Review of the Aftershokz Aeropex Bone Conduction Headphones

By David Goodwin, 31 October, 2019

Review Category

Rating

4 Stars

Review

I've been using AfterShokz bone conduction headphones since 2013 and they are a regular companion on my daily walks, allowing me to listen to music, podcasts, books, and VoiceOver while still being able to hear traffic and whatever else is going on around me.

The $159 Aftershokz Aeropex are the company's smallest, sleekest, lightest, and most advanced bone conduction headphones yet. They are well-designed, have good build quality, and are extremely comfortable to wear.

In nearly all regards these are the best bone conduction headphones I've used to date. The only regression I experienced over the older AfterShokz Trekz Titanium, is that they don't perform as well in particularly noisy environments.

If your own use case doesn't involve noisy environments (such as walking alongside busy roads), then I would highly recommend the Aeropex. Otherwise, despite being slightly bulkier and less refined, the Trekz Titanium might be a better choice at just $79.

What is Bone Conduction?

Bone conduction technology has been around for decades. I'm not going to try and pretend that I understand all of the science behind it, butt at its basic level Instead of sending vibrations through the eardrums, bone conduction headphones use transducers that vibrate to ‘push’ sound through your cheekbones and into your cochleas.

To get a taste of the experience, first say something out loud. Now, block your eardrums with your fingers and say something. The sensation should be quite different... almost like hearing your voice directly inside your head.

The main benefit of bone conduction headphones is having your ears free to maintain situational awareness, which has them primarily marketed at cyclists, runners, and those playing sports or exercising who want to be able to hear what's going on around them.

Being blind, you aren't likely to encounter me cycling or running down the road on my own. However, being able to hear the world around me whilst listening to music, podcasts, books or walking directions from VoiceOver brings significant value and pleasure.

It's not hyperbole to say that me and my guide dog would get much less exercise if I didn't have something to listen to whilst out walking. Using bone conduction headphones allows me to lose myself a little in a podcast or book, whereas most traditional styles of headphone would leave me too isolated from my surroundings to be confident in my safety and security.

A second benefit of bone conduction is for people who struggle to find in-ear headphones that fit comfortably and securely; or those who don't like the weight and pressure of most on-ear or over-ear headphones.

Another cited benefit, is that bone conduction headphones are purportedly useful for people with some ear conditions or level of hearing loss, as they work by circumventing the eardrum.

What's in the Box

In the box, AfterShokz includes the necessities — and a little more.

You have the Aeropex headphones themselves, along with a silicone rubber case with a magnetic closure.

AfterShokz includes two charging cables for the headphones. This might seem somewhat generous compared with the single cable that you would typically expect to find, but in this instance is good to see as AfterShokz uses a proprietary magnetic charging cable with the Aeropex.

Personally, I would rather have had a standard cable connection such as the Micro USB used by AfterShokz on previous headphones or USB-C, but having two cables does at least allow me to have a spare or have one for home and one for work.

The last items in the box are two foam earplugs, which can be used to block your eardrums for those times when you want to shut out the world completely whilst listening to something.

Design

The Aeropex has a form factor that's essentially the same as previous AfterShokz bone conduction headphones - a thin band wraps around the back of your head, loops up and over your ears, and the transducer pads sit just in front of your ears.

Located on the right side of the band (and just behind your right ear when wearing the headphones) is a volume rocker that also serves as the power, pairing, and battery level button. Pressing volume up and down simultaneously for three seconds changes the equalizer. Next to the volume rocker is the charging port, and an LED light is also apparently close by.

On the left transducer pad there is a discreet multifunction button that will play/pause audio and answer/end calls with a single press, skip tracks with a double press, and summon Siri with a long press.

The wrap around headband is much slimmer than that of older models. It sit's slightly lower on the back of your head than previously, but is still likely to get in the way if you sit back on a chair with a high back or headrest. It's a minor gripe, but one that might prevent the Aeropex from being your go to headphones when travelling by plane, coach, train or car.

