Shokz charges the same price for its smaller OpenDots ONE headphones as it does for its OpenFit 2+ headphones – so which one should you buy?
OpenDots ONE Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Comfortable for everyday listening | Audio easily overwhelmed by exterior sounds |
| Decent battery life | Not the best fit for exercise |
| Supports wireless charging | Tricky touch controls |
OpenFit 2+ Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Good battery life | Not a huge upgrade over previous OpenFit models |
| Comfortable for running | More expensive than the original OpenFit headphones |
| Dolby and Bass boost deliver superior sound | Some sound leakage at higher volumes |
OpenDots ONE Score: 3.5/5
OpenFit 2+ Score: 4/5
 |
Buy The Shokz OpenDots ONE! | Buy On Amazon |
 |
Buy The Shokz OpenFit 2+! | Buy On Amazon |
In this review
Shokz OpenDots ONE vs Shokz OpenFit 2+: Design
Shokz OpenDots ONE vs Shokz OpenFit 2+: Performance
Shokz OpenDots ONE vs Shokz OpenFit 2+: Battery
Shokz OpenDots ONE vs Shokz OpenFit 2+: Conclusion
Ethical disclaimer: The Shokz OpenDots ONE and Shokz OpenFit 2+ headphones used in this review were sent to me by Shokz for the purposes of review.
To my understanding they’re not asking for them back – which is honestly preferable, not because I want lots of Bluetooth headphones per se, but simply for hygiene reasons. Simply put, don’t share headphones unless you like risking ear infections, people… but I digress.
As with any other product reviewed here at ART, whether or not a product goes back has no bearing on the review, and likewise Shokz has had no input into this review beyond supplying them for review in the first place.
For more on ART’s ethics policy, see here.
Also, if it wasn’t obvious, for this review I’m doing something a little different.
Given that both of Shokz’ new open air headphones sell in Australia for exactly the same price, I’ve been testing them out but I’m putting them head to head, because I figure anyone keen on one variety might benefit from knowing if the other style would be a better fit for their needs.
Design
The Shokz OpenFit 2+ are… well, not surprisingly, they’re an update to the Shokz OpenFit headphones I reviewed last year at a slightly higher price point.
Like their predecessors (and other Shokz headphones), they’re built around an open ear design with a loop that curves around the top of your ear, while a speaker sits just outside your auditory canals, delivering sound to the air – hence the name – but without the use of bone conduction as you’d find in (for example) Shokz’s run-specific headphones.
Also read:
Shokz OpenFit Air Review
The Shokz OpenFit 2+ (if you’re curious, there are also OpenFit 2 headphones without the plus, but as far as I can see, they’re not being launched here in Australia) use the same basic ear hook design as their predecessors.
Shokz has however changed the construction just a little bit, with a softer silicon coating that it claims is more comfortable than the original units were, while still retaining the same level of overall durability.
The other big design change – and one of my favourite design upgrades on the Shokz OpenFit 2+ — is the inclusion of physical control buttons on the ear pieces themselves, instead of touch sensitive areas.
This is a personal bugbear of mine, especially when running, because I find myself jabbing at my own ears to play or pause or pick up calls in a frustrated way on so many pair of true wireless headphones that use touch sensitive areas. That’s exactly what the Shokz OpenDots ONE do, and I dislike it intensely. Buttons are just better in this regard.
While you can get the Shokz OpenFit 2+ in either black – as supplied to me for review – or grey finishes, the style does rather look like old-school hearing aids, which is perhaps unavoidable but also possibly problematic.
Maybe I’ve just reached the age where people assume I need hearing aids, because on one occasion while testing them, I had someone assume they were hearing aids and start shouting at me to ensure they could be “heard”.
Argh.
The Shokz OpenDots ONE are completely different, and a new design style for Shokz, though not an entirely new design concept. They’re more like tiny clip-on earrings than anything else, designed to sit a little closer into your ear and then looping around the side of each ear. This is a lot easier to hide, as long as you’re stylistically comfortable with the idea that you look like you’re wearing small ear bands while using them.
Like the OpenFit 2+ headphones, they’re available in either black or grey finishes, though the “grey” is more like a beige/silver combination, because that’s what Shokz sent me.
