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David Carnoy Executive Editor / Reviews
Executive Editor David Carnoy has been a leading member of CNET’s Reviews team since 2000. He covers the gamut of gadgets and is a notable reviewer of mobile accessories and portable audio products, including headphones and speakers. He’s also an e-reader and e-publishing expert as well as the author of the novels Knife Music, The Big Exit and Lucidity. All the titles are available as Kindle, iBooks, Nook e-books and audiobooks.
Expertise Mobile accessories and portable audio, including headphones, earbuds and speakers Credentials
- Maggie Award for Best Regularly Featured Web Column/Consumer
CNET’s expert staff reviews and rates dozens of new products and services each month, building on more than a quarter century of expertise.
Best value bone-conduction headphones
Shokz OpenMove Bone Conduction Headphones
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Best bone-conduction headphones for working from home
Shokz OpenComm 2 UC
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Best bone-conduction headphone for people with smaller heads
Shokz OpenRun Mini
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What are the best bone-conduction headphones overall?
Bone-conduction headphones continue to increase in popularity — particularly for runners and bikers — as Shokz, the leading maker of bone-conduction headphones, has made incremental improvements to their design, performance and sound quality over the years. The company’s current top-of-the-line OpenRun Pro is the best bone-conduction headphone, although it may be a little too pricey for some people.
While bone-conduction headphones are lacking in the bass department (unless you plug up your ears with the included foam earplugs), they’re appealing for a few reasons. First, since they deliver sound to your ear through your cheekbones, you don’t have ear tips jammed into your ears. And thanks to their open design, you can hear what’s going on around you — traffic noise in particular — while listening to music or having a phone conversation. Also, some race coordinators don’t allow runners to wear anything in their ears, which is where headphones like this come in handy.
You may notice that there are only Shokz products on this list. That’s because they’re currently the best option. We’ve tested other bone conduction headphones — you can find plenty of inexpensive generic models on Amazon — but we’ve always come away feeling you’re better off buying Shokz’ entry-level OpenMove headphones than any of those.
Here’s a look at the top models. I’ll update this list a new bone-conduction headphones are released.
Best bone-conduction headphones for 2024
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