Swimming is a lonely sport, more so than any other. The monotonous follow the black line below you. 25m, 50m, tumble turn, go the distance, tumble turn. Follow the black line. I did a lot of that in my teenage years, training in the pool, alone with my thoughts, counting the laps. There was nothing like the Shokz OpenSwim Pro on the market in my timeline.
First Impressions
The OpenSwim Pro looks similar to most of the products in the Shokz offerings.
It has the bone conduction modules, the ear hook, the module behind where the magnetic charging port is located. Finally the band that goes around the back of your head and keep it all together.
My review unit is an eye catching orange and grey. There is a light and dark grey colourway as well but I quite like how distinctive the orange looks (plus that’s the DRN colour as well). Offically this is the red colourway.
The charge port is proprietary and just three buttons in shiny blue buttons adorns the unit. These are for play/stop, power combines with volume rocker. Holding that down puts the unit into pairing mode.
In Use
Wearing the OpenSwim Pro is simple, there is only one orientation you can wear them. Just like the other products in their line up except this one is full waterproof. You can wear this swimming laps, or open ocean, or in the shower. This also means a different way of listening to your audio.
If you are just wearing in the shower, then well you are easily within Bluetooth range to stream music. Even if you are in the 18 shower heads villa bathroom at Crown Towers. But if you are doing laps in the pool, that is not going to work so well.
To give the OpenSwim Pro complete independence from needing a Bluetooth connection, it has 32GB of onboard storage with support for a few popular codecs. You do need to switch the mode either via the Shokz app, or hold the Volume + and Volume – buttons simultaneously for 2 seconds until you hear the prompt.
I covered the quality of the Shokz bone conduction technology in my previous two reviews. To summarise, in general the sound quality is decent but not incredible. This is to be expected. Further, noisy environments tend to overwhelm the bone conduction so you can struggle to hear your preferred audio. With the earlier generation of Shokz (excluding OpenRun Pro 2 with DirectPitch), cranking up the sound and bass can result in uncomfortable tactile vibration.
I haven’t really been near a pool for a while so I kicked off the audio review by watching Season 2 of The Boys on Amazon Prime. Totally violent, gore filled, inappropriate for little kids, but at least the audio was just beamed into my skull, so to speak. Relax, I was watching it late in the night when the little ones were fast asleep.
It is kind of fitting. The psychopathic and sadistic narcissist Homelander kind of drilling into your skull. The audio coming through via bone conduction and the volume turned up to be just a smidgen under that tactile vibration makes for a different viewing experience.
As is the norm, bone conduction audio are not on par with headphones or in ear buds. But for watching TV in this case was actually quiet perfect. Look I am also old enough to really enjoy the Billy Joel soundtracks in it.
When worn in Bluetooth mode, the OpenSwim Pro comes with two EQ modes – standard and vocal booster.
Standard provides a balanced frequency for listening to music while the vocal booster provides enhanced intermediate frequencies for audiobooks, podcasts and the like.
A third EQ mode is available when the OpenSwim Pro is set to MP3 mode. The swimming mode is designed for swimming. Shokz recommends and provides earplugs to provide the best listening experience.
To listen to audio in MP3 mode, you need to transfer files in the supported file formats listed earlier. The charging cable is also a data cable. When you connect it to a computer, the Shokz appears like a USB drive and you can just paste the files straight into it.
For me this is a simple process. But for the less tech savvy and those who usually have their audio streaming directly from an online service, this would take a little more manual effort. Shokz does not provide the tools to help with this, and quite honestly this would be out of scope. There are tools out there and they all need some effort and persistence to get started with.
For those who prefer Shokz to provide a tool, unfortunately they can run into a gamut of issues with copyrights amongst other things. I can understand the decision to put the onus on the end user instead.
Audio Quality
On dry land, I put on some music to put the OpenSwim Pro through it’s paces. Keeping expectations in check, the bone conduction is not there for the full sound stage with isolation. There is a balance between volume, environment noise and that ticklish tactile feedback. I listened to these tracks in a quiet environment.
