If you’re a frequent runner, cyclist or gymgoer, you’ll know that a good pair of sporting headphones is key for getting the most out of your workout. Many of us want The Dark Knight soundtrack firing into our ears and making our hearts beat that little bit faster as we plough towards the end of another lightning-fast 5K while imagining that we’re the Caped Crusader himself, but getting a pair of wireless headphones that can deliver that pulse-quickening performance, with the strength, durability and ruggedness to match, can be a heroic task.
Step forward the Shokz OpenRun Pro 2. Boasting clever bone conduction technology with a lightweight neckband design, these are headphones that are designed to get you through the most arduous adventures. Shokz knows its way around a pair of sporty specimens, and with endorsement from marathon marvel Eliud Kipchoge and former Ironman world champion Jan Frodeno, the OpenRun Pro 2 are being championed by some of the finest athletes on the planet. Let’s see if they can nab a place on our proverbial podium.
Price
The Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 will set you back £169 / $179 / AU$319. If you’re after sports and workout headphones at a similar price, then wireless earbuds with adjustable stability bands or secure fits are our recommendation. The Beats Fit Pro are currently one of our favourites and sit roughly at the £190 / $160 / AU$299 mark, whereas the excellent Bose QuietComfort Earbuds (2024) are yours for a similar £180 / $179 / AU$289 price tag.
Design & comfort
Even before it comes time to actually wear them, you’ll find yourself impressed with how tough Shokz’s versatile sporting headphones seem. Bend and flex the neckband in your hand and your blood likely won’t run cold with the realisation that your precious pals are about to snap or fail to return to their original shape. Drop them and they’ll bounce back like an iron-chinned boxer, bend them and they’ll flex like a master yogi; douse them with water and they’ll be dry and ready to wear in no time. That IP55 rating certainly comes in handy, after all.
If your sporting excursions tend to go beyond a simple jog to the end of the street to catch up to the ice cream van, you’re going to want a set of headphones that provide stability and comfort over long periods of wear. In this capacity, the OpenRun Pro 2 make a fine account of themselves, with their frame’s flexible and lightweight design (just 30g) barely registering across the key points of wearer contact. You may feel a small amount of weight from the over-ear loops, but it’s nothing close to the pressure or that ‘digging-in’ sensation that heavier rivals can often provoke.
Nor is there much worry about the OpenRun Pro 2 giving you any in-ear soreness. Thanks to their bone conduction tech, the Pro 2’s drivers sit beside the ear itself, bypassing fears of excessively bulbous eartips burrowing painfully into your ear canal and making your marathon a melancholic misery. Music playback aside, you’ll hardly notice the drivers are there, with that beside-ear configuration allowing exterior sounds to pass unimpeded into your lugs and giving you a far greater sense of awareness as you tackle busy roads and bustling byways. The security of the fit is superb, too, and while the neckband isn’t adjustable, we never feel concerned that the Shokz would ever come loose and disconnect us from our tunes.
Features
The OpenRun Pro 2’s primary purpose is to get you powering through personal bests, but that doesn’t mean these sporty headphones are as sparsely furnished as an abandoned running track. A decent battery life is essential if your workouts aren’t going to be cut short before their time, and the Pro 2 do a decent job of giving you ample playtime. 12 hours is a respectable amount at this level, while a five-minute quick charge providing 2.5 hours of use is welcome when you’re desperate to get out the door but realise you used up all of your juice on last week’s park run. For comparison, the Beats Fit Pro grant you a total of 27 hours of life, but that’s including the charging case.
Bluetooth 5.3
Codec Support SBC
Noise-cancelling? No
Battery life Up to 12 hours
Finishes x 3 (black, orange, silver)
Weight 30.3g
If you do need to check up on your battery life, the OpenRun Pro 2 come with support courtesy of the official Shokz app. While not a particularly deep or involved platform, it fulfils its general brief by being uncluttered, clear and easy to navigate, especially if you’re halfway through a 10K and want to make adjustments as easily and quickly as possible. The app’s five-band equaliser lets you adjust the headphones’ sonic profile to your liking, although four preset modes – standard, vocal, bass boost and treble boost – are on hand for a quick fix. From our experience, we’d stick with the Standard setting, as we found that the alternate modes tended to make the Pro 2 sound unbalanced and lacking in key areas of the sonic spectrum.