The wrap around headband is also likely to get in the way when wearing overcoats with a high collar or a scarf. This is another minor niggle, but one that might prevent Aeropex from being your go to headphone in one other situation - when wrapping up to go for a walk in the cold or rain.

Although the basic form factor of AfterShokz's headphones may not have changed significantly over time, their design has become much more refined and the build quality appears to be much improved compared to that of the Bluez and Bluez 2S I've previously owned. The latter news will be very welcome to those who've had poor experiences with AfterShokz build quality in the past, although I will say that the Trekz Titanium were also a marked improvement and have proved in my experience to be durable..

Also changed from the earlier models is the pressure on your cheekbones when wearing the headphones. In my view the fit of early models was too tight to be comfortable for extended use. This is certainly not the case with the Aeropex, where there is only gentle pressure. This and their lightness makes for an extremely comfortable fit.

Features and Performance

The key features of the Aeropex at a glance are:

  • 30% smaller and 13% lighter than the Trekz Air.
  • Aeropex sit at a new 30-degree tilt against your face to reduce vibration.
  • PremiumPitch 2+â„¢ technology that is claimed to optimise the sound to increase bass.
  • Dual noise-canceling mics that minimize surrounding noise when making calls.
  • Sound leakage has been reduced by 50% compared to the Trekz Air.
  • 8 hours of music and calls.
  • A full charge takes 2 hours.
  • Up to 10 days of standby time.
  • Bluetooth v5.0.
  • Wireless range up to 33 feet.
  • Multipoint pairing that allows the Aeropex to be connected to two devices at the same time.
  • An IP67 waterproof rating, which means the Aeropex are completely sweat and rain proof and can withstand being submerged in up to one meter of water for 30 minutes.
  • You will be alerted if you try to charge the Aeropex when they are wet.

My experience of multipoint pairing on the Aeropex has generally been as disappointing and frustrating as it was with the Trekz Titanium.

When multipoint works, it's a great feature to have available. When it fails - and you are stood on the kerb trying to get your Apple Watch to simply say something somewhere; or when your MacBook pairs but VoiceOver is silent - it's enough to have you immediately reset the Aeropex to pair with just a single device.

My suspicion is that the fault for problems with multipoint pairing falls fully at Apple's door, as trying to get seamless switching with Apple AirPods has been similarly frustrating in my experience.

On a more positive note, initial pairing and subsequent connection with my iPhone XS has been fast and reliable.

To continue on a positive note, the bluetooth range of the Aeropex is exceptional. I have routinely left my iPhone in a downstairs room and been able to move around both levels of my home with no drop or degradation in connection to the headphones.

This is in stark contrast to my earliest experience with AfterShokz headphones (the Bluez), where simply putting my iPhone in my trouser pocket would be enough to introduce connection issues.

Comments on latency (‘lag’) of bluetooth headphones is generally subjective and influenced by personal use case, but, for what it's worth, my experience with Aeropex is that I only notice a hint of latency if I stop and look for it. In normal use, I notice none, and believe that Bluetooth 5.0 support is responsible for what I see as an improvement over the slight latency I would occasionally notice on the Trekz Titanium.

Call quality on the Aeropex can probably best be described as ‘adequate’. The sound of the caller's voice is typically quite ‘tinny’, and the interference in particular from wind noise at my end of the call means that I am unlikely to shake my longstanding routine when on bone conduction headphones of checking with people early in the call that they can hear me clearly.

One final comment for this section is on battery life, where all that's to say is that I've seen nothing to have me dispute AfterShokz's stated figures.

Sound Quality

There's no getting away from the fact that bone conduction headphones just don’t sound as good as regular headphones.

If you come to the Aeropex expecting sound quality to be comparable to that of a regular headphone at the same price point, you will be disappointed. However, if you approach them with realistic expectations of something that essentially works by forcing sound through your cheekbones, you might be pleasantly surprised.

