The Best Bone Conduction Headphones

Suunto recently made the surprise move into launching headphones and decided that bone conduction would help it stick to its more outdoor-centric roots. While the Sonic wasn’t its first pair or its most feature-rich model, it hit the sweet spot for price, performance, and providing another option outside of the more established names.

The Sonic’s design is an unoriginal neckband one, which at just over 1 ounce is nice and light. They’re ideal for running for a few hours without suffering from wear fatigue. The built-in physical controls make it a breeze to adjust volume or intercept a call from your phone. Speaking of calls, Suunto includes two microphones, accompanied by an algorithm designed to cancel wind up to 15 kilometers per hour. It’s surprisingly effective how well this feature works to make handling calls in more challenging environments worthwhile.

The bone conduction sound can be tweaked by using one of the two available sound modes in the Suunto app. The normal mode provides a pleasant, balanced profile, with just enough in the bass department and a level of detail that makes it well-suited for listening to podcasts instead of a marathon training playlist. Swap it for the outdoor mode, and you’re mainly going to enjoy more volume to counter the added noise in your environment. It does miss out on some fun features from Suunto’s premium headphones, like the safety LEDs and a charger that doubles as a power bank, but the Sonic focuses instead on the factors that make it a solid yet affordable purchase.