While they’re new to Shokz, this isn’t a new idea; Bose has a similar set in the Ultra Open Earbuds, which… I haven’t reviewed at all, so don’t ask me to compare them.
Luckily, I know a guy who has.
Also read:
Bose Ultra Open Earbuds Review (Pickr)
The different design style does mean that the Shokz OpenDots ONE do feel substantially different in my ears, with a lesser overall contact area because there’s no over-ear loop sitting there for hours at a time.
That being said, the flipside here is that they don’t feel quite as secure in my ears as the Shokz OpenFit 2+ do when I’m running. They never felt like they were going to tumble to the ground or anything like that, but the difference there was notable.
Whether that’s an issue for you will depend very much on how you’re going to use them. Shokz has a long association with fitness activities, and for those kinds of pursuits the OpenFit 2+ would be a better bet, but for the more sedentary types, or simply folks who don’t want such an obvious “headphone” look, the OpenDots ONE might be a better option.
The Shokz OpenFit 2+ have a small edge over the Shokz OpenDots ONE when it comes to water resistance, with an IP55 rating compared to the IP54 rating for the dots. Neither is rated for swimming purposes – for that you’d want the Shokz OpenSwim Pro headphones instead.
Performance
Setup of either unit is via straight Bluetooth, and pleasingly both cases feature physical pairing buttons rather than relying on touch sensors on the headphones themselves to initiate contact with your chosen audio input.
If you want to get the most out of either the Shokz OpenDots ONE or Shokz OpenFit 2+ you’ll need the Shokz App for iOS or Android, which lets you modify multipoint pairing settings, update firmware and adjust audio settings.
While the Shokz OpenFit 2+ have definite right and left sides, the Shokz OpenDots ONE headphones can be worn in either ear.
Rather neatly, once inserted they sort out their orientation so you don’t get mixed up stereo directions.
Rather less neatly, from time to time during testing I’ve had instances where they decided to stay paired to a device after being placed back in their charging case, which is not headphone behaviour I’d normally expect.
I’ve long advocated for enabling the Bass boost function in Shokz headphones, not because I’m a music listener who only cares about thumping tones, but more because the open nature of Shokz’ products rather naturally weakens their general audio presentation, and bass is where they suffer the most.
You can set custom equalisation presets, but both the Shokz OpenDots ONE and Shokz OpenFit 2+ also support Dolby Audio via a toggle in the Shokz app. This is one of the key areas that make the Shokz OpenFit 2+ the “plus” model, with the regular (not, as far as I can see, sold in Australia) model missing this feature.
You might be wondering if Dolby Audio is going to be all that on an open ear unit, and the answer is quite simple.
The answer is yes.
Enabling Dolby Audio on either pair made a surprising difference to audio output and the richness of the tone across multiple music genres, from Stevie Wonder’s classic “Superstition” to Loius Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World” through to Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers”. Why yes, I do listen to some quite varied genres, but the point here is that it’s well worth enabling Dolby Audio to improve the overall audio presentation of either set.
There are limitations however to what you can do with an open air set of headphones, as much as Shokz wants to talk up its audio engineering and how it can more directly send audio into your head, and this does lead to differences in how the Shokz OpenDots ONE and Shokz OpenFit 2+ sound in real world use.
During my review period, I’ve tested out both sets in a variety of environments, from my relatively peaceful home office to the bustle of shopping centres, the noise of Sydney Trains (seriously, Sydney commuters, learn some basic train etiquette!), parkruns and street runs and plenty more besides.
In pure audio terms, the Shokz OpenDots ONE do deliver a more immersive soundscape than the Shokz OpenFit 2+ do, and this isn’t really all that surprising when you think about it.
The OpenDots place their speakers considerably closer to your ear canals, and this gives them a broadly similar isolation (not noise cancellation) behaviour to actual in-ear headphones. The more open nature of the Shokz OpenFit 2+, despite featuring slightly more complex drivers can’t quite match that.
So an open win for the Shokz OpenDots ONE then? Not quite.
It very much depends on what you want out of a set of Shokz headphones. They’re best known in the fitness space, and the downside to the isolation of the OpenDots is that you do have less overall awareness of the world around you, because more of the environmental audio is blocked out by those closer speakers.
