Open-ear wireless earbuds are nothing short of a revolution. For many people, the ability to hear their tunes or podcasts and the outside world can be a game changer. The fact that open earbuds also tend to be way more comfortable than their traditional, closed cousins is, depending on your needs, either a bonus or the main reason to buy them.
Unfortunately, open-ears suffer from two major drawbacks: Sound quality takes a serious hit unless you’re in a perfectly quiet environment, and because there’s no way to passively isolate external sounds, you can’t have active noise cancellation (ANC) as a work-around. Or can you?
Shokz’s newest open-ear model, the Shokz OpenFit Pro ($250 in black or white), challenges that notion with the company’s first open-ear noise reduction system. It’s not as effective as the kind of active noise canceling you’ll find on closed earbuds like the Apple AirPods Pro, but it absolutely delivers what it promises: a noticeable reduction of mid-frequencies—just enough to take the edge off life’s more annoying sounds.
Open Buds With ANC?
Photograph: Simon Cohen
During the winter, I run a small space heater in my office. With the OpenFit Pro’s noise reduction enabled, the drone of the fan is decreased by what feels like half (an entirely unscientific measurement), and yet, I can still hear all of the usual comings and goings in my house clearly. At the gym, it drops (but doesn’t eradicate) the sound of treadmills and the in-house music selection.
However, it also delivered an unexpected side effect: my first encounter with the so-called “sucking” sensation that some folks experience when using ANC products. I’ve tested more ANC headphones and earbuds than I care to count. Some do a phenomenal job of blocking sound, and some don’t. But none have ever caused a physical sensation like the OpenFit Pro, which, in my case, feels like inward pressure (pushing vs sucking). It’s not painful, but it’s unpleasant, and it made me want to turn it off after just a few minutes of use.
You can adjust the amount of noise reduction in the Shokz companion app, and reducing it from its maximum setting caused the sensation to subside. Unfortunately, it also reduced noise reduction to the point where it wasn’t really blocking any sounds. The good news is that the sensation of pressure is reduced a lot when playing music, and, like most well-executed noise cancellation systems, it doesn’t significantly alter the OpenFit Pro’s sound quality.
Quality Audio
Photograph: Simon Cohen
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