REVIEW – Most hearing folks, at some time or other, want to listen to content privately, whether it’s due to the personal nature of the audio, or to avoid irritating others. Earbuds and headphones tend to filter out the rest of the world, some even creating anti-noise to cancel out unwanted sounds. But what if you’re running, walking, or biking in a city and need to be aware of the truck looming up behind you or the driver honking their horn because they can’t be bothered to slow down while you go through the crosswalk with your right-of-way? Keeping your situational awareness while also allowing you to enjoy audio is one of the driving forces behind bone-conduction listening devices. We’ve tested many sets over the years here at The Gadgeteer, and I have purchased some with my personal funds that I still use. Today, I’m reporting on a set from Nank, their Runner Diver2 Pro Bone Conduction Headphones for Sports. Let’s see how they sound.
What is it?
The Nank Runner Diver2 Pro are bone-conduction headphones that also have earplugs for swimming.
What’s in the box?
- Nank Runner Diver2 Pro headphones
- Charging cable (USB-A<=>proprietary magnetic connector)
- 3 pair (S/M/L) Sound Quality Enhancers
- Soundproof earplugs
- Silicon Adjustment strap
- Literature/manual
Hardware specs
Click to expand
- IP68 Waterproof Swimming Headphones
- 10 Hour Play & Magnetic Charging
- Bluetooth 5.3 & 32G MP3 Player
- Bone Conduction Open-ear Design
- Leakage Reduction Sound & Shocking Sound
Design and Performance
The Nank Runner Diver2 Bone Conduction headphones are made from a flexible material covered with a medical-grade silicone. They form a tight semi-circle, but can easily be flexed to wrap around your head from ear to ear. An adjustment strap is included, which can be used if your head is smaller (or if you’re fitting a child). All the controls are on the right earpiece.
This is the same side where the magnetic charging/data transfer cable attaches. This can only be attached one way, with the cable coming through the rear of the loop and moving toward the front. On the other end, you can plug it into a USB-A charger, or into a computer USB-A port to transfer files. Only the usual file formats are supported for transfer (more on this later).
The earpieces are flexible hooks with flat round areas roughly the size of a US dime. (For those unfamiliar with US coinage, it’s about 18 mm or .75”). This area will fit flush with your cheekbone, in front of your tragus. The company website likens the shape to “seahorses”, but I think it looks more like a goose or a duck.
With bone conduction, the sound radiates into your head, rather than being played as an aural sound that goes into your ear canal, which vibrates the eardrum. This means the flat area needs to rest against your skull as close to the bone as possible.
The “head” (if we’re staying with Nank’s seahorse metaphor) can be flexed closer to the main body, putting the tip of the “nose” directly over the opening of the ear canal. This is supposed to (and, in my testing, largely succeeds in) delivering a clearer sound. (Other bone-conduction headphones I’ve used only sat on the cheekbone and had no adjustment, so I found this interesting. I don’t know how far this pushes the technical definition of bone conduction. Is it just a way of masking the ambient noise? It did make the sound better, but I didn’t use this mode much while biking in traffic.)
Included in the package are what Nank call Sound Quality Enhancers. These are discs of a semi-soft material that fit over the opening of the ear canal. The tips of the headphones rest directly on the center of these, and the sound is played straight into the ears. Especially when listening in water or in harsh environments, this is supposed to make a difference in the sound quality and the volume transmitted. It felt okay if you’re comfortable having something flat across your ear. I found the sound not as clear with them installed, which is odd. I’m not sure if there was an echo within the ear canal from a sympathetic vibration or what the issue was, but it was decidedly less clear, in addition to being uncomfortable. I prefer earplugs (which are also included), to use while swimming.
Speaking of swimming, one of the hallmark features of the Runner Diver2 Pro is that content can be added to the device directly so that you can listen without having to pair it with a BlueTooth host device. This is fine if you have content in one of the supported formats, but most of us now have streaming music services, rather than downloading files in mp3, flac, WAV, or m4a format. I have a collection of audiobooks from Audible.com, which, being a part of Amazon, may be one of the largest distributors of audiobooks around. One drawback with this service is that they have their own proprietary audio format which only plays within their app. Connecting to your device over BlueTooth will allow you to hear that content, but BlueTooth doesn’t work when the headphones are underwater. Converting the proprietary Audible format into one of those allowed formats breaks DMCA. I wrote to the Nank support team for clarification on this point. Their reply, in it’s entirety, is as follows:
Nank(Naenka)
Hi, are the Audible.com downloads audiobooks? If these file downloads are in mp3, flac, ape WAV m4a, etc., they will be supported for playback; if not they can only be played by connecting and using Bluetooth mode, thank you very much!
Setup
Charge and pair through standard Bluetooth methods. If you have content in the aforementioned formats, connect to your computer through the charging cable and the device will show up as a storage drive. Files can then be loaded and played randomly or in file-sort order.
What I like about the Nank Runner Diver2 Pro headphones
- Can work with Bluetooth or downloadable content
- Very comfortable to wear
What I’d change
- Needs a travel case
- Make an agreement with Audible and support their Audiobook format
Final thoughts
Listening to audio content while exercising is probably the second most common use case for personalized listening, second only to listening while commuting. (This is pure anecdata, but you know I’m right!) Sometimes, you want to block out all the sounds of the person on the next machine in the gym grunting and huffing, and often, when you’re riding or running or swimming, you want to hear other things in your immediate vicinity that may impact your safety. Bone conduction headphones are great for this. The two-mode wearing style of the RD2s make it easy to hear a lot of your environment and then quickly hear much greater detail and less of the outside world by shifting to the “Noise Cancelling Mode”. This simple adjustment makes them a nice option to the Transparency mode of many noise-canceling headphones.
Price: Usually $139.99, on sale for $111.99
Where to buy: Company Webstore
Source: The sample of this product was provided by Nank. Nank did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.
