The biggest complaints about Google Glass usually concern the battery life and audio. When the wearable device first came out you couldn’t get more than four hours of use from it and the audio was iffy when conditions were perfect. Six months later, Google has been working very hard to tackle battery life and it looks like their new headphones will handle the sound issue.
The use of a bone conduction sensor in Google Glass is an incredibly cool idea, and in very specific situations it is incredibly useful. You aren’t just hearing sound, you’re feeling it – a powerful tool in certain environments. Most of the Glass notification tones are set at a high, piercing tone, so even in a crowded room you hear and feel that you have a notification worth checking. This is especially useful when using the turn by turn navigation, which signals you to glance at your display to see what is happening next on your route.
Unfortunately this features becomes a lot less useful when trying to place a phone call through Glass. Even if the person on the other end is nice and loud with a great connection, it’s difficult to hear. Many users have taken to placing their hand over their right ear, pressing the bone conduction sensor against the mastoid process, and that works a little better but is clearly not an ideal solution. For phone calls Google released a mono earbudthat can be connected via the microUSB port, and now there’s a stereo set to match.
Physically the stereo earbuds look just like the mono, which should come as no surprise. The Glass logo can be swapped out to match your Glass, and just like the mono bud you connect via microUSB to get the party started. The longer cable wraps around the back of your head, and provides more than enough length for people with big heads or lots of hair. The cable connecting the earbuds is cloth, so when you aren’t listening to audio you get to enjoy the sounds of cloth rubbing against the back of your neck. It’s a little irritating at first, but a quick re-adjust of the cable and you’re set for a little while.
These earbuds aren’t going to make an audiophile weep with joy, but they are easily on par with your average $100 set of earbuds. Instrumental music sounds nice and crisp, which is both a blessing and a curse. The volume for your whole system is one toggle, so while you may enjoy turning up the volume to enjoy a violin solo you’ll be deafened by the next notification tone that comes in. The only place these headphones struggled at all was delivering bass, which isn’t all that surprising given the nature of earbuds.
For $85, considering you can only use these with Google Glass, these are surprisingly nice. If you are the type to rely heavily on earbuds and already have a favorite set, there are some third party microUSB to 3.5mm converters online that users have reported work fairly well. Additionally, Google had provided instructions for creating your own on Google+. This would probably end up being the better option for people who are already happy with their earbuds, but if you’re planning to listen to music through Glass on a regular basis this will be money well spent.
And, for reference, here is our look at the Google Glass mono earbud…
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