I have run, swim and worked with the Aqua Suunto. Under water I understood what these bone driving headphones propose
A common problem of aquatic headphones is that, in addition to not being Bluetooth for physical reasons, they are usually specifically aquatic. That is, little or nothing appropriate to use them out of water. The rest of sports headphones usually also have something in common: they forget the water. I do not talk about enduring sweat or rain, but really swimming, throwing you into a pool and forgetting everything except to breeze. That’s where the Suunto Aquabone driving headphones that are not only designed to function under water, but They have water as their natural state, But they are still dry in dry. I have tried running, on long walks, even at home while working. But it wasn’t until I took them to swim when I understood what I was trying to do with them. Thus they look when they take them out of our head. Image: Xataka. Its strength is not the sound (because it should not be) The first thing to understand of the Aqua is that they are not headphones to use. They use bone driving, a technology that transmits sound through vibrations that travel through the bones of the skull, specifically the temporal bone, to the inner ear. The auditory channel is free: you don’t need to have anything inside the ear to listen to music or a podcast. That provides a double advantage. On the one hand, comfort and safety outdoors: you can run or bike listening to your content without isolating yourself from the environment. On the other, an even more overwhelming logic underwater: nothing gets into the ear, there is no distorted sound, there is no sense of tamponade. Everything happens in that little transducer that rests on the ear and that, against all prognosis, it manages to keep listening even. That little button that stands out from the transducer is the one that serves to stop or continue the music (a touch), pass from song (two touches) or backward (three touches). Image: Xataka. Pogo load pins that guarantee pond but require their own case. Image: Xataka. And here with the connected load case. This works as an external battery for a pair of complete loads. Connecting a USB-C cable we will move to the wall charger mode. Image: Xataka. The surprising thing is that, despite this different way of transmitting the sound, the experience works. There is no isolation, but it is not what you are looking for here. You can hear the music, the podcasts, whatever you want … and you are still connected to what surrounds you. In water, where any other system fails, they continue to comply. Suunto has adjusted the equalization thinking about that: in outdoor environments and, above all, in immersion. Dry, sound is enough; In pool, better than expected. There are no forceful serious study, but a solid, coherent and much more refined proposal than I imagined. Running and swimming with them Before trying them in the water, I’ve been running with them months. Literally. I immediately noticed that the important thing was not as much the sound quality and the feeling of freedom: nothing inside the ear, nothing that falls out when moving, and the music always present without disconnecting from the world. Ideal to go through the city or by roads without losing sight or hearing what surrounds you. You didn’t have to adjust them every little, or worry about whether they loosen up. They simply worked. Besides, Its three buttons (two on one side, one in the other) allow to change volume or pass song. All great. But although they had convinced me, the best was yet to come. The posterior strip. It is flexible but without applying pressure it remains rigid. I don’t feel that I bounce in my neck. Image: Xataka. The first time I used them in pool I felt a certain astonishment. Not long, but when I did it used to be without music because all the previous solutions had seemed a commitment: they were uncomfortable, unreliable, or directly fragile. In fact it came from using some Sony NW-WS413 –With its humble 4 GB– since 2022. Image: Xataka. With those two buttons under the pogo pins we can do almost any action, combining pulsations, pulsation time, etc. Turn them on, turn them off, adjust volume, enter and exit sports mode, etc. Image: Xataka. With the aqua you do not have to juggle: The placing, you start the session from the headphones themselves (without the mobile, thanks to the 32 GB of internal storage) and throw yourself into the water. From the first length, something changes. Music accompanies you. And you keep swimming the same, without worrying about anything. There are no cables, there are no rubber ones that come out. The band that surrounds the head does not move. It does not loosen. It does not bother. It is as if it were not. But the most interesting comes later. These headphones listen to you swim At the end of the session, the data appears in the Suunto app: Posture, head angle, respiratory frequency, sliding in stroke. Technique metrics that I had never seen in headphones. And that, at least in my case, they told me something I didn’t know: that I breathe badly. Image: Xataka. Or more exactly, that I do it asymmetrically, with my head turning more to one side than to the other. They had never told me in the training. Nor had he noticed it. But there was the graphic. Yes indeed: There is no real -time feedback. What you get is a later readingas if you had a silent coach who takes notes while you swim. It is true that the app could go further in its interpretation of the data – phalta context, lack of concrete orientation – but as a starting point, impresses. It is another way of seeing your body in motion. To listen to you from within. For a future version it would be great to be able to … Read more