In his review of the Aeropex on Digital Trends, Ryan Waniata says that in his opinion these are the best bone conduction headphones yet in regard to sound quality, but are less vibrant and lack the bass of traditional headphones:

If high-fidelity in-ear headphones like Sennheiser’s Momentum paint a vibrant sonic canvas, bone-conduction headphones are more like a charcoal sketch of the soundscape — all the beats are there but instruments aren’t as colorfully fleshed out. The Aeropex definitely offer more meat on the bone then my previous bone-conduction experience (no pun intended), especially in the treble register where sound is clear, resonant, and relatively open.

Bone conductors have always struggled mightily with bass, though, and that’s still the case here. While the latest Aftershokz model has improved down low, you’re simply not going to get a ton of thump from those little pads.

Writing on Android Police, Rita El Khoury is somewhat more positive about the Aeropex's sound quality:

Sound quality is very good... considering there's no seal and sound is passing by your cheekbones. If I press the earpiece element into my cheekbone, I get a louder and more enveloping sound, so perhaps people with a larger head would get a better experience. However, as it is, the sound is nice even if a little hollow. Mids are good, vocals in music and podcasts are clear. Highs are crisp, though I did feel they lost a bit of their definition when listening to busier arrangements. Bass is usually where other bone conduction headphones fail, either replacing it with uncomfortable vibrations or nearly muting it. That was the case with my older AfterShokz Bluez, but the Aeropex manages to actually get bass across to your inner ear. It's not the beat-thumping bass you'll get from regular headphones, but it has the merit of being there. Podcasts, pop, and rock fit well with the sound profile, but if hip hop and urban music are more your jam, you're going to find the Aeropex lacking.

I only occasionally listen to music with the Aeropex and am no audiophile. For my use case, this leaves me with only one complaint about sound on the Aeropex - that the volume level doesn't seem to go as high as it does on the Trekz Titanium.

To put this to the test in a situation where this possible issue would most matter to me, I performed a side by side comparison of the Aeropex and Trekz Titanium during a 90 minute walk around my neighbourhood.

Stopping regularly to switch headphones and check volume levels confirmed my suspicion that the level of the sound output from the Aeropex is comparatively lower to that of the Trekz Titanium.

Specifically, the volume level with the Aeropex typically has to be set 10-15% higher than on the Trekz Titanium to achieve a comparative listening level.

My experience in noisy environments was that these would often require a volume level on the Aeropex where you start to feel vibrations from the transducer pads. There were situations during my test walk where the noise of busy roads was such that it made it impossible to set the Aeropex volume to a level where it was both clearly audible and a tolerable user experience.

Of significance for my listening preferences is that spoken word (such as podcasts, books or VoiceOver output) will generate noticeable vibration from bone conduction headphones at volume levels where music doesn't. This isn't new or specific to the Aeropex, but having to crank up the volume level more frequently than on the trekz Titanium means that there are more occasions when it becomes too intrusive to be tolerable.

The transducer pads of the Aeropex are about half the size of those on the Trekz Titanium, so my assumption is that AfterShokz had to make some compromises to achieve this, and as a result the Aeropex simply don't have the same ‘punch’ in regard to volume.

The takeaway from my test walk was that there were stretches of my usual routes where the Aeropex were not usable, whereas the Trekz Titanium were.

This is extremely disappointing, as my primary use case for the Aeropex is for listening to podcasts or books during my daily walks and I now have to sacrifice the features and more refined sound of the Aeropex in favour of taking the Trekz Titanium when I know I'm going to be in noisier environments (which living near the centre of a large city means just about everywhere I walk).

For my secondary use cases - such as around the house, yard or less noisy environments - the performance and sound quality of the Aeropex is very good. The Aeropex having less brute force in regard to volume compared to the Trekz Titanium is not an issue, which allows me to enjoy all the other areas in which they are better.

In Closing

If you're in the market for bone conduction headphones, the AfterShokz Aeropex are the best that I have used.

AfterShokz has combined the benefits of bone conduction with a decade of experience to create what feels like it's the best that a consumer-grade bone conduction headphone can be right now.

