When open ear bone conductive earphones came out I really liked the practicality of them for sport activities. They stay on your ears, and you can hear the sounds around you, especially the safety of hearing traffic around you. However, early version sound quality and features left a lot to be desired. However, Shokz has really advanced the technology to where the OpenRun Pro 2 is the ultimate sport headphone.

Fit:
The OpenRun Pro 2 fits comfortably over my ears and the band between the earpieces help keep it securely in place. It would take a serious fall or blow to the head to knock these off (in which case losing your earphones is not going to your primary concern). I tested them under all the ski helmets we are testing this year and there was no interference. I did find that some jacket collars did interfere a bit with the back connector, but it was only minor inconvenience. The same was true with hats or sunglasses, there was little interference with a tight-fitting beanie and sunglasses.

I find this style of headphones to be better than earbuds which would sometimes be pulled loose or out when you pull on a helmet or hat over them. And I have never found a good fit with earbuds that would fall out while running. The ergonomics/fit of the OpenRun Pro 2 fit was also improved over the previous version.

Sound Quality:
Bone conduction and open air conduction drivers are not going to be as good as large over the ear headphones, however, the sound quality is getting to be of high quality. When listing to music I noticed a large improvement over straight bone conduction headphones. Specifically, the improvement is from a reduction in distracting to annoying deep bass vibrations. By sending the deep bass through the air conduction speakers it eliminates these noticeable vibrations that come through pure bone conduction speakers.

I compared the OpenRun Pro 2 to the Pixel Buds Pro through several different songs and found the quality to be very close, with the Pixel Buds being marginally better with a deeper bass. 

Controls and Features:
Shokz has kept the same controls as the OpenRun Pro that we like. On the left side there is a large Multifunction Button whose feature set is quite intuitive. Push once to stop music or to answer or end a call, double click to advance a song and triple click to return to the previous song (which is great for wanting to replay a power song when you need a little extra motivation during a run). And to access your phone assistant you just hold the button down for 2 seconds.
 

On the right side is the power on/off and volume up and down buttons. It would be nice if the volume buttons were a little bigger so you could operate them with a light pair of gloves.  

Shokz has switched the charging cable over to a USB-C which makes it easier to charge (the EU thankfully made tech companies quit using proprietary connection and charging cables by the end of 2024).

Bluetooth 5.3:
The OpenRun Pro 2 has Bluetooth 5.3 that has two important features. This is the one of the most stable versions that allows you to connect two devices to the headphones. Bluetooth 5.3 also has double the range of version 4 with a max distance of 800 feet.

Features

• Dual drivers combine bone-conduction tech (treble) with air conduction (bass)
• Strategically positioned dual wind-resistant microphones and an AI noise-reduction algorithm filter out 96.5% of background noise
• 12 hours of battery
• 1 hour charge time
• Sweat & Water Resistant
• Bluetooth V5.3
• Ergonomic design with flexible Ni-Ti memory wire

Verdict

The OpenRun Pro 2 brings the best of both worlds together with traditional speakers and bone conduction technology. The Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 is the ultimate sport headphone as it has advanced sound quality, into a very comfortable form factor that also allows the wearer to be very aware of their surroundings.  With the release of the Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 I am pretty much done with the other styles of headphones and earbuds.

One of the areas that I would like to Shokz expand into is motorcycle helmets, I would love to replace my ‘high-end’ Cardio in-helmet speakers with Shokz ‘OpenRide’ motorcycle helmet speakers. Shokz R&D department give me a call if you need a beta tester.