Aftershokz XtrainerZ review

I’m genuinely excited to be writing this xtrainerz review because, in short, these things are absolutely, astoundingly amazing. However, as you’ll see, they may not be the best option for everyone.

I’ve got a long swim coming up and I’m rediscovering just how boring endurance swim training can wind up being. I know I’m going to be swimming at least six hours a week and if I’m honest, I have been dreading it. Over the years, I’ve experimented with a number of swimming mp3 players, starting with a cheap Chinese noname player which was useless.

I more recently tried a substantially more expensive Sony swimming Walkman which was, stunningly, also useless. Basically, even with the volume on max I could make out the bass line to music, but that was about all. They were uncomfortable and I gather people who use them wind up with a lot of ear infections.

I have been running this year with a pair of Aftershokz Trekz Titanium which have been brilliant – a lot of the sound is transmitted directly to the bones in your ears by vibrating your skull directly. It sounds awful, but works amazingly, with the music and audio coming through clearly and still allowing you to hear what’s going on around you with obvious safety benefits when running with cars and bikes around. These are rated to IP (Ingress Protection) 55, which means they will repel dust and waterspray (sweat and rain basically) but are not waterproof, despite what a number of owners I have spoken to believe. They also stream over Bluetooth which means your phone needs to be very nearby.

When I was at Alcatraz earlier this year, Aftershokz had a stand and when I wandered over a shiny new toy caught my eye. The Xtrainerz was a brand new model designed for swimmers with an onboard 4Gb of storage so you can leave the phone in the locker, and rated to IP68 which means totally sealed from dust and designed to resist long term water immersion (in this case, 2 hours at 2m). This is as high as IP ratings go. The battery life is also good, at 8 hours.

Seeing them finally on sale, I didn’t really hesitate and got a pair on order with my own money to test. Arriving 24 hours later than scheduled, I was dying to try them out.

I don’t remember the packaging for the Titanium as being anything special, but the Xtrainerz box is actually quite premium – separate packages for the headphones and, weirdly, unbranded swimcap in a special pouch.

Breaking open the main box, more goodies were exposed. Some minimal (but sufficient) instructions, the headphones themselves, a special travel pouch (also containing, I discovered much later, some earplugs in a case) and the charging dock.

Normally I’d grumble about a proprietary charger (I spent an hour last night looking for the wireless charger for my bikes power meter) but given the waterproofing, Aftershokz didn’t have a choice. I snapped the headphones into the hinged case and as soon as I plugged in the USB end, my PC recognised them as a drive and started topping up the charge. In moments I’d dragged a random selection of music across and was ready to go play. I charged off to the local lake to give them a go.

The Xtrainerz are light. Really, really light, and very comfortable. And as they hug the skull fairly closely I don’t think they are going to cause any more drag than the goggles you are already wearing. Hoping for the best, I fired them up by holding down the middle button, tweaking the volume with the buttons on either side and also skipping tracks by holding them down – nice and simple, and the buttons themselves were tactile and responsive.

Based on my previous experiences with waterproof mp3 players I set the volume to max – everything was crystal clear – and waded into the lake. As soon as I dipped my head underwater I popped back up and turned it all back down again – it got louder as the water improved the connectivity the conduction was using. This was a surprise, but boded well. My response to this was obviously not unique as there is a option to switch between land/underwater modes which changes the bass and other levels and seems well optimised for both.

I pointed myself at the first buoy on the 800m circuit and settled into a fast crawl.

I think I’m quite a noisy swimmer, with a lot of splashing and the occasional grunt as I push myself to my top speeds; but all the way around the course I could hear every note, every word of the surprisingly eclectic music I’d put on shuffle. I did try to fiddle with the controls while swimming and although this seemed possible it did mess up my stroke anyway, so I suspect I’d just stop next time.

Eventually, I climbed out of the water properly stunned at the quality and clarity of the sound I’d been hearing. I could still hear everything around me just as with the land models. Having both sets of sound at the same time initially felt weird, but I was soon able to happily hum along while swimming.

My holy grail had been the thought that I could possibly listen to audiobooks and podcasts, but I’d considered this so unlikely to work I hadn’t bothered to put any spoken audio on the device. I was now wondering if this would actually be clear enough to work.

I went home, wiped the music off and put a bunch of podcasts on. Next morning I was in a different lake, doing a different 800m loop. The sound though, was just as clear. I heard every word of the Edinburgh fringe podcast including the noisy excerpts from some of the sketches.

This is a fundamental shift that is going to transform my training experience. I now need to see if I can hunt down some specific real time coaching sound files – even if these aren’t available yet, I bet it wont take long.

There is one downside to these headphones however. They do not have Bluetooth capability, so you cannot stream from a phone or other device, ruling out the option to choose your material on the fly. This is potentially a significant downside, and if this is a dealbreaker for you go buy one of the others. Some of the athletes I’ve spoken to don’t see this as an issue either as they hate running with a phone and this gives you music on the move even if you don’t have a higher end fitness tracker that could stream.

If you are looking for a pair of waterproof swimming headphones make sure you try these before wasting your money on anything else.