Are Bone Conduction Headphones Safe and How Do They Work？

In recent years, you may find that more and more people around you are wearing a kind of earphone clipped to the edge of the temple. Most of these headphones are bone conduction headphones.

Bone conduction headphones are sound transmission devices that transmits sound through the vibration of the skull so that people can perceive speech.

In physics, sound can be transmitted through solids, air, and liquids as media. Traditional earphones transmit sound through the air, while bone conduction headphones transmit sound through the solid of the skull.

Bone conduction technology is very mature and widely used. In the early days, it was mainly used in hearing aids, emergency rescue, military, and other professional fields. In recent years, it has gradually been applied in the field of consumer electronics.

Are bone conduction headphones safe?

We often hear people worry about the safety of bone conduction headphones, but we can promise that they do not harm the human body at all.

First of all, due to the sound transmission method of bone conduction headphones, they do not need to pass through the ear canal and tympanic membrane, which can avoid damage to the tympanic membrane. Moreover, the vibration waves of them are relatively moderate, and the impact on auditory hair cells will be less, so they are the headphones that cause the least damage to the ears.

Secondly, traditional earphones have problems with electromagnetic waves, which can cause damage to the human brain and hearing nerves. The electromagnetic waves of bone conduction headphones are extremely weak, which is the same intensity as the electromagnetic waves existing in nature. So they will not cause damage to the human brain and hearing nerves.

Moreover, bone conduction headphones can help avoid the dangers of wearing them. It does not need to occupy the ear canal when wearing it. In addition to hearing the sound in the headphone, you can also hear the sound of the outside world. Wearing them when crossing the road will not be in danger because you can’t hear the sound of the horn; when you are exercising outdoors, you can also avoid some dangerous situations.

It can be seen that bone conduction headphones are relatively safe, but safety is not absolute. If you use them to listen to music at high volume for a long time, it will still cause damage to the cochlea.

In addition to safety, bone conduction headphones have many advantages, such as comfortable wearing, cleanliness, high waterproof level, etc.

Of course, bone conduction headphones have some drawbacks, the two most prominent being sound quality and sound leakage.Compared with traditional earphones that focus on sound quality, their sound quality is weaker, but this does not mean that their sound quality is poor. In fact, some bone conduction headphones with better quality have very good sound quality.

Sound leakage has always been a common problem with bone conduction headphones, mainly because the vibration of the bone conduction vibration unit drives the vibration of the headphone body, resulting in sound leakage. However, with the advancement of technology, better bone conduction headphones do a good job in preventing sound leakage, and the problem of sound leakage has basically been solved.

How do bone conduction headphones work?

To understand how bone conduction headphones work, take me back to my middle school physics class. We know that there are three kinds of media that transmit sound, namely solid, air and liquid. Among the devices that transmit sound, it is more common to use air as the medium, such as speakers and common headphones. From this point of view, we can regard traditional headphones as air conduction headphones. They use air as the medium to transmit sound to the eardrum through “air conduction way”, and then transmit the sound to the auditory nerve through the vibration of the periosteum and hear music.

Bone conduction headphones are another type of headphones that transmit sound waves through solid resonance, allowing sound vibrations to cause bone vibrations. Then through the medium of bones, it is directly transmitted to the auditory spirit. Therefore, you only need to put the sound unit close to the ear to hear the sound played. Because of this, bone conduction headphones do not need to be plugged into or wrapped around the ears, so they will not cover the ear canal, so that the eardrum can still receive external sounds normally, which allows the wearer to listen to music while paying attention to the surrounding environment .

The work principle of bone conduction can be seen everywhere in our life. When we eat nuts, we can clearly hear the sound of the nuts being crushed, but others cannot hear it. This is the vibration generated by our crushed nuts, which is transmitted to the auditory nerve through the bones and is “heard” by us. The principle of sound transmission is bone conduction.

When your understand how bone conduction headphones work,You may know that they are a healthiest headphones.If you are interested in them, here are 5 excellent products for you.

1. Wissonly Hi Runner bone conduction headphones

Recommended reason:

Wissonly bone conduction headphones is the first brand I came into contact with. I first found it on the crowdfunding website. Later, I bought it after seeing many people’s recommendations in some online running forums. After my long-term comparative test, the overall function of this Hi Runner model product is very powerful, which greatly exceeds my expectations.

Their team is one of the best talents in the field of bone conduction. The product director was once the core engineer of a first-line brand, and has accumulated 10 years’ experience in the field of bone conduction technology. Wissonly Hi Runner increases the vibration area of the sound source vibrator by 35% through excellent structural design, which makes the music feel more spatial and immersive. It is also excellent in sound leakage reduction. The fully wrapped design reduces the vibration of the shell, and the structural optimization makes the sound leakage wave be offset, thus avoiding 90% sound leakage, which is much better than the bone conduction headphones of the same price on the market.

The fully-enclosed design of Wissonly Hirunner bone conduction headphones makes its waterproof grade to IPX8, which means that you can wear it for bathing, swimming and even diving within 20 meters. Even better, the Hi Runner headphones has a built-in storage of 32GB, which can store 5,000 songs. It can still be used without the mobile phone. It supports both MP3 mode and Bluetooth mode. It is equipped with Bluetooth 5.0 chip, which makes it superior to most bone conduction headphones in transmission distance, connection stability and power consumption.

2. Philips A8606 bone conduction headphones

Recommended reason:

A8606 are ear-clip-on headphones, so that they fit closely with the auricle during wearing. Because it is made of titanium alloy skeleton and wrapped with skin-friendly silica gel, it can not only keep the shape stable, but also cause no pressure on ears. It is easy to wear and can be used for a long time. This earphone adopts IPX5 waterproof design, so ordinary splashing water is not afraid, and sweat is a cinch. The disadvantage is that the sound quality needs to be improved, and there is a little missing sound.

3.AfterShokz OPENRUN PRO bone conduction headphones

Recommended reason:

Openrun PRO also pays great attention to comfort in wearing, and its body is made of skin-friendly silicone which makes it more comfortable, and it can be better enjoyed. In order to reduce the weight, titanium alloy is selected in its connection material, which is not easy to bend and deform, ensuring the service life. The bone conduction headphones are also equipped with Qualcomm QCC3024 chip and Bluetooth 5.0, and have stable connection and no disconnection in daily use.

4.earsopen SS900 bone conduction headphones

Recommended reason:

Different from other bone conduction headphones, this earsopenSS900 is mainly worn by pinching ears, which requires both hands to finish wearing. Its’ IPX7' s waterproof grade can achieve the effect of short-time immersion under water, and it is easy to face the daily sweat. The 8g single side headphone body can play a comfortable and non-inductive role in the whole wearing process, but it will be a little uncomfortable when worn for a long time due to the wearing way of clip ears.

5.Nank Runner CC3 bone conduction headphones

Recommended reason:

Since the body of the runner CC3 is made of silicone material in the part that fits the skin, wearing it has a feeling of summer coldness, which can fully stimulate the fans of sports.

Its sound quality is not a big problem, and it has built-in 4G storage, which can store 1000 songs. And you could enjoy music in places when meet poor phone signal. The wearing comfort and stability are not bad.

It is that the waterproof level is not high enough, and it is not suitable for rain or water sports.

Among the above five bone conduction headphones, Wissonly and Philips are the most worthy of purchase. Because they have the strongest technical accumulation in this field, the sound quality, reducing leakage and comfort of their products are very good. If you consider cost performance, we recommend you to choose Wissonly.