Shokz Open Fit Air Review: Open-Ear Sound Without the Premium Price

Introduction

For years, bone conduction headphones have been the default answer for anyone who wanted music without losing touch with their surroundings. More recently, though, air-conduction open-ear designs have been gaining ground, and Shokz’s Open Fit earbuds helped lead that shift. The new Open Fit Air takes that same formula and drops the price down to a very reasonable $120, compared to $180 for the original Open Fit, without much compromise at all. After spending time with them, we think these are pretty incredible for the price.

Why Open-Ear Headphones Make Sense

The main reason to go open ear is situational awareness. You can listen to music or podcasts while still hearing what is going on around you, whether that is an office, a walk, a run or ride outside, or just the house if you have kids around. In sports scenarios, that awareness can matter even more, from traffic and trail users to the occasional forest animal you would rather not run into.

Bone conduction headphones work well and have been the go-to for a long time, but there is a ceiling on the sound quality that technology can deliver. Air-conduction designs, which are effectively small speakers positioned near the ear, deliver sound much closer to a traditional in-ear earbud while keeping the awareness benefit. There is still a place for bone conduction, but air conduction has become our preference for most activities, and the Open Fit Air is a solid option in that category.

Sound Quality: Richer Than the Price Suggests

The big headline is that these sound really good, and it was genuinely surprising how good they sound for the money. They deliver a nice, full sound profile that works well across all kinds of music, from rock and hip hop to singer-songwriter material, with good clarity on vocals and voices for podcasts as well.

They use the same direct pitch air-conduction approach as the original Open Fit. The originals are only slightly richer and fuller, thanks to higher-end speaker materials, but it is not a night-and-day difference. It is really only when switching back and forth that the originals pull ahead with a bit more low end and clarity. The Air still sound great, and we were never disappointed.

Think of these as splitting the difference between a traditional closed in-ear earbud and bone conduction: good sound quality plus situational awareness. You will not get the deep bass of a sealed design, but that is simply the nature of open-ear listening. You can also customize the sound through the Shokz app, which offers four preset EQ settings. Unlike the originals, you cannot create a fully custom EQ curve, but the out-of-the-box tuning is quite enjoyable on its own.

Fit, Comfort, and Everyday Usability

Both the originals and the Air are extremely comfortable, but the Air are actually the more comfortable of the two. The pods are slightly bigger and weigh just a touch more, but the battery now sits inside the pod instead of the ear hook, which lets the hook, made from a mix of nickel and titanium, be lighter and more flexible. The silicone on the outside of each earbud is supposedly slightly softer on the originals, but we could not tell the difference. Both are light enough that it is easy to forget you are wearing them.

Interestingly, the Air also have a more premium look, with slightly glossier materials on the outside of each bud.

For fitness and sports, they are great in the gym, great for running, and we have used them happily for both road and gravel biking. Where we would not use them: mountain biking, rock climbing, or anything where losing an earbud is a real risk. Because these are independent earbuds, there is simply more risk of one coming off, even with the over-the-ear hook design. Shokz’s bone conduction models, like the OpenRun Pro with their wraparound design, hold the advantage there; you would need a pretty bad situation for those to come off. The Open Fit family is not listed under Shokz’s sport headphones on their website, not because they are not intended for sports, but because bone conduction is the better pick when maximum security and water resistance matter most. For everything short of the roughest activities, these work well.

They also play nicely with glasses, sunglasses, hats, helmets, and stocking caps. Full-face helmets are the one exception, since the side of the helmet can press parts of the earbud against your head, which was not comfortable with the full-face helmets we tried. You can also use a single earbud on its own if you prefer.

On wind: they handle it well. Even at higher speeds on the bike, we could still hear music clearly up to around 20 mph, though we had to push the volume a few notches higher to overcome wind noise. Bone conduction models like the OpenRun Pro are only marginally better in wind, and their sound is less full, so we still prefer the air-conduction sound here.

Sound leakage, a common worry with open-ear designs, is well controlled. The speaker orientation directs sound into the ear rather than outward, so others should not hear your calls or your guilty-pleasure tracks unless they are sitting right next to you in a completely quiet room.

Controls, Bluetooth, and Water Resistance

The Open Fit Air use Bluetooth 5.2 with multi-point pairing, so you can connect two devices at once, the same as the original Open Fit. Water resistance is also the same, with an IP54 rating. That is not the highest rating out there, but it has been fine for most sports as long as the buds are never fully submerged, and it is roughly on par with earbuds like the Apple AirPods Pro.

Controls are capacitive touch buttons on the outside of each earbud, handling play, pause, track skipping, and volume, with customization available in the app. The touch area is large, covering almost the entire flat outer surface of the pod, yet precise enough that we never experienced accidental presses when inserting or removing a bud. The one quibble: the long-press behavior takes a bit longer to respond than we would like, and since there were no accidental touches, a shorter hold time would be welcome. Thin gloves and thin hats work fine with the touch controls; thicker ones are more hit and miss.

Battery Life and Charging

Shokz advertises 6 hours of listening time per charge, with the case bringing total runtime to around 28 hours. The original Open Fit gets 7 hours on the buds themselves, so that is one small step down here. The quick-charge feature is handy: 10 minutes in the case buys you about 2 hours of listening.

The case charges over USB-C and is basically the same size as the original Open Fit case. Neither model supports wireless charging, which is worth knowing if that matters to you.

Buying Advice

With the Open Fit Air, there are really very few compromises for the lower price. Sound quality is still excellent, we actually find them more comfortable, and they even have a slightly more premium look. The originals hold small advantages in battery life and a marginally richer sound, but it is hard to justify spending $50 more on the Open Fit. If you are worried about the most secure fit or the highest water resistance, a bone conduction model like the OpenRun Pro or the versatile new Open Swim Pro, which combines Shokz’s swim-specific and running headphones into one package for use above or below water, is the better route. But for most activities, air conduction delivers noticeably higher sound quality, and the Open Fit Air is the one to get.

Conclusion

The Shokz Open Fit Air makes open-ear listening easy to recommend. Excellent sound for the price, comfort that outdoes the more expensive model, and only minor sacrifices in battery life and speaker refinement. For most runs, rides, and gym sessions, this is the open-ear earbud we would pick first.