Oladance OWS Sports headphone

The Oladance OWS Sports open-ear headphones have a pair of 23x10mm drivers that provide a crisp, clear, high-quality sound – with an impressive bass – while still allowing you to hear your surroundings. Throw in a great battery life, low weight and a first-rate build quality and you've got a pair of phones with very few down sides.

The OWS Sports is the latest model in Oladance's range of open-ear headphones. The design features a single band that goes around the back of your neck, linking the headphones at either end. Unlike most earphones, these aren't isolating, and they're not a bone-conducting design either – instead they have a pair of bass-boosting 23x10mm drivers that direct sound into your ears. A driver is essentially miniature speaker that 'drives' the air, creating pressure waves that result in your ear canal receiving sound. Got that?

But regardless of the science, the result is a pair of headphones that gives you a crisp, clear listening experience for your music or podcasts, while not isolating you from your surroundings.

Build

The construction quality of the OWS Sports is excellent. Oladance uses a soft-touch, premium silicone that feels comfortable agains your skin, and with a reasonably snug fit that sits close to your head. There's no unpleasant pressure to keep them in place and there are physical buttons controls that work in the rain – its exceptional IPX8 rating means it can survive submersion in water – and with gloved hands. But that high quality and resistance to the elements is reflected in the high price.

The box includes a good quality hardshell carry case that you can throw in your bag and a proprietary charging cable that connects magnetically to the phones for an easy charge. And the package as a whole does make you feel like your money is being well spent.

With quite large 23x10mm drivers and a Qualcomm chip, Oladance is placing a big emphasis on the sound quality of these headphones.

In use

I've found the Oladance Sports excellent. Pairing them was a breeze and to turn them on you just hold the volume-up button on the right ear. I would recommend downloading the Oladance app, as this allows you to update firmware easily and to change things like the multi-function button use. I also found that the Bluetooth worked consistently well during testing, suffering no dropouts.

The play/pause button is on the left ear – a double tap lets you skip songs, a triple tap plays previous songs.

When putting these on with a helmet, I found it much better to put my helmet on first and then put the phones on over the top of the helmet straps, which reduces the chance of the straps getting tangled.

Sound quality

Getting the volume right can be an issue with bone-conduction headphones – but that was never the case with these. You can actually have these quite loud, which is very handy when you're riding. Except when there was a lot of wind and I was listening to something quiet, I was always able to hear my music.

And one of the real highlights of these when listening to music is the sound quality – it's really very good, head and shoulders above that of any bone-conduction headphones I've used. The sound quality is crisp and clean, the bass is impressive. Oladance says 'its patented Virtual Bass 2nd algorithm enhances the low-frequency sound for a fuller and deeper bass', and I really think it does.

This was really noticeable when I compared them against the sort of cheaper open-ear headphones you can find on eBay. Swapping between the two the differences are immediately and strikingly obvious, with the sound quality of the Oladance Sports significantly better than that offered by cheapo phones.

They don't have the thumping bass you'll find on isolated headphones, but that's to be expected when your ears are also open to the outside world – but the bass that is present is impressive, and provides a very nice listening experience.

It is worth mentioning that the open-ear design does mean people around you can hear sound escaping from your phones, usually the drum beat or the more high-pitched parts of songs, which could well be annoying to other people if you're using them in a train, for example.

While the band around the back of your head is out of the way most of the time, I did run into issues when I tried to zip a high-necked jacket all the way up, or pull a neck warmer over my ears, when the band can get in the way.

The soft-touch silicone proved comfortable even after wearing the phones for hours, and I didn't suffer even a hint of skin irritation. They're snug and comfortable over your ears, and stayed in place well.

And one final positive: the battery life is excellent. I managed 15 hours of use after a single charge, so unless you're an endurance rider you're extremel unlikely to run out of battery life during normal day-to-day use.

Value

At £189.99, these are very much at the upper end of things when it comes to headphones – but if you're after phones that offer an excellent sound quality while still allowing you to hear the outside world, and without the 'muddy' sound you can get from bone-conduction phones, the Oladance OWS Sports are a great option.

You can pick up a super-cheap pair of open-ear headphones on eBay for as little as £8.99, but from my experience these are poor with a pretty shocking sound quality.

Pay a bit more and the Tozo OpenReal Air Conduction Sport phones, another open-ear design, come in at £49.99. And Emily was pretty impressed when she tested them late last year.

Stretch your budget to £160 and you could get the Shokz OpenRun Pro bone-conduction phones. Steve enjoyed using them and was impressed with their sound quality, but they're not as good when you're riding at high speed, and the bass can't match the Oladance Sports' open-ear design.

Conclusion

If you value sound quality and enjoy listening to all the sections of songs, from bass to the high sections – while still being able to hear ambient noise – the Oladance OWS Sports are a very good option, and one I'd have no qualms recommending.

Verdict

Very well made, excellent sound quality, comfortable and an excellent battery life – but expensive