Your Music, Clipped To Your Ears -- Vibe Body Sound Headphones

I love my iPod. I love walking for exercise and listening to podcasts. I do not love having my ears covered, however, or not being able to hear other noises, whether they be car horns or barking dogs. So when I heard that ThinkGeek was carryingVibe Body Sound Headphones, I wanted to try a pair.

ThinkGeek describes the earphones like this: "The Vibe Body Sound headphones clip on to your outer ear and conduct vibrations through your skin and cartilage." More about that shortly. The earphones do clip on your ear instead of going in your inner ear. The picture makes them look like they're very uncomfortable but they're not; I wore them for over an hour and they didn't bother me (I never forgot they were there, but they didn't hurt.) You'll have to charge the earphones to use 'em -- they charge via a USB port. (The battery lasts 4-5 hours before needing a recharge.) Press a button to turn the earphones on. Instead of a volume control, you can press the same button three more times to increase the sound and rate of vibration of the earphones. The highest setting wasn't -- exactly -- uncomfortable, but it did feel rather like a troop of ants was kickboxing in my ear.

Once I hooked up my iPod, I was surprised that the clip-on earphones sounded pretty much just like regular headphones. Better yet, someone could stand next to me talking, and I could hear them clearly. I didn't feel isolated as I would wearing regular headphones. Now, of course if I had the iPod's volume turned all the way up, I would still have trouble hearing things around me.

The earphones didn't work as well in a noisy environment either. I sat in a coffee shop wearing them for an hour, and there was simply too much noise to sort out voices. Things were not as muffled as they would have been had I been wearing regular headphones, but I still had to turn the earphones or my iPod off to talk to the people sitting next to me.

ThinkGeek describes these earphones as being skin- and cartilage- conducting; never having used real bone-conduction headphones I can't make a comparison. I do know that if you use these people next to you will be able to hear music coming from your 'phones, and while using them I was never able to seriously decide if there was actually conduction going on or if the design was just a clever way to put the music right to your ear without forcing you to block out other sounds.

For me, the big pro for these earphones is that I can use them and not feel cut off. (That's both literally and figuratively true; people seem more reluctant to talk to you when you're wearing actual headphones, and more willing to talk when you're wearing what looks like giant clip-on earrings.) I was able to listen to podcasts for a long time without having that weird "my earbud has attached itself to my skull" feeling. And since the earphones clip in place, I did not have to worry about them falling out or shifting as I moved around. A benefit I did not expect, but a welcome one!

There were cons too, unfortunately. The earphones are $99 -- not cheap. If you're planning on wearing them in an acoustically busy environment (like a coffee shop) they might not work well for you. I found that sometimes the podcasts were a little too quiet with these earphones and I had to turn the vibration feature all the way up. (With music the volume wasn't an issue.)

Overall, though, I feel a lot safer walking down the sidewalk with these on, having a better sense of what's going on around me.