The Best Bone Conduction Headphones

Naenka changed its name to Nank. While that made a bad brand name even worse, the Chinese audio brand at least knows how to build a solid set of bone conduction headphones. The Runner Diver2 Pro offers Bluetooth or MP3 music player streaming, wrapped up in a comfortable and secure-fitting neckband design that’s made primarily for runners and swimmers. That’s why you’ll find a well-positioned set of physical buttons and an IP69-rating. They're tough enough to be submerged in freshwater and seawater up to 10 meters for as long as five hours.

While it lacks the more balanced sound profile of Shokz’s OpenRun Pro and Swim headphones, the Diver2 Pro makes up for it with its power and bass. Nank includes sound enhancers that sit inside your ear to create a better seal, though they do feel odd to put in and wear. You can instead wear them with the vibration units placed closer inside of the ears to create a more closed listening experience to block out more outside sound. They offer pleasant open-ear sound in all scenarios, so if you like the idea of something well-built for swimming and everything else, these are more than up to the task. We also like the Jabees 7Seven ($74) as an affordable option. Check our guide to the Best Swimming Headphones for more.

The Mojawa Run Plus comes from an audio brand that has Apple engineers within its ranks. Whoever personally designed them, the design for the Run Plus rules. At just 1 ounce, they're a similar weight to most other leading bone conduction headphones, and the good-looking shape more easily accommodates sunglasses.

The Mojawa app also gives you access to four EQ modes and lets you enjoy Shokz-rivaling sound, with some meaty bass and a performance in the mid and treble departments as notable highlights. I also like the combination of touch and physical controls, although the capacitative buttons do cause some problems in the water under a swim cap.

You’ll need the proprietary charging cable to drag and drop files on to make best use of the 32 GB music player, which offers enough room for roughly 8,000 songs. There’s far from class-leading battery life and only hit the maximum eight-hour number when listening at more moderate volumes. It’s a knock that most will be able to live with, especially when the Run Plus impresses in other key departments.

Suunto recently made the surprise move into launching headphones and decided that bone conduction would help it stick to its more outdoor-centric roots. While the Sonic wasn’t its first pair or its most feature-rich model, it hit the sweet spot for price, performance, and providing another option outside of the more established names.

The Sonic’s design is an unoriginal neckband one, which at just over 1 ounce is nice and light. They're ideal for running for a few hours without suffering from wear fatigue. The built-in physical controls make it a breeze to adjust volume or intercept a call from your phone. Speaking of calls, Suunto includes two microphones, accompanied by an algorithm designed to cancel wind up to 15 kilometers per hour. It’s surprisingly effective how well this feature works to make handling calls in more challenging environments worthwhile.

The bone conduction sound can be tweaked by using one of the two available sound modes in the Suunto app. The normal mode provides a pleasant, balanced profile, with just enough in the bass department and a level of detail that makes it well-suited for listening to podcasts instead of a marathon training playlist. Swap it for the outdoor mode, and you’re mainly going to enjoy more volume to counter the added noise in your environment. It does miss out on some fun features from Suunto’s premium headphones, like the safety LEDs and a charger that doubles as a power bank, but the Sonic focuses instead on the factors that make it a solid yet affordable purchase.