That's not to say that the Aeropex are perfect - sound quality with music won't satisfy audiophiles, call quality leaves something to be desired, and you might struggle to hear what's playing when in noisy environments - but the areas where the Aeropex fall short are mostly inherent weaknesses in the nature of bone conduction itself. For my circumstances and use case, these are areas where I am willing to compromise in return for the benefits of being able to maintain some awareness of what's going on around me.

The one disappointment is that if I want to continue to be able to safely lose myself in a podcast or book when out walking some of my regular routes, my Trekz Titanium headphones won't be completely retired for now.

If you have used the Aeropex or other bone conduction headphones, please share your experiences below - particularly if you experience or opinion doesn't match mine.

The AfterShokz Aeropex retail for $159.95 and are available in Cosmic Black, Blue Eclipse, Lunar Grey or Solar Red

Devices Accessory Was Used With

iPhone
iPad

Disclaimer

The article on this page has generously been submitted by a member of the AppleVis community. As AppleVis is a community-powered website, we make no guarantee, either express or implied, of the accuracy or completeness of the information.

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Comments

By nohansa nuh on Tuesday, November 5, 2019 - 14:10

I really like the nu aftershokz aeropex,
I really surprise by the sound quality, spesificly A stereo separation,
almost like in ear headphone or over the ear
I must say, I can watch A movie with surround sound on it.
the stereo now is facing strate,
und like older aftershokz the stereo is oute of face, cossing oqwerd listening expereyence.

sorry for my language.

By Patrick Bouchard on Tuesday, November 5, 2019 - 14:10

Thanks for writing this. I intend to bargain hunt when Black Friday comes around to get a good pair of headphones to use while out and about with Aira, and these are on the list of things I have my eye on. I now know ahead of time that they're difficult to use in noisy environments, so I'd likely not be satisfied with them. That's a shame, because the other option I'm looking at is nearly double the price, namely AirPods Pro.

By Guy S on Tuesday, November 5, 2019 - 14:10

A good, informative article and pretty much reflects my opinion.
These are a good choice for headphones if you want to be able to hear what's going on around you as mentioned above when walking on the street etc.

I use them mostly while doing most exercises not only outside but inside as well so I can hear other things as well as what's on the headphones. Bone conduction headphones probably aren't for everybody and do take a little getting used to but you get accustomed to them rather quickly.

One of the main reasons I think people are disappointed in bone conduction is that they expect them to have the same sound quality as over-the-ear headphones which I think is tough to accomplish as your ear is more responsive to the various frequencies than your cheekbones are. Having said that, they aren't bad at music reproduction but I use them mostly for audio books and podcasts anyway and voice is a much narrower frequency range than music.

The volume issue as mentioned above is also disappointing to me as well, but then again I have some hearing loss on top of this. I have quite a bit of loss in my right ear and since this is my first use of bone conducting headphones, I thought this might be a way to bypass this loss but hasn't helped too much so I would imagine it would depend on the nature of your hearing loss if these headphones would be a help or not and if this is one of your main reasons for getting these kinds of headphones you might consider trying before you buy, if that is an option depending on where you live and how close and easy it is to find a brick and mortar store where you could try them out.

I wish they were a little cheaper than the $159 price but all in all I like them and the ability to hear what's going on around me as well as listen to my media.

I did have a problem at first with being able to hear my VoiceOver although I could hear audio books and podcasts but that seems to have cleared itself up.

I have recently bought a pair of Mopow H20 Bluetooth over-the-ear headphones for music listening - yes, I am an audiophile!! - and paid $40 for them on Amazon and am really pleased with them. Great sound and good bass response, which can be kind of tough to find on some headphones, but these are pretty impressive for the price point.

By arhdc on Thursday, March 5, 2020 - 14:10

I wanted to get a pair of bone-conducting headphones and could not decide between the Trez Air ($100) and the Aeropex ($160). The lower price point was appealing, but the newer design was appealing as well. I decided to buy both to compare. After a week of switching back and forth between the Air and the Aeropex, I am ready to make the call, and for me, the Air is hands down my preferred option.

