) are still going strong and I bought them nearly 5 years ago. They’ve served me well, but I felt it was time for an upgrade. All of the tech blogs have already chatted reviewed some of the technical aspects of the Aftershokz Aeropex so I’m not going to be mentioning much about the typical reviews of having some audio leakage, reduced audio quality, and feeling the vibration from the transducers (admittedly, I had to look up what the pads that make contact with the side of your head were called). Instead, I’m going to be looking at these devices as a functional piece of equipment that fills a gap and serves a specific purpose in a number of different functional niches and potential consumer audience.
So who is this product for?
- Fitness enthusiasts and exercise aficionados who prioritize awareness over audio quality (don’t get me wrong though, the audio quality is great on these things for what they are).
- If you want to listen to audio, but also want to hear everything around you.
- You work in an office and want to listen to music, podcasts, audiobooks, etc., but don’t want to give off the impression you don’t want to talk to anybody (although, you probably don’t).
- You’re a swimmer.
- If you’re hard of hearing. This is just what I’ve seen from my research on bone conduction technology, so results may vary.
Being a borderline audiophile, I was married to my Bose MIE2i wired headphones for some time (I can hear true audiophiles scoffing at me already). It let me hear (or at least I thought) just enough of my environment to hear cars coming up behind me or other runners/walkers coming around the corner. However, after a few close calls of actually not hearing, those moments where you accidentally snag your arm on the wire and nearly rip your near $1K smartphone out of your pocket (only for it to be saved by the same wire that also got it to come flying out of your pocket), I was looking for a solution to this problem and I found Aftershokz products. Sure, you could argue that there are now wireless earbuds that do activity tracking and allow you to have some sketchy pass-through audio (I’ve used some of these products too, but the pass-through audio quality was subpar compared to hearing real sound, having them in your ear all day is not comfortable, and battery life on all of them were… meh), but the Aftershokz Aeropex are open ear, which means you can hear the environment around you with your natural hearing. I don’t know about you, but for me, there is no substitute for this. Cue, a video of a guy who could’ve gotten hit by a car because he couldn’t hear what was going on in his environment:
Especially being outside, I would rather hear what’s going on in my immediate environment first, then whatever I’m listening to on my headphones, second. I’ve seen people in large cities walking around with earbuds or noise-canceling headphones and though I understand why you would want to block out all of the noise pollution from the city, but I personally wouldn’t do that at the expense of my own safety. Think about it, if somebody yells, “get out of the way,” wouldn’t you want to hear that? or the sound of a car engine getting closer and coming up behind you? How about sirens? Do you want to ignore the sound of that? Probably not because all of these things are warnings that are intended to be heard and the Aftershokz Aeropex are awesome for that purpose. Plus, IP67 rating means you can do your laps at the pool and still listen to your favorite tunes (or take a shower with headphones on if you are so inclined).
For my non-sport related use for these headphones. I use these in at the office all the time. I work in an open office environment. I would wear headphones from time to time but then people would always come and apologize for interrupting me. The thing is, I do not want to send a non-verbal communication telling people to leave me alone, but I do want to listen to music, audiobook, or podcast without having people around me thinking that I’m being antisocial. Call it politicking if you want to, but I like to be available for the people that may need my help or vice versa. I still have to pause the sound by pressing the multi-function button, because it’s hard to listen to somebody when you have somebody else talking or singing into your head, but the message that I’m now sending to the people that are around me is that my ears are open and I can hear them when they talk to me. Bonus: this headset is so light and comfortable enough to wear all day. Speaking of wearing it all day, I’ve yet to have this thing die on me while I’m at the office, but I do charge it every night (supposedly the battery life is supposed to last up to 8 hours).
Share in my experience with this awesome product, click on the image below to get your own Aftershokz Aeropex:
Co-Owner of FiT ME Brand, LLC