Jukes Solo Wave bone-conduction headphones — swim to your favourite tunes
Jukes Solo Wave Openear headphones
Summer is coming and we can finally look forward to warmer temperatures, lazy days at the beach and more outdoor activities.
I’ve been checking out the Jukes Solo Wave bone conduction headphones, which you can wear in the water with no worries. In fact, they’re designed to be used while swimming.
The Solo Wave use bone-conduction technology to transfer most of the sound from the headset to your ears. They don’t cover your ears at all and as a result of the technology, they can be completely sealed to ensure an IP68 dust and waterproof rating. It accomplishes this by using transducers that deliver vibrations to the cheekbones and face, which are subsequently translated into sound by the brain.
The headphones feature a flexible band that wraps around the back of your head with loops on either side that fit around your ears. On the ends of each loop is the part that contains all the electronics and speakers and sits in front of and not in your ears.
The Wave is mostly black with grey, orange or blue accents depending on which style you purchase.
Since the Wave sits around the back of your head and nothing goes into your ears, they’re incredibly comfortable to wear. Regardless of the activity — running, working out or even swimming, the Wave can handle and feel comfortable in any situation.
If used for swimming, Jukes recommend wearing goggles and a swim cap to ensure they don’t fall off. They also include a decent pair of swimming earplugs as well as a nice soft pouch to keep them safe while transporting or storing them.
The headphones have a built-in music player but you’ll need your own music files to transfer to the 16GB of internal storage. You can’t sync music from Spotify or Apple Music but you can pair them with your phone or smartwatch. The latter might be more practical for those who own one that is also waterproof and good for swimming — assuming it supports syncing music from your phone.
Bone-conduction technology is amazing and makes headphones like the Solo Wave possible but you can’t expect the same sound quality that you’d get from normal earphones or headphones. I don’t see this as being a problem since I’d consider the Wave as being headphones designed to fit a specific purpose.
When I really want to enjoy music at its best, I sit down in a quiet room with my best headphones. While I love listening to music when running, walking or any other activity, the sound quality isn’t as important as the features to me.
The Wave doesn’t get very loud and, of course, their open design means there’s no noise isolation — unless you wear the earplugs that come with them. I found music can be drowned out if you’re in a busy street or other noisy environments. There’s also a lack of bass or power but there’s plenty of detail in the mids and highs.
The Wave has actual buttons on the right side for playback, volume and pause/play/answer/reject a call. The buttons are fairly stiff and require a decent amount of effort to activate.
They’re also very close together which makes finding them blind rather challenging. However, they do work and are more practical than touch controls would be for their given application.
The included USB charging cable is proprietary and connects magnetically to brass pins on the right side. You can also use this cable to transfer music files (WAV or mp3 format only) to the internal 16GB of storage. You can toggle between Bluetooth and the internal music player by double-pressing the play/pause button.
Jukes say the Wave is good for up to five hours of playback depending on volume, whether you’re in Bluetooth or if you’re using the internal player — even the type of music you’re playing will have an effect on battery life.
I think the Jukes Solo Wave would be a great option for those who like to do a lot of lane swimming in a pool to break up the boredom or maybe help get the blood flowing with high-tempo music. They’re also great for those who want to run or walk in all sorts of weather and need to hear what’s happening in their surroundings.
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