Forgive the ugly old face … but notice the fancy bone-conducting headphones, and then look and see if you can spot the tiny white plastic wire that sneaks down into my ear.
That’s my hearing aid.
I got the shockz because I got sick of having to take my hearing aids out and then put my AirPods Pros in so that I could listen to podcasts or dictate.
The bone conduction sound quality is good enough for podcasts. The microphone good enough for dictating.
Hope this maybe helps someone.
BTW, I purchased this pair: opencomm2uc-2025-upgrade – Shokz
There is a cheaper version, but this one comes with a universal connector usb c thingy that I can plug into my Mac. It also swaps between my iPad and my iPhone using bluetooth.
There are other shocks that are good for sports but have no microphone.
My wife has a pair of these (without the extended mike). She finds that ear buds irritate her ears and she dislikes over the head headphones. She loves them.
I have also seen cyclists and runners recommend them as they allow the wearer to remain aware of the surroundings.
I’m jumping back on the Shokz bandwagon since they moved to USB-C charging. My AirPods have enough problems that I can’t trust them for phone calls anymore.
There’s nothing quite like the Shokz. There are cheaper knockoffs, but all of the knockoffs I tried persistently dropped the first syllables of words in conversations as they tried to aggressively save power, so they’d “sleep” in lulls in conversations.
Noting that we’ve had problems with both Shokz headsets we’ve owned, so I bought the extended 2-year warranty with mine.
There is another option for those of us who wear hearing aids; when I’m on a phone call, zoom call, listening to podcasts in the car, or dictating I wear a regular pair of AirPods (not pros) over my hearing aids. That works perfectly for me.
When I want noise cancellation, I take my hearing aids out and put in AirPods Pro.
Oh, never thought of that! It never occurred to me that the standard AirPods would fit.
That said, I quite like not having something in my ears for a bit.
Thank you Jim - sound advice (haha)
I imagine that they might fit for some (like me) but maybe not for everyone. Good to know of other options.
I did that accidentally one time - my hearing aids are quite comfortable and forgot I had them in when I wanted to use my AirPod Pros. I use the Comfy tips which may make it easier.
My hearing aids work very well for phone calls but are a little lacking for music or podcasts.
