Does anybody have experience with bone conduction bluetooth earpieces? The technology seems kind of new to me, and not necessarily optimized yet. The reason I ask is, I need to be able to take phone calls in areas with high ambient noise. My idea is, have a bone conduction earpiece on one side with an earplug, and leave the other ear open. I see more music headphones using this technology than phone earpieces, and I'd like to just have a one side earpiece and not a pair of wraparound headphones. People tend to think you're not listening to them if you have wraparound headphones on.

Does this exist? I have some experience with noise canceling earbuds/headphones, and while they're great for constant ambient noise like a plane engine, they don't do very well with random loud noises.

Thanks.

 

I use Aftershoks while mowing the lawn with an earplug in (in my case two of them) - so they do work. Sound quality isn't great but it works well for podcasts, which telephone calls is similar. They do have a microphone for telephone calls.

 

One-sided BC headphones seem kind of pointless - they put pressure on your bones by gently squeezing your head. With bone conduction headphones, you don't need to "leave one ear open" - both ears are already open - that's the draw to me for BC headphones. I can listen to music while working out, but I can also hear that car coming up behind me with one tire in the gravel shoulder because dude is texting and driving so I can GTFO of the way.

 

The biggest problem you'll face for phone calls is the microphone. I work in a processing facility with moderate amounts of background noise, and my actual phone does a great job of suppressing background noise but every Bluetooth headset I've tried has severely struggled with it and the person on the other end of the line can hardly understand me.