I started with Good Luck, Babe which has been blowing up the airwaves as well as the primary school disco. Chappell Roan’s tone diversity in this track came through well. From the mid to low start, the change in range and onto the belting out of the chorus, the audio render did not take away from Roan’s remarkable vocal talents.
Swapping genres, cross the seas and time, Bird Thongchai’s มีอะไรอีกมั้ยที่ลืมบอก is catchy and clean. His voice is showcased within the limits of the sound stage with good clarity.
Pushing the envelope a bit more with Asaf Avidan’s 900 days. His unique and remarkable vocals came through spectacularly.
Circling back to powerful female vocals, the OpenSwim Pro delivers on Jessie J’s Big White Room and her vibrato and range faithfully.
Playing the same tracks whilst in water, with the ear plugs in improved the body of the audio. Swimmers would be cognisant of the noise isolating effects of being under water. This combined with the earplugs changes the game as it literally adds passive noise cancellation into the mix.
Other Features
The OpenSwim Pro has a rated 9 hours battery life in Bluetooth mode. I started the review without charging it and it reported back as battery medium. I went a pretty long way before I finally busted out the cable to charge it.
The 32GB of onboard storage allows for about 8000 music tracks. You’ll run out of battery life long before you run out of music. Playing in MP3 mode will drop it down to 6 hours.
A 10 minutes quick charge will give you three hours of play time. Although Shokz does not give specifics here (and I didn’t test it personally), that three hours I will assume is for Bluetooth mode.
Despite being only labelled at sweat proof, the OpenSwim Pro is waterproof with a IP68 rating. That means the highest possible protection against solids, and second highest for liquid – complete submersion below one meter and for more than 30 minutes. I still wouldn’t be going diving with those though.
Shokz has provided a neoprene carry case that to keep the OpenSwim Pro in, along with a small carry case for some ear plugs to help with the audio experience.
Gripes
I started getting into this a little earlier about transfer of files to the OpenSwim Pro. To add to this, there are no tools to manage the tracks you put onto the Shokz.
As far as the OpenSwim is concerned, it is just one big bucket where the files are loaded in a single alphabetical playlist. Unless you are connected to your computer, you can’t see what is loaded.
Second to that, you have very little control over the music when it comes to playing. So if you have maxed out the storage with 8000 tracks, this can get pretty unwieldy.
Lastly, hang onto the proprietary cable. You will be out of luck if you lose it.
Conclusions
I feel the name OpenSwim is undercutting the product. The OpenSwim Pro offers something that the rest of the product line does not – onboard storage. This means you can go for your run, or the gym, or swim, all without the need for a phone nearby to stream your music.
Yes there are limitations in media management, but the Shokz OpenSwim Pro is so much more versatile for having the onboard storage.
The audio quality is decently good for most parts. It is a limitation of the current technology that bone conduction is simply not the same as traditional headphones or earbuds. Would it ever be on par? Not my area of expertise and never say never. I had reviewed the OpenRun Pro 2 recently and the audio improvements Shokz has made with DirectPitch technology is impressive.
The Shokz OpenSwim Pro has a RRP of $299 and is available from Amazon and authorised retailers.
DRN would like to thank Shokz for providing the review unit.
Specifications
Battery
Continuous play: Bluetooth mode: 9 Hours, MP3 mode: 6 Hours
Charge time: 90 minutes
Standby time: Automatically turn off after standing by 2 hours in MP3 mode, or 6 hours in Bluetooth mode
Battery capacity: 160mAh (Min)
Charge voltage: 5V±5%
Quick charge: A 10-minute charge gives 3 hours of battery life (music)
Connectivity
Bluetooth version: Bluetooth V5.4
Compatible profiles: A2DP, AVRCP, HFP
Wireless range: 10m (33ft)
Audio codecs supported: MP3, FLAC, WMA, WAV, AAC, M4A, and APE
Design
Sweat resistance: IP68
Weight: 27.3 g
Material: Silicone, plastic, nickel-titanium alloy
Sound
Frequency response: 20Hz-20KHz
Speaker sensitivity: 105 ± 3dB
Microphone
Microphone sensitivity: -38dB ± 1dB
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