If someone happens to ring you when you’re out and about, Shokz has planned for such a contingency. The brand has placed the Pro 2’s microphone in what it terms the ‘optimal low-wind zone’ to prevent wind interference and promote greater call clarity. The effect is genuinely impressive, and we certainly found that we were able to conduct clear conversations using the Pro 2 while adventuring in the Great Outdoors.
For further on-the-fly adjustments, the Pro 2 are furnished with volume up and down buttons housed at the right-hand side of the headphones which, though they might seem a little tricky to access at first glance, are in fact easily accessible when using your thumb to reach under the Shokz’ lightweight frame. To switch them off completely, the volume up button also acts as a power control – just hold it down for a few seconds and your running headphones will take a well-earned nap.
Sound
It’s only fair that we adjust our expectations given the provenance and purpose of these rather idiosyncratic sports stars, even if such concessions can only go so far in mitigating the OpenRun Pro 2’s sonic shortcomings. Bone conduction technology is a novel way of communicating sound from source to ear, and while running headphones are often judged as much for their design and durability credentials as for their audio capabilities, good sound still matters if your trusty companions are to keep you motivated across the miles.
What you really want from a decent pair of sports headphones is enough spark and energy to make your workouts go with a bang rather than a whimper, but those adjectives don’t exactly spring to mind during our tests. Their lack of punch and general body are perhaps our biggest issues with the Shokz, and it doesn’t take long to figure out that these are a long way from the most powerful or pulsating headphones we’ve ever heard. Sounding removed and distant, they’re very much headphones that put your music, with most of its flavours and idiosyncracies, firmly into the background. In-ear rivals, such as the new Sony LinkBuds Fit (review coming soon) or the Beats Fit Pro, provide genuine sonic muscle, seeming powerful and propulsive when compared directly with the Run Pro 2’s rather flimsy sonic character.
There isn’t much clarity or musical engagement to be found, either. Again, these are running headphones designed to offer an accompaniment to your workout rather than acting as the main event, but that’s an excuse that only goes so far. Rhythms are poorly communicated, whereas the rise and fall of dynamics across tracks and genres are heavily compressed, leaving even the most adrenaline-inducing tunes feeling listless and lacking in any hint of drama. If you’ve ever played Mortal Kombat, think of a fighter after Shang Tsung has just used his signature ‘soul steal’ finisher; drained of life and hollow to the core.
That’s not to say the Shokz are completely without their charms. While the Pro 2 can sound hollow and removed, they’re not a wholly disorganised listen, and there is some textural detail to be found amidst the general blandness. The Shokz seem most comfortable through the midrange, and we’re pleased to discover that the hefty guitar on Audioslave’s Show Me How To Live and the erratic violin from Christopher Lennertz’s I Can Do Anything do sound something like a guitar and violin respectively. It’s nothing like the meaty, substantial sound you’d get from a sonically competent rival, but it is something.
Verdict
The Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 do have certain qualities that could make them recommendable to the right user. In terms of their design and usability, they are a decent attempt, one that’s likely to bring endless comfort and convenience to seasoned athletes who crave a pair of headphones that simply fade into the background – sonically and physically – during even the longest workouts. If you can’t deal with conventional in-ear designs, they could appeal.
If you need headphones that offer adequate levels of sonic performance though, we’d recommend searching elsewhere. Yes, concessions have to be made for their design and type, but when there are solid alternatives that can offer similar comfort levels alongside superior sound, it’s hard to find a way of wholeheartedly recommending Shokz’s effort. For driving you on for mile after weary mile, the Pro 2 don’t offer nearly enough sonic performance to make your marathon feel like a walk in the park.
First reviewed: November 2024
SCORES
- Sound 2
- Features 4
- Comfort 5
MORE:
Read our review of the Beats Fit Pro
Also consider the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds (2024)
Best running headphones and wireless earbuds tested on the road and in the gym
