Mojawa Run Plus Review: Swim- and Run-Friendly Bone Conduction on a Budget

Introduction

Mojawa has been pushing hard into Shokz territory lately, and the Run Plus is its most compelling effort yet: a swim- and run-friendly bone conduction headset with both Bluetooth and onboard MP3 playback. On paper it closely matches the Shokz OpenSwim Pro while costing about £10 less in the UK and $159.99 in the US. After time on the road, in the pool and in the gym, it is clear these get very close in some respects and fall short in others.

Who the Run Plus Is For

If you want phone-free music for swimming, running or gym sessions without blocking your ears, the Run Plus is squarely aimed at you. The MP3 mode means you can load songs directly onto the headset and leave your phone in a locker, and the open-ear design keeps you aware of traffic, other swimmers and gym chatter. It suits anyone who values situational safety as much as entertainment.

Design, Build and Controls

The Run Plus follows the familiar bone conduction blueprint: vibrating transducer pads connected by a flexible neckband, hooking over the ears and resting on the cheekbones. The IP68 rating offers full dust and waterproofing and the headset survives in two metres of water for up to two hours, so pool swimming is well within scope. At 29 grams they are only a couple of grams heavier than the OpenSwim Pro and generally feel well built and compact.

Controls are refreshingly unfussy. One large button on the left pad handles play, pause, skip and back, while a touchpad further up responds to swipes for volume. That is easy to learn and easy to use on the move, though the touchpad can be slightly harder to locate when running fast.

There are two caveats. Like most waterproof tech, these use a proprietary magnetic charging cable, so you need to carry it with you, and the cable supplied with one unit failed after the initial charge, which is a small durability worry. There is also no app-based playlist or track management, so your 8,000-song capacity ends up in one long dump list, with shuffle as the main organising tool. The OpenSwim Pro shares that same limitation.

Sound Quality

This is where the gap opens up. The Run Plus pumps out a thinner sound than the Shokz OpenSwim Pro, and at full volume it is not the loudest option around. Quieter songs and intros were hard to hear at times, and busy roads, loud gyms and commuter trains easily overpowered them. All bone conduction headphones trade some richness for open ears, but these land a little further back in that trade-off.

There is also no EQ or sound optimisation here. What you get out of the box is what you keep.

In the pool, however, MP3 audio genuinely improves. The water insulates you from outside noise, so the sound packs more punch and feels fuller, making it a welcome distraction for monotonous laps. For swimming alone, these do the job without much complaint.

Battery Life

Mojawa claims 8 hours of playback, just short of the OpenSwim Pro’s 9 hours, with a rapid charge that returns an hour and a half of runtime from 5 minutes on the plug. Real testing painted a slightly shakier picture: the battery indicator was flaky, sometimes jumping 10% on power-up, and a two-hour Bluetooth run burned roughly 30%. That suggests real-world battery life sits below the listed figure, though testing was done at full volume and day-to-day staying power ends up roughly level with the OpenSwim Pro.

Buying Advice

Within Mojawa’s lineup, the Run Plus is easily the best bang for buck, clearly beating the company’s more affordable Hapti Terra on quality and value. As a rival to the Shokz OpenSwim Pro it gets close on design, fit, in-pool performance and battery, but the thinner sound output and the charging cable reliability concern hold it back. Shokz also has a longer-established track record for returns and support, which counts for something.

At $159.99, the price gap with the OpenSwim Pro is narrow. If the Run Plus were $20 or $30 cheaper, it would be an easy recommendation as a value pick. As things stand, the OpenSwim Pro still edges it on overall value, unless you are specifically drawn to Mojawa’s slightly lower price.

Conclusion

The Mojawa Run Plus is a capable, well-built swim- and run-friendly bone conduction headset with strong pool performance and sensible controls. It falls just short of the OpenSwim Pro on sound power and long-term reliability reassurance, but for pool swimmers and MP3-first listeners it remains one of the most interesting alternatives on the market.