The Headphones of Tomorrow Won't Even Go Inside Your Ears

When you're in a quiet environment, the Aeropex work pretty well. The sound profile is a little bit hollow, so something like Bon Iver's "10 dEAThbREasT" from 22, A Million sounds way weirder than it should, like you're missing half of the parts. But if you're just listening to podcasts or random ambient music to get you through the day, you're unlikely to notice.

Things get hairy as soon as you decide to take the headphones outside. Because you don't insert the Aeropex headphones into your ear, they don't provide any kind of seal from external noise. The company, and other manufacturers of open-back headphones, consider this an advantage. It certainly makes them better for indoor and outdoor workouts, where spatial awareness is key. But it makes the headphones horrendous for day-to-day use. Anywhere there is significant ambient noise, like the subway, where screeching wheels and rumbling engines can produce sound as loud as 90 decibels (as measured by my Apple Watch), anything played on the Aeropex is totally unintelligible at anything other than extremely loud volumes.

AfterShokz attempts to address this problem by including a pair of earplugs with Aeropex headphones. Beyond the fact that carrying around earplugs to make your headphones work is extraordinarily silly, it doesn't really work. Without the sound that comes from the tiny headphone speakers themselves, the Aeropex make anything you're listening to sound like it's coming from a speaker 10ft away from your body and 6 ft under water.

If you're looking for a new pair of workout headphones, the Aeropex are a totally adequate option. They're light, have a great 8-hour battery life, are fully waterproof, and come with a two-year warranty. But at $160, I don't think I would buy something with this limited of a use. I'd want my workout headphones to also be functional on my commutes, while traveling, or when I'm just hanging out. But the Aeropex just don't offer a good enough sound quality or seal to make that possible.

That's not to say the tech included in them isn't super exciting, and even miraculous for people born without the ability to hear. But that's not most people. If you want a dedicated headphone for workouts, the $80 AfterShokz Titanium might be worth it. But for anything else, we'll spend our hard earned bones elsewhere.