Nank Runner Diver2 Pro Bone Conduction Headphones
Whenever I talk about earphones and disability – single sided deafness – I inevitably get a recommendation to try bone conduction earphones. And in principle that sounds like a great idea, right? Well, it depends. Bone conduction might bypass the ear canal, and may even transfer sound through the skull from the side of a non-functioning inner-ear to the opposite side, but it isn’t a panacea and, in headphone form, has some drawbacks.
In my case, as far as I can tell I have a functional right eardrum, it’s just lacking an ear canal, and thus doesn’t work well with earbuds, and gets mixed results with on-ear (prone to slipping off) and over-ear (prone to quirky wear detection) headphones. Bone conduction, then, should have been absolutely ideal for me. Unfortunately it represented another set of compromises, dashing my dreams of sweet stereo separation against the rugged rocks of reality.
I did it. I tried bone conduction headphones.
But it was certainly an interesting new experience – my first impression of the Nank Runner Diver2 Pro – kindly supplied to me by a very nervous Nank/Naenka for review – was one of awe. For starters the audio quality was considerably better than I had anticipated. I later realised this was, in part, due to some of the higher frequencies conducting the old fashioned way through the air. Even with my ear blocked the experience was impressive. Despite being ostensibly open, and quite loud they also leak surprisingly little audio.
More profoundly, for me, was that feeling of being enveloped by the audio. You can recreate this experience by listening to music with one earbud, and then sticking the second one in. Notice that difference? It’s almost as if the music moves from one side to being *in* your head. I’ve sought this listening experience since I first had wired earbuds for my off-brand-not-a-Sony-walkman, and it’s something that others no-doubt take for granted. With headphones all music for me is mono, and panned anywhere from all the way to most of the way left, it’s not a great listening experience and it’s a small wonder I prefer the full body immersion of very loud speakers.
The Nank Runner Diver2 give me some semblance of this stereo immersion experience, though it is- as always- complicated not by the design of the headphones themselves but by my own, surgeon-crafted physiology. In order for bone conduction to work well, the headphones require a reasonably good contact with that area just in front of and below your ear canal. Y’know, the bit that wiggles around when you press both sides and move your jaw. This is, at best, a compromise since headphones requiring a screw in your Mastoid bone might be a little controversial, but for me it’s extraordinarily unfortunate. Not only do I have to wrestle the headphones over my reconstructed right ear with some extraordinary effort, but they then sit over a bit of cartilage that blocks the normal contact area and don’t maintain a good fit at all. Not only this, but they quickly turn very, very uncomfortable. This is, I stress, absolutely a me problem, but at least I know that consumer bone conduction headphones are awkward and uncomfortable for me to use, even if they might be otherwise very compelling.
On my left side it’s all great. The transducer sits relatively comfortably where it should, and I’ve found it comfortable enough that I opted for these headphones (with the right side just hanging loosely) as my sleep companion- a rare opportunity for me to lie on my left side without accidentally turning off my headphones, jamming an earbud uncomfortably into my ear, or having my head wedged up at an awkward angle. The tips of the earphones also fold forwards and back, adjusting from mostly skull contact to sitting over the ear itself. In this position they block your ear canal somewhat and offer much more (passive!) external noise rejection and somewhat better low frequency response (subjectively measured, of course.)
As neither a runner or diver I’m missing out on much of the pitch of Nank’s headphones, they are water resistant and worked great in the shower, but I expect that’s selling them a little short. For divers, however, they have 32GB of onboard mp3 storage. My age-addled brain read that as 32MB and expected I’d only fit a single album, but no; my modest (Bandcamp purchases) flac collection (yes flac files just work, apparently) didn’t even make a dent.
So, yes, we’re way past the good old days of tiny, single-album mp3 players and 32GB is a pretty decent size into which I’d estimate you might fit 80 modest flac albums (Endless Summer by The Midnight weighs in about 439mb). Unfortunately actually copying files over to the headphones was quite a chore- I found the speed to be roughly 1MB/s so my audio collection took well over an hour to copy.
lil magnetically keyed USB connection! Slow, though.