There’s an argument here too that unless you really like the style of the OpenDots, you might be better served by an actual pair of in-ear headphones, because those will give you even more isolation, and for this price, even active noise cancellation if that’s what you want.
If you’re after that classic “I can hear the truck before it flattens me on my street run” feel, the Shokz OpenFit 2+ are a better bet entirely because they’re more open in that classic Shokz style, while still delivering better audio than the original Shokz OpenFit headphones did. Given the serious jump upwards in price compared to those OG sets, they absolutely should deliver better audio too.
Both sets however still don’t do well in more noisy environments. Walking through a busy shopping centre for example, even with the volume cranked up to serious levels, I struggled to make out podcasts and music from either set.
The other issue here, and it’s a classic problem for these kinds of open air headphones is that sound does leak out from them.
On the microphone front, I’ve got some samples of audio in my quick hands-on videos for both pairs you can check out here:
The one caveat I’d place here is that the OpenDots video was my second take for recording audio, because the first one went quite haywire, with entirely inaudible and messy sound being picked up from the headphones.
This can happen with Bluetooth audio from time to time, usually thanks to other environmental factors – try walking past traffic lights with Bluetooth headphones on and you’ll see what I mean generally – though that wasn’t the case for my test environment at all, so I’m not entirely sure what the problem in that case was.
Battery
The Shokz OpenDots ONE and Shokz OpenFit 2+ are rated for up to 40 hours and 48 hours of playback time respectively.
How do they get such extraordinary levels of performance out of such small headphones?
The answer is that, like every other manufacturer, they really don’t. Those are total battery life figures based on recharging from the charging case, with considerably smaller estimated battery life figures of up to 10 hours for the OpenDots and up to 11 hours for the OpenFit 2+ respectively.
Which is stil quite good, at least at a claims level. In real world testing you’re likely to hit a little less than this, but then Shokz’ own specifications do state that
This music listening time data was gathered at the Shokz Laboratory in a temperature-controlled environment of 25±2 °C, playing SBC-encoded audio at a 50% volume and all other features set to default. The actual battery life depends on the volume, sound source, degree of environmental interference, custom settings, use habits, and other factors.
Source: Shokz AU website
I tended to hit around 7-8 hours for the OpenDots and sometimes 8-9 hours more typically for the OpenFit 2+ headphones in my testing, which is still quite good for headphones in this class.
I’ll also note that the 50% audio volume figure may depend on the connected device, but almost certainly won’t be loud enough in some environments for audio to be properly heard.
Both the Shokz OpenDots ONE and Shokz OpenFit 2+ headphones support USB-C charging as well as wireless charging if you’re more Qi-inclined. This is the other big feature that differentiates the OpenFit 2 and OpenFit 2+ headphones if that makes a big difference to you.
Shokz OpenDots ONE vs Shokz OpenFit 2+:
Alex’s Verdict
It’s good that Shokz has options for consumers to pick from, and the overall mix is an interesting one.
The Shokz OpenDots ONE do feel more to me like a style choice over anything else. If you don’t like the over the ear look of classic Shokz style headphones, and especially if you’ve got hair to hide them – not my style, clearly – then they could be a decent match, though I’d also suggest that maybe a more classic set of in-ear buds would deliver even better audio and the benefits of ANC at this kind of price.
Meanwhile, the Shokz OpenFit 2+ headphones are a better exercise-centric pair if you don’t like the presentation of Shokz’ bone conduction headphones, but the serious rise in price relative to the original OpenFit headphones is a touch problematic in a straight line value sense.
Was this review useful to you?
Support independent media by becoming a sponsor or buying me a coffee!
[kofi]
Donate via PayPal
Find out more about how you can support Alex Reviews Tech here.
Shokz OpenDots One/OpenFit 2+:
Pricing and availability
Both the Shokz OpenDots ONE and OpenFit 2+ headphones retail in Australia for $339.95.
|
Buy The Shokz OpenDots ONE! | Buy On Amazon |
|
Buy The Shokz OpenFit 2+! | Buy On Amazon |
Was this review useful to you? Support independent media by dropping a dollar or two in the tip jar below!
[kofi]
About the Author
