Introducing to you an ultimate game-changer for the way we listen to music: the Bragi Dash earbuds. These neat little gadgets are the world’s first wireless smart in-ear headphones. But they’re also much more than that. You can store music on them, take phone calls with them, wear them swimming and even track your fitness with them. Awesome.
Being able to listen to music on the go is a wonderful thing; you can take your favorite melodies with you anywhere you please and use them to shut off from the rest of the world. But then there are the dreaded headphones which often do a good job of ruining the experience. In-ear headphones are the bane of anyone’s bag; no matter how tidily you wrap them, they somehow get tangled and wrapped around everything else.
And all that untangling and pulling doesn’t do the wires any good, which often break, warranting a new pair pretty regularly. Then there’s the issue of poor fit, meaning many of us need to constantly pop them back in and twizzle them until they feel like they may stay in for another five minutes. Over-the-ear headphones negate this issue, but they are bulky and less ideal to carry around.
Thankfully, there are people out there that have realized our frustrations and woes, and have gone and done something about it. And that something is a pretty impressive piece of technology: The Dash earbuds.
These earphones were born out of German startup company Bragi, which received almost $3.5 million from 16,000 backers on Kickstarter. The buds are completely wireless and allow you to play music through a Bluetooth connection. Don’t fancy carrying your smartphone or iPod around all the time? Don’t worry—they’ve got that covered, as they have an embedded 4GB music player, too. They have impressive noise cancelling capabilities, but if you’d rather allow ambient sound through, such as traffic, you can adjust the settings accordingly.
Given the importance of good fit, the team used ear molds acquired from hearing aid companies to guide their design. The buds come with three different sized silicone sleeves, and they’re lightweight so they’re unlikely to fall out. Sean O’Kane from The Verge tried them out and reported that they’re surprisingly comfortable and do indeed stay in place. They’re also waterproof up to one meter.
But it doesn’t end there; these smart earphones also act like a fitness tracker as they’ll measure things like distance, speed, cadence, heart rate and calories burned. The Dash also has a built-in accelerometer which allows you to control it through gestures. You could set it to tell you the weather forecast if you tilt your head up, or answer a phone call if you nod, for example.