Once copied, though, music played as I might expect. With only a next/prev and play/pause control, however, it’s quite difficult to get to any particular song. You’ll need to load up your very favourite tracks and just let ‘em rip. Additionally, copying data happens via the magnetic, pogo-pin style charge cable so you really, really don’t want to lose that. Thankfully it clips in and aligns magnetically, and the magnets are keyed so you can’t stuff it in backwards.
After some days of working my way sporadically through my albums I found that “TF (Trans-flash) Mode” – the music player mode – simply stopped working. I figure either one of my music files is corrupt, has a disagreeable filename or some other glitch occurred. I poked around the filesystem with no obvious clue as to what happened, but upon disconnecting the headphones music was playing again. I guess I’ll try and remember which song it failed on the next time! (Edit: Okay it failed pretty quickly right about the time I would expect it to be playing Peter Gabriel – Four Kinds of Horses. It’s either not a fan of Peter Gabriel or this 144MB flac monster of a song is simply too much… yes I know every progressive metal and jazz band is side eyeing me right now.)
With only three buttons you need to triple-press the middle one to enter “TF” music playing mode, and long press the outer buttons to select the prev/next track. It’s not obvious by feel which is which, though if you know your album order and tracks are sequentially numbered (they are from Bandcamp) you should be able to figure it out. An easy mnemonic is that next/forward is toward the back of the headphones… wait… no… what!?
The controls need a little more separation, it’s a bit tricky to tell them apart by feel!
While I’ve had trouble with over ear and on ear headphones staying put, and tended to lean into earbuds despite only being able to experience aggressively mono audio, the Nank Runner Diver2 are perhaps the first headphones that give me stereo and stay on my head under all circumstances. They’re not heavy at all, so even if they weren’t (sometimes uncomfortably due to aforementioned reasons) wrapped around my head they still wouldn’t budge.
One noticeable additional flaw, which isn’t a me problem, is the lack of a low-end bass response. It almost slipped my notice from regular music listening, but when I cued up Daft Punk – Doin’ It Right it’s like the BOOMY bass had been filtered right off. Perhaps this is a deliberate design choice since these frequencies are much more amenable to bone conduction, or perhaps it’s a limitation of the technology, but these are not an “audiophile grade” listening experience. Not all is lost, though, since they seemed to hit most of the range of the brutal wobbly bass in Karsh Kale’s Distance with the lower frequencies being as much a sensation as a sound which is probably why it almost slipped my notice.
Overall I’m pretty sold on bone conduction as a concept and I have no trouble enjoying music with the little air leakage filling out the mid and high frequencies. I’m not a fan of the open ear listening experience, though, and prefer to be completely immersed in my music. This can be accomplished with an earplug (the headphones come with full noise isolating earplugs and shallow ear plugs which they are supposed to rest on), but I just can’t be bothered to keep one handy. Another me problem that might be a you problem too.
What I’m not sold on is comfort, I can understand how these might work for others but they do not work for me. I think if the lumpy bits where the battery and controls live were moved much further toward the back (albeit the controls would be awkward to access) or the whole package was much slimmer they might feel much better.
I’m not a diver, or a runner, but I find the mp3 player functionality pretty useful. Just slapping these on to play some music while I do household chores is a lot easier than grappling with my phone. Even when I’m not underwater! Shame about the uh… transfer speed.
Check out these transducers!
The other factor is the price. While Nank certainly have something worth considering here, their £160 list price isn’t super competitive with the incumbent Shokz and their OpenSwim Pro. That said, if you’re reading this in November 2024 you can use BF32 to get 32% off, for a much more reasonable price.
What I’d love to see out of a successor is faster music copying speeds, a sleeker design or the fat bits moved a little further away from the ears, and some more differentiation in feel between the on-device buttons.
Oh and maybe don’t put three possibly unlicensed mp3 files on the headphones – one with some… choice language – by default, eh, Nank?