JoshuaFalken
I wear a set of these every day, for hours at a time. I started writing what I thought would be a concise comment that turned out to be not concise. I tried to break it up because no one likes a wall of text.
Shokz customer service and hardware quality:
I got my first headset, the Trekz Titanium model, from them in 2016 before they rebranded to ‘Shokz’. The company replaced them twice under warranty. The third pair held up until I broke them in 2022, and I ordered the new OpenRun Pro model.
This new headset is significantly lighter, and lasts longer than the original version I had. Obviously they’ll only get better in five years, but I’d say there’s no need to wait. The quality is there. Honestly, I’m surprised they don’t charge more for them.
My usage and experience:
They focus a lot of their marketing on athleticism, which is probably the number one use case for most people. That said, I use them both when I drive and when I work to take calls, as it’s clearer both for me and the person I’m speaking to than other, single ear, headsets I’ve used before.
As far as music quality, it is a Bluetooth headset so audiophile fidelity can’t be expected, but I like them since at mid volume they won’t bleed sound to other people yet I can still exchange a few words with someone without having to pause anything and slow down a brief chat.
If you’re a podcast listener, these things are fantastic. I listen to about two hours of spoken word content each day, and I couldn’t wear in ear or over ear headphones for that long. That’s just preference though.
Charging:
A change Shokz made at some point was to move from a micro usb charger to a magnetic one. It’s fantastic. I have a cable affixed in place on my dresser and my desk, and it’s as simply as Apple’s Magsafe charging system if you’re familiar with that. I just put the headset down and it’s charging - don’t even need to turn it off.
It also recharges in maybe twenty minutes, which for something that lasts me all day every day, is pretty great.
To sum up, I’ll be buying another pair when my current ones kick the bucket, and another after that.
Problem -
Reaction -
Solution
OHIO
It’s not related really, but seeing this article about Ohio doing something stupid reminded me of this article, and specifically the Instagram propaganda shown off within.
While the company admitted no wrongdoing, it must pay $1.7 million in civil penalties, as well as $277,251 to cover investigation costs as well as to “support future enforcement of consumer protection laws.”
Why is it we allow these companies to pretend they did no evil? The penalty should have been a couple orders of magnitude higher, and they should have had to admit what they did. Obviously we don’t live in a world where both those things would happen, but we don’t even get one of them?
They surely made more than two million doing this and so the fine is meaningless. The real way to make it meaningful would be to force the admission of guilt, and then use the admission as justification to stop them from buying out the competition for 18 billion dollars.
Look how they deceived their customers, good thing they can do it to even more customers now!
Is it just me or does that bike have a kink in its neck?