Many of the best running headphones I’ve tested in recent years have been open headphones, which offer a welcome balance of sound quality and awareness of your surroundings during workouts. I run almost every day, and also do other workouts like cycling, strength sessions and yoga, and open buds often fit the bill for the outdoor training I do in particular.
I was looking forward to testing the OpenRock X headphones then, which make grand promises about their sound quality, along with having an adjustable open fit and long battery life. You can check out our full OpenRock X review for the breakdown on how they fare as headphones for general use, while my testing focused on whether they were good sports headphones. Here’s what I found out.
The fit works well for most workouts
Unlike many open headphones with a similar hook design I’ve tested, you can adjust the fit of the OpenRock X by twisting the panel up and down, and in and out, to get the speaker in the right position and secure the headphones on your ear.
Pinching the panel firmly against the top of my inner ear created the most secure fit for sports, but even if you loosen this a little to be more comfortable I found that the headphones stay in place reliably for runs and bike rides, even when I was also wearing glasses.
The only workouts where I found the headphones could come loose were vigorous HIIT or strength sessions with lots of jumping around, but even then the buds didn’t shake completely loose and I could secure them more firmly using the panel.
They balance sound and awareness well
No open headphones can match the sound quality of in-ear buds, but I enjoyed listening to music on the OpenRock X, which have enough power in the lower ranges and reasonable clarity in the upper ranges. They’re still not great for traveling, when the open design means your music can be drowned out, but they were good during my indoor and outdoor workouts.
Unlike even the best bone conduction headphones, I also found they were loud enough to block out the sound of traffic when it was safe to during my outdoor runs, but if you lower the volume you can hear a balance of your audio and what’s going on around you.
I often run a route which has some sections without sidewalks where I run on a quiet road, but then a long stretch on a sidewalk by a busy road, so having buds where I was able to stay aware of any cars when running on the road but then block them out when safe was helpful.
The battery life is impressive
Battery life is a strong point for the OpenRock X headphones — as you would hope for given the large case they come with — which adds an extra 36 hours of battery life on top of the 12 hours the buds can store themselves. If you are caught short of battery, a quick charge feature nets you an hour of playback from five minutes of charging.
I found that I could go two weeks comfortably without needing to plug in the case when using the headphones daily for workouts and occasionally when working or traveling as well. With the comfortable design and long battery life, these are headphones you can use all day without worrying about having to charge them, and if you just use them for workouts it will be weeks before you need to plug in the carry case.
I wish the case was smaller
I might have praised the battery life delivered by the large case, but the downside is that I found it a bit too big to carry with me on runs in a belt or shorts pocket. Since you can’t turn the headphones off without putting them in the case, they’re not the most practical if you’re planning to run somewhere and stay for a while.
The price is too high
At $179.99 in the U.S. and £179.99 in the U.K, the OpenRock X are priced in line with some other open headphones I’ve tried like the Shokz OpenFit or Oladance OWS Sports. However, given that they aren’t ideal for using outside workouts because of the open design, it feels too high a price.
I have also tested the Shokz OpenFit Air, which are $129, and the 1MORE Fit SE S30 Open Headphones ($69), and both offer much better value as open headphones you’ll mainly use for workouts.
More from Tom's Guide
