30 Days with the Bragi Dash, The World’s First Hearable
I love to listen to music. From the first Sony Walkman, to an Archos JukeBox 5000 to my first iPod, I have always loved listening to music and being able to do so on the go.
Over the years I’ve owned close to 100 headphones, in ear buds, in ear monitors, etc. Some are top end audiophile IEMs from Shure and Sennheiser, some have come with my music player, some made specifically to allow me to make phone calls. In the past few years I even travel with mutiple pairs of earphones, in case my main pair breaks or just stop working.
But I’ve always been annoyed by the wires. They tangle, catch on things, are typically points of failure and if you have young children they love to pull on them. Wires are a phenomenal pain in the butt. With the exception of really high end IEMs where high quality cables can make a difference in SQ (sound quality for you non audio-nerds) wires are a Twentieth century invention looking to be disrupted.
Needless to say I’ve long yearned for truly wireless earphones. I had an early pair of tethered IEMs using the Kleer technology, made by SA Audio, that had wonderful SQ. The only problem being I had to carry a plug in Kleer emitter dongle connected to the source and one day the wires caught on a strap and the IEMs died and the company stopped making them. More recently JayBird has released some very nice bluetooth wireless, but tethered, IEMs; the BlueBuds, JayBird X2 and at CES 2016 they announced the soon to be released Jaybird X3. JayBird makes a very nice BT earphone, the SQ is very nice, neutral sound with a decent soundstage but limited volume. They are great walking around earphones and for the gym, the BT range is very good and they are comfortable to wear for hours at a time. Average battery life is about 5–6 hours of continuous use. But they are tethered. My infant son would pull on them, the wire would ocassionally catch on something. And then, one day, I heard about the Bragi Dash.
What are Bragi’s The Dash, you ask? Single armature, high quality IEMs with really good SQ, a very nice nice and neutral sound with good soundstage and volume. Oh! And they are completely wireless.
These IEMs were lauched on Kickstarter in 2014 and successfully raised over 3.9 million dollars in 2014 to develop, market and deliver the worlds first “smart” wireless IEMs. Two years later, are overcoming numerous engineering and at scale manufacturing challenges they began delivering these innovative earphones to backers and recently have opened their online store to orders. Credit card in hand, after reviewing an early Verge pre-release review from CES 2016, I ordered my pair. And waited. And waited. And waited.
I shouldn’t complain, not being an early backer, I simply waited about 45 days. Nothing really when, Dash comfortably in my ears, compared to those 15,000 plus backers who waited two years for their Dash to be delivered. But it felt like a long time. So how are they? In a word, awesome.
The Dash are made of high quality plastics, come with a number of sleeves meant to accommodate different size ear canals and pinna (the external ear) and reside, when not in your ear, in a high grade aluminum (or aluminium if you prefer) two piece case that also is it’s charging cradle. The case/cradle has rechargable batteries that allow for 4–5 full charges of the Dash when on the go without having to connect the charger to an outlet. The Dash last about 4 hours of solid use between charges and recharge fully in about 45 minutes.
The sound quality is very good. Not perhaps worth $300 when compared to wired IEMs or headphones, but excellent for BT and for being liberated from said wires. How is do the Dash connect without wires? Using some ingenious technology called NFMI or near field magnetic induction. NFMI transmits in a bubble of two meters or less, the transmission is contained and connects the two “radios”. In this case the earphones. Therefore no wires are neccesary.
And let’s not forget that these are smart IEMs. What does that mean? Well they have sensors on the side that are in contact with your ear, sensors that monitor and measure a number of things. First and foremost when you insert them into your ear you hear a tone, followed by a message that you are now connected. This indicates that the Dash understand that you are wearing them and that they are connected to the BT paired source. Any bluetooth enabled source seems to work well with the Dash, at least I’ve not yet found a source they wouldn’t connect to with just a bit of work.
How esle are the Dash “smart”? Well they measure heart rate, steps, level of work, are water proof and have gesture based controls. But my favorite smart feature is “Transparency” mode. Transparency mode is similar to having bionic hearing. You swipe forward on the left Dash and external microphones are activated that pass through sounds. So if you are listening to music or an Audible book or a podcast and someone asks you a question, a quick swipe forward and you can clearly hear them. When you first use Transparency mode it’s quite amazing, it’s like hearing in three dimeensions for the first time. It has to be experienced to be believed….
When they were first released the software lagged behind the hardware. There were significant BT problems, frequent audio outages, phone calls sounded horrible and backers flooded the interwebs with their cries of pain and suffering. But the Bragi has been working tirelessly on frequent firmware updates, as of V1.4 call quality, BT connection persistence and audio quality have all improved significantly. The update process is abit involved and can take up to 2 hours, but the effort is worth it.
So, you might ask, what is my final conclusion? I love them. They have replaced all of my wireless IEMs and all but my Shure 843 wired headphones. As I write these words I am listening to Above & Beyond’s We’re All We Need and watching The Man From U.NC.L.E on HBO while in Transparency mode. They are a V1, they are expensive and they are the future.
