Suunto Wing Review | Trusted Reviews

Verdict

It’s a strong first effort from Suunto with its first ever pair of headphones that provide some good extras that do want finessing. Backside line, they don’t fairly outperform the cheaper competitors.

Introduction

The Wing is Suunto’s first ever pair of headphones that, unsurprisingly, are designed for individuals who wish to spend their time outdoors.

The Wing adopts an open-ear, bone conduction headphone design and like its sports activities watches, goal to enchantment to sporty varieties with options like LED lights for if you’re coaching in darkish situations and head-based gesture controls if you don’t have your palms free, and don’t wish to cease mid-workout to fiddle with the bodily controls.

It’s going up towards the marginally cheaper Shokz OpenRun Professional and even cheaper bone conduction sports activities headphones just like the Haylou PureFree BC01 and the Naenka Runner Diver. The open ear headphone competitors is fierce proper now, so the Wing actually needed to ship on all fronts to compete. Proper now, it feels just like the Wing sits in and amongst these strong bone conduction choices.

Design

• Acquainted neckband look
• Waterproof and dustproof
• Energy financial institution charger

Suunto sticks to a reasonably typical bone conduction headphone design, with the neckband-style body fabricated from a mixture of titanium and silicone. At 33g, it isn’t as mild because the Shokz OpenRun Professional (27g) however doesn’t weigh heavy when in place. I’ve used them for effectively over an hour of steady listening they usually’ve not felt uncomfortable to put on.

Whilst you do discover them somewhat greater than the OpenRun Professional, they do sit securely and don’t soar round. They’re extra geared toward actions if you’re upright, like operating and biking, and also you’ll discover a safer and dependable match from ear hook-style headphone for HIIT exercises.

They arrive in black or black and pink, and each variations characteristic an IP67 licensed design, giving them some mud and water resistance and technically means you could possibly give them a wash beneath the faucet. That is about ensuring they will deal with sweatier exercise classes although and can survive a downpour. I used to be in a position to check them out within the latter they usually survived an excellent soaking.

There are three bodily buttons included in complete. Two sit on the underside of the body and allow you to regulate quantity and change the headphones on and off. The one which sits somewhat additional again additionally permits you to activate the built-in LED lights on each arms. The multi-function button on the suitable arm permits you to reply and grasp up calls, play and pause audio, in addition to skip tracks. The controls are straightforward to entry and comply with the structure of most different sporty bone conduction headphones.

When it’s essential to cost the Wing, Suunto has opted towards a setup the place you plug the headphones right into a proprietary charging cable. As an alternative, it makes use of a small charging cradle that doubles as an influence financial institution, which is powered up by a normal USB-C cable. It’s not an unwieldy dimension so you’ll be able to slip it right into a pocket.

Options

• Customisable LED lights
• Responsive head gesture controls
• Multipoint connectivity

To assist the Wing stand out from a jam-packed crowd Suunto has included a number of extras which may make them extra interesting than its rivals. Certainly one of these options I’ve seen crop up earlier than and that’s the built-in LED lights that may be customised to blink or keep fixed from the identical app that Suunto makes use of for its watches. It is a characteristic I noticed on the Philips TAA6606 and whereas the characteristic works similarly on the Wing, it does really feel like they’d be extra helpful right here in the event that they had been brighter.

Suunto additionally features a set of straightforward gesture-based controls that allow you to nod or shake your head to skip audio or settle for and reject calls. The issue I discovered is that whereas the gesture controls work effectively, they do really feel like they’re a contact too delicate. I are inclined to barely transfer my head extra after I run a bit faster as an illustration and that causes the controls to always go off. Including a sensitivity setting right here would assist.

One other helpful additional is the twin Bluetooth connectivity, which implies you’ll be able to pair to 2 gadgets on the similar time, making it simpler to change between the 2. I used to be in a position to pair it to my cellphone, an Apple Watch Extremely 2 and a Garmin Forerunner 965 after I needed to change from streaming audio from my cellphone to my watch and vice versa.

Battery life, in line with Suunto, can max out at 10 hours off a single cost and 30 hours in complete with the absolutely charged energy financial institution. That’s based mostly on listening at 60% of the utmost quantity. That drops to eight hours with the pinnacle motion gestures, and 4 hours with the LED lights on. 

After slightly below two hours of use with headphones in its out of doors mode, with the pinnacle gesture controls and LED lights not in use, the battery dropped by 60%. For slightly below an hour of operating with the LED lights and head controls in use, the battery dropped by 25%. It feels that realistically, you’re going to get on common half of that 10 hours for those who’re listening at louder volumes and placing these additional options to common use.

Sound High quality

• Good, however not class-leading bone conduction sound
• Two sound modes don’t really feel massively totally different
• Some vibrations at louder volumes

Bone conduction headphones have improved lately when it comes to sound high quality, however usually come up a bit brief on the ability and bass entrance, whereas additionally leaking sound to these round you.

I’d say the Suunto Wing sits slightly below the very best sounding bone conduction headphones I’ve tried. It sits within the ‘good’ class, however I don’t assume they sound fairly as balanced or as polished because the Shokz OpenRun and OpenRun Professional or one thing just like the Haylou Purfree BC01.

Suunto pitches these as headphones for individuals who train outdoors, in order that’s the place I spent nearly all of my testing time with them. I additionally used them at house whereas working and on the gymnasium to see how they’d maintain up for indoor use. I listened to music by way of Spotify, Apple Music and a mixture of podcasts and audiobooks. I additionally use the Songs to Check Headphones With playlist on Spotify as a helpful indicator as to how the Wing can deal with a combination of genres.

Suunto presents two sound profiles, accessible to pick out from the Suunto companion app. That’s the place you can too allow extra smarts. The conventional mode is described as providing a extra balanced efficiency. The Outside mode boosts total quantity although warns that noise can happen at larger volumes.

The general profiles of each modes are practically an identical. The distinction actually does appear to lie with quantity and having tried utilizing the Regular mode outdoors, I shortly switched to the Outside mode because it struggled to compete towards automotive visitors and different louder sounds.

With New Order’s Remorse, the Wing delivers pleasing heat. When it’s time to deal with a bit extra bass like on Thundercat’s Them Adjustments or Erykah Badu’s On & On, there’s somewhat of the muddiness that’s related to bone conduction headphones. At louder volumes, bassier audio produces that acquainted bone conduction tickle. Whenever you need trebles to glitter and people mids to be buttery clean on vocally wealthy tracks like London Grammar’s Losing My Younger Years, there’s somewhat harshness and boxiness as an alternative.

They sound greatest indoors when there’s much less sound to cope with, outdoors it’s extra of a problem. The stability between audio and exterior sound is mostly good, however except you’re listening at louder volumes and in Outside mode, you gained’t be capable of get pleasure from the very best that these headphones have to supply. They do leak too, so if somebody’s in shut proximity it gained’t take lengthy for them to have the ability to tune into what you’re listening to.

There’s a microphone included, although Suunto doesn’t actually make a giant deal of the Wing’s name dealing with talents. In the event you’re planning to make use of them to do your conferences on the transfer, it’ll be a problem in louder environments.

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