Subscribe now and choose from over 30 free gifts worth up to £49 - Plus get £25 to spend in our shop
Tempted by the idea of some fancy* headphones with transparency mode, so I can hear both traffic and music while riding.
Has anyone tried them for road use though, do they work or does the Mic just pick up loads of wind noise?
*by which I mean over 25 quid. But preferably under 60. Only saying cos some people seem to think 250 is reasonable these days.
My cheapo Q61 Amazon earbuds don't block much noise and are not particularly loud at full blast. Happily use them in commuting traffic where I'm paying lots of attention to surroundings but not sure I would wear them on a longer ride as it is useful to hear stuff further away coming behind you.
My commuter bike has a friction front mech which can slip, the earbuds will block out chain rub and also conversations with others.... diesel buses and trucks usually intrude sufficiently to overwhelm voices on the radio..
Bone conducting headphones seem the default answer but not cheap.. not sure this helps...
Wind is an issue when walking round on a breezy day, I imagine it would be rubbish on the bike
I use the Shokz bone conductors - sound is much better than you might expect and they work in the bike if turned up.
SENA helmet? Quality obv not on a par with headphones but you can still hear other things.
Hear-through mode on my Jabra's is awful on the bike (great at walking speed / in a shop etc). The wind noise is horrendous.
(Don't tell anyone, but I've been riding with earphones in for 30+ years, touch wood without incident). I'm half deaf anyway so I'm not actually missing out on much to begin with.
Any earphones, in one ear only (left). Anything else is unnecessarily fancy.
I've got some posh B&O ones and they are absolutely dreadful for picking up wind noise. Unusable even walking around on a slightly breezy day, I hate to think how bad they'd be on the bike.
Well that settles that then! Nice one folks
I use the Shokz cheap ones. They're ok. Not exactly high fidelity but then I'm not sure how you can have loud quality audio whilst also being able to hear the **** in the Range Rover trying to close pass from behind you. Also they can't fall out your ear into the nearest bush if you hit a root.
I quite fancy trying some bone conduction phones, especially for those rides where the first 20-30mins is just out down the same route you always start every ride with.
But then I also think, maybe it's good to have a boring half an hour occasionally, without phone, music, computer or radio, and just give my brain some time to breathe?
I love my bone conducting headphones when running, but wearing them cycling is a bit of a mixed bag: they’re mostly fine on the mountain bike but once shifting on the road bike they get drowned out by wind noise.
The drop in apparent volume relative to background noise really makes you realise how loud the wind noise you naturally tune out when cycling gets.
Some sort of headband over the ears (and headphones) makes a big difference to wind noise.
Transparency can often miss things. On occasions where I’ve been away with work and only want to take one set of headphones (calls/iPad/exercise) I’ve used my AirPod pros when out running and they’ve missed quietly approaching cars , EVs or very fast traffic all of which I’ve heard with Shokz.
Shokz work great unless you are going very fast or it's very windy. Other than that they are brilliant
Shokz work great, especially when combined with a pair of “cat ears” wind reducers. They do have a certain look to them though - I kept them for solo commuting duties.
What's the difference between transparency mode and ambient sound mode?