In many respects, the two models are nearly precisely the same. The weight and sizing are roughly identical, the Aeropex are supposed to be lighter, but it is not enough of a difference to notice. The Aeropex transducers are quite a bit smaller than the ones on the Air. Still, I do not find this to be a noticeable difference in terms of either wearing them or transporting them, so it winds up being purely cosmetic when wearing them. The transducers do sit at a more vertical angle relative to the ears on the Aeropex than do the Air transducers, and this is a real problem for me. The very slight change of angle on the Aeropex pushes the transducers back into the front of my ears, and they become very uncomfortable after an hour or two. The Air does not do this and is MUCH more comfortable for me to wear. I prefer the sound of the Air to the Aeropex. They are louder for me, and the sound is, for the most part, clearer. I believe that the sound and fit preference of the Air is due to the fact that I have a large head and ears, and the Air just fits me better.

The Aeropex does leak less sound and is less audible for bystanders. The Aeropex are also more waterproof, but I do not find this to be much of a selling point as the Air are already pretty well weatherproofed and how waterproof do I really need a headset to be? I also HATE proprietary charging cables. Kudos to Aftershokz for including two cables with the Aeropex, but they are still proprietary. Give me a micro USB, or better yet, USB C, any day. Many will like the magnetic charging connector, it is slick, but given a choice I'll take the Micro USB on the Air. I find the Air buttons to be more intuitive, and especially the multifunction button on the Air is much easier to find. A downside of the Air is more buzz on the cheeks at maximum volume, but at slightly reduced volume this goes away for me, whereas the Aeropex has less buzz at max volume that is still present at a lower volume than the Air, at least on my head.

Battery life, connectivity, range, and microphones all seem pretty comparable though I guess that the Aeropex are rated for longer battery life. I think the better fit of the Air lends to me running them at a lower volume than the Aeropex, and I have not tried to make rigorous battery life comparisons. Add to this the fact that you can get brand new Air's for $100 (or less), and the Air is the hands-down winner for me.

Things the Aeropex does better:
-Slightly lower profile
-Theoretically lighter though you can not tell the difference
-Theoretically better battery life
-Waterproof
-Less sound leakage
-Less "buzz" on my cheeks at full volume

Things the Air does better
-Drastically more comfortable for me
-Buttons are more intuitive, especially the multifunction button
-Louder and for the most part clearer sound for me
-Micro USB charging port

By Ekaj on Sunday, March 5, 2023 - 14:10

Hello everyone. I was just looking for a review of another device, that I swear was on here but came upon this thread. I guess my reply is part review and part question. First the question. Has anyone else had trouble on the Aftershockz website? It seems rather cluttered and not terribly effective with VoiceOver. Having said that, my parents gave me an Aftershockz Open Air headset a couple years ago for Christmas upon request from yours truly. If I recall correctly Serotek--now Pneuma Solutions--was giving them away for a little while. Well I decided to put one on my Christmas list. I got it and am very happy with it. I would write a review on here, but I can't seem to get their website to cooperate long enough for me to search for the type of headset which I now own. Tia for anyone's assistance/advice.

By Holy Diver on Sunday, March 5, 2023 - 14:10

I used these for about two and a half years before the battery died which, hey, decent lifespan for bluetooth headphones. I agree with pretty much evverything you said in your review but waant to add a few impressions. They do indeed sound decent, especially for bone conduction, and I found myself using them a lot in the shower where they were perfectly serviceable for casual music listening. Leakage is real, people within a few feet of me could pretty much always get a hint of what I was listening to unless I turned the volume down to around 50 percent ... and that's simply not usable when out in public. The other real negative is mic quality. These might be fine for a phone call but even then expect to repeat yourself now and then. I'm saving up for the opencom right now because the mic sounds a lot better, as it should since it's a boom mic closer to your mouth, and also because reviews indicate there's significantly less audio leakage than the aeropex. I think I'd sacrifice a little bit of base for that extra privacy and especially the clearer microphone quality.