Bohm S10 Review — Truly Wireless Earbuds

Listening to music is deeply personal. Besides just individual taste in music genres, tastes in different headphones varies from person to person based on comfort and how a set of headphones make music sound. Some folks prefer open back headphones — which let the audio of your surroundings mix with your music — while others prefer closed back headphones or earbuds to isolate the sound. Some prefer wired headphones due to the quality and simple plug and play style, while others (including myself) prefer Bluetooth headphones due to the overall convenience of not dealing with wires.

A new category of headphones has sprung up over the past few years — truly wireless earbuds. These are Bluetooth earbuds that aren’t connected with any type of wire. Even the slimmest and sportiest Bluetooth earbuds have some sort of connection, while these do not. An early entry to this category was The Dash by Bragi,which was listed on Kickstarter in early 2014, and shipped in early 2016. Samsung announced their own truly wireless earbuds, the Gear Icon X, which are due for release later this year. Both of these earbud models include some form of activity tracking and local storage for music, allowing users to head out on a run with just the earbuds.

A relatively unknown entry to this category is the subject of this review — the Bohm S10’s. I have yet to see an announcement for these earbuds, and just found them while browsing Amazon one day. They lack local storage and activity tracking, but at $80 they are significantly cheaper than either the Gear Icon X ($200) or The Dash ($300). They are available to purchase now, and are even available with 2-day Prime shipping from Amazon.

Right out of the way, I’ll say the included ear tips didn’t last five minutes in my ears. The wing portion of these go into the upper part of the pinna in your outer ear to keep the earbuds from falling out, and this design just does not fit comfortably with my ears. This is going to vary from person to person, so I won’t count this against the S10’s. If you order these and the ear tips are comfortable, more power to you. If they cause discomfort, I’d recommend a set of Comply Foam Ear Tips. I’m using the Comply TX-500’s, but the smaller TX-400 would probably provide a snugger fit.

With a comfortable set of ear tips in place, setting up the earbuds is fairly straight forward: hold down the multi function button on both ears for a few seconds to pair the ear buds with each other. Once that’s complete, you can open the Bluetooth menu on your device and pair the earbuds to your device.

The same process happens every time you turn the earbuds on, and truth be told it takes long enough to be annoying. While standard Bluetooth earbuds take a few seconds at most to pair and connect to a device, these take around 15 seconds each time you turn the earbuds on. It doesn’t sound like much, but it quickly becomes irritating.

Once paired and inside your ear, the earbuds do well. I didn’t notice any difference in audio quality between the S10’s and my LG Tone Infinim’s, however my phone of choice is a Google Nexus 6P. The Nexus 6P is great at many things, but audio isn’t one of them. I didn’t find any mention of support for the aptx audio codec, which delivers CD-Level quality for Bluetooth devices, so I’m willing to bet that when paired to a better host device, there would be some quality differences between the S10’s and other Bluetooth earbuds.

Even without any activity tracking features or standalone storage, exercising is where these earbuds shine best, with an important caveat. Once I got over the anxiety of one ear bud randomly falling out — that surprisingly hasn’t happened yet — it was an enjoyable experience. I had no problems with range or interference, even though other gym rats had their Bluetooth headphones. Similarly, jogging in a suburban area was presented no problems. However, things changed when I wasn’t surrounded by walls or houses that the Bluetooth signal could bounce off of. Jogging on a road with nothing but corn around me quickly led to the earbuds losing signal with my phone — even when the phone was in my hand, one foot away from my face.

While I didn’t have any interference problems in the gym, I didn’t have as much luck when using the earbuds in a busy airport. When I was sitting still, waiting at my departure gate, everything was fine. When I walked around to get a cup of coffee, I quickly ran into issues of audio cutting in and out frequently. Another issue I had at the airport was the earbuds causing some social awkwardness: with traditional earbuds, you can take the earbuds themselves out of your ears and have the whole unit rest on your neck and shoulders. This shows the other party in your conversation that they have your undivided attention, but you can still have your earbuds in a convenient location. With these, you have to either hold them, or leave them in your ears. I decided to just leave them in my ears, and twice someone was confused as to whether I could actually hear them.

The Bohm S10 include a carrying case that also acts as an extended battery. The S10’s themselves are advertised with up to 2.5 hours of battery life. With my volume set to medium-high, I got about one hour and fifty minutes from a full battery to completely dead. The earbuds will give you a low battery warning about ten minutes before dying, and will (very annoyingly) give you more low battery warnings every minute until they are completely drained. Either way, this should be a sufficient amount of time for a workout.

Charging the S10’s inside the cradle takes two hours from a dead battery, and the cradle provides up to four charges before the battery inside the cradle will need to be recharged. Using the S10’s an hour or so workout each day, then putting them back into their cradle worked out well; in this case the battery in the cradle lasted the entire week. However, this was another frustration while traveling: in a six-hour day of flying, two hours of using the headphones followed by two hours of letting them charge is irritating at best.

The S10’s include a microphone for voice calls, but because of how far the microphone is away from your mouth, you’re either going to have to yell, or the other party is going to have difficulties hearing your voice.

Overall, the Bohm S10’s (and others in this category) are an interesting proposition, and it’s amazing that technology is now compact enough to make these a reality. Making them a reality and making them a good experience are two different things, however. If you are only looking for Bluetooth headphones to use while working out, these might have merit. If you want to get a good value for your dollar, and put your money towards earbuds that are great for workouts, travelling and everyday life, look elsewhere. A quick search on Amazon reveals Bluetooth earbuds that are cheaper and have better battery life, while still having a very light design. For what it’s worth, users of the $300 The Dash by Bragi earbuds noted similar problems as what I described above, so it’s an unfortunate fault of the form factor. In a few years, when batteries last longer, the Bluetooth antennae are stronger, and the microphones are more powerful, this may be a compelling option. For now, look elsewhere.