Creative Outlier Free Pro Review

Verdict

The Inventive Outlier Free Professional gives good, however not greatest in school bone conduction sound on land and within the water for much less cash than the swim-proof headphone competitors.

Introduction

The Inventive Outlier Free Professional are bone conduction headphones constructed to be your all-day headphones with a robust train slant, together with once you go for a swim.

Together with that swim-proof design, Inventive offers you the choice of Bluetooth and music participant streaming with extras like multipoint connectivity, a low latency mode to enhance watching movies and the promise of as much as 10 hours battery life.

They’re priced cheaper than different swim-proof bone conduction headphones together with the Shokz OpenSwim, so may you avoid wasting cash by grabbing these extra inexpensive waterproof headphones as an alternative?

Availability

The Inventive Outlier Free Professional value £159.99 / $129.99, however will be discovered for £89.99 / $99.99, making them a less expensive purchase than the Shokz OpenSwim (£139.95 / $149.95), and the Naenka Runner Diver (£135.56 / $169.99), two of the very best performing waterproof bone conduction headphones I’ve examined.

Design

• IPX8 water-resistant design
• Microphone protector for swimming
• Silicone ear plugs included

The Inventive Outlier Free Professional undertake a well-known behind-the-neck and ear hook design related to bone conduction headphones and has a mixture of titanium and silicone within the design to make it snug to put on, however really feel like they’re well-built as properly.

At 31.5g, the Outlier Free Professional is sweet and lightweight making them ideally suited for carrying over longer intervals. They arrive solely in a blue look with the whole design appropriate to be submerged in freshwater as much as 1.5 metres for as much as 40 minutes. The identical degree of safety isn’t on supply in saltwater, so it’s not going to be appropriate for all open water swimming spots.

Beneath the appropriate arm are three bodily buttons for monitor skipping, for quantity management, with a button that has a giant ‘M’ on that permits you to change between Bluetooth and music participant modes.

For swims, Inventive has included a set of silicone earplugs to cease water from invading your ears. Additionally they embrace three small rubber microphone protectors that you simply’ll must plug into the microphone port to additional shield the headphones from moisture invading the onboard elements.

The bodily buttons are somewhat too tightly positioned collectively for my liking, which makes it straightforward at occasions to hit the unsuitable button, whereas getting the microphone protector plugged in earlier than a swim is a particularly fiddly course of. There’s a purpose why three are offered as a result of they’re straightforward to misplace.

Options

• 8GB music participant
• As much as 10 hours battery life
• Multipoint connectivity

Together with the headphones you’re getting a proprietary magnetic charging cable that additionally doubles because the cable wanted to plug right into a USB-A port on a laptop computer or pc to tug and drop audio to utilize the built-in 8GB music participant.

That is fairly commonplace for the way most bone conduction headphones with music gamers work and the Professional is suitable with MP3, FLAC, WAV and APE file codecs, though it doesn’t assist WMA information. It’s a drag and drop strategy that may be a contact gradual going at occasions syncing audio over.

When it comes to battery life, Inventive says you possibly can get pleasure from as much as 10 hours of battery life from the onboard 180mAh capability battery, although these numbers are primarily based on listening at reasonable volumes.

In actuality, should you’re utilizing this near high quantity, and certain most will, attending to the promised 10 hours isn’t at all times attainable, whether or not that’s utilizing the Bluetooth streaming or from the music participant. Generally I discovered battery life nearer to 6-7 hours. A 40-minute swim with the music participant noticed battery drop by 10%. So it’s not a foul displaying on the whole.

Attaching that charging cable for a 5-minute cost does get you two hours of playtime, making it straightforward to maintain them topped up and pondering much less about how a lot battery you must play with.

Inventive gives another extras right here to make them extra helpful exterior of exercise time. There’s a multipoint connectivity mode to connect with two Bluetooth gadgets on the similar time, a comparatively simple, four-step course of to set it up should you like the concept of with the ability to deal with calls from one in every of two related gadgets.

There’s additionally a Low Latency mode, which guarantees to offer audio and video playback with much less lag. That is activated by urgent the multifunction button 4 occasions, although I actually can’t say if it improved or supplied a greater expertise.

Sound High quality

• Good however not the very best bone conduction sound
• Name high quality
• As much as 10-hours battery life

Inventive isn’t doing something significantly out of the conventional when it comes to the way it makes use of bone conduction know-how to ship sound to your ears.

Whether or not it’s over Bluetooth streaming or through the built-in participant, the general sound profile is identical. It’s fantastic, however once you’ve examined different bone conduction headphones like I’ve, it’s not breaking new floor and even matching what the very best bone conduction headphones can supply.

The bass is muddy, the midrange sounds boxy and the trebles are harsh sounding. Whenever you go louder, these bone conduction vibrations are somewhat extra noticeable. These aren’t the worst bone conduction headphones I’ve used and there are some fantastic traits right here, however it doesn’t match the expertise I’ve come to count on from Shokz, Naenka and Haylou in providing one thing extra balanced.

When switching to music participant mode, I piled on a bunch of drum and bass podcasts in addition to spoken podcasts and for the previous, the bassier sound is probably the most redeeming high quality although it comes on the expense of readability. Listening to podcasts was fantastic, however it merely wasn’t as clear as another bone conduction headphones I’ve examined.

Within the water, that lack of readability and quantity makes the expertise a much less memorable one. They do an okay job of delivering sound for swims, however there’s actually room for enchancment. It’s an identical story utilizing them for calls and should you’re searching for the very best bone conduction headphones for very clear calls, these should not those both.

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