Aftershokz Trekz Titanium headphones conduct sound through your bones

Sports headphones that use bone conduction to transmit sound – a nice take on sports headphones

The lightweight and comfortable Trekz Titanium wireless stereo headphones are the safest alternative to traditional sport headphones and earbuds. Bone conduction technology, an open ear design and a suite of convenient features deliver premium music play and crystal clear calling without compromise. Designed with athletes in mind, Trekz Titanium are sweatproof, secure, and will allow you to hear your surroundings – no matter where life takes you.

Who It’s For

The Trekz Titanium are for athletes of all types. Specifically, however, they’re great for staying aware of your surroundings, because they don’t block ear canals and allow you to hear what’s around you. For me, running in the morning partially on the road and partially on trails, this is a great benefit. They also seem great for bikers who want to keep aware of traffic around them, but want to listen to podcasts too.

Testing Method

I wore the Trekz Titanium on daily road runs, trail runs, gym workouts, indoor bouldering, and around town for about two weeks in Colorado. I had them connected to my iPhoneX and usually used the Apple Podcasts app or Spotify.

First Impressions

They’re a nice little package – seem well built, no extra pieces or ear tip guards necessary, and come with a nice storage bag and charging cable. Of note on first look, the charging port is Micro-USB. Given that everything else nowadays is USB-C, the use of Micro-USB seems outdated and requires me to carry around an extra old school Micro-USB cable. Ugh.

Like

• The headphones pair easily via bluetooth, and the connection is solid. Running with my phone in hand, the connection never drops at all. Walking around my house, the range is just fine.
• When worn properly, the sound on podcasts is nice and clear. I love that they let me hear what’s going on around me, but since the sound is conducted through bones, it doesn’t get drowned out by other noises. Pretty cool!
• The one-piece design stays secure and snug on my head most of the time, and once adjusted to the right spot, it’s comfortable enough to wear.
• The simple volume controls and multi function button on the side is easy and effective.
• Battery life is good. I charged them after every workout, but during 3 hour gym sessions or long runs, they never had any battery issues.

Don’t Like

• As far as audio quality goes, they’re not the best. I wouldn’t really listen to music with them, because I’m a bit of a snob in that regard. But for listening to podcasts, they’re really great. Clear voice quality, and decent volume. But for any nuanced music, or watching TV in a loud gym where there are atmospheric audio nuances, these aren’t the best – for that I switch back to a pair of JBL Reflect Mini’s i have, which plug my ears and stop outside sound.
• It’s worth noting that when connected to my mac, these headphones use only the “low quality” SBC audio codec. Even after forcing/enabling both APT-X and AAC in the mac Bluetooth Explorer utility, the headphones would still only connect using low quality SBC. This further supports my podcast-only usage of these headphones.
• Yes, these headphones have a microphone on them for calls – but it sucks. I really wanted the mic to be good, because these would be almost the perfect “walking around my house on conference calls all day” headphones. But in my personal tests both recording audio and playing it back, and asking friends how I sounded on the phone, the results were consistently negative – scratch mic pickup, and lots of wind noise with even the slightest breeze. So, yes you can talk on them if you need to, but they’re certainly not a good bet for consistent calls.
• That Micro-USB port needs to be replaced with a USB-C port.

Should you buy it?

Looking for solid wireless headphones for listening to podcasts on a morning workout, and like the open airiness of nothing in your ears? These are great!

Final thoughts

Aftershokz Trekz Titanium are a novel approach to sports headphones, and for my morning run, they’re great.

Find it

Aftershokz Trekz Titanium on Amazon

Direct from Aftershokz