Tayogo Waterproof Headphones
Tayogo 8GB Waterproof MP3 Player Bone Conduction Bluetooth Swimming Headphones
~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 2019-10-14 |
Tayogo 8GB Waterproof MP3 Player Bone Conduction Bluetooth Swimming Headphones Things to know about these.
This product claims to be:
- (1) Bluetooth Headphones
- (2) FM Player
- (3) Bone Conduction Bluetooth Swimming MP3 Player
They suck at #1 and #2, and are only mediocre at #3... but I bought them for #3, so that's good enough for me.
- (1) Bluetooth doesn't work underwater. And the antenna is on the right ear, I breathe to my left, so while swimming if my head goes under, or I turn my head to breathe, the music cuts out. So as underwater bloothtooth headphones they're useless. This isn't their fault and bluetooth doesn't carry well in water. But it is a problem with their marketing. They should explain that they can only be used in the pool for people that keep their head out at all times, or if strap your bluetooth phone or watch to the back of your goggles, not more than 6" away. Above water, they're fine. But that doesn't meet my use-case.
- (2) As FM they get few channels if I'm outside, changing stations is lame (one channel at a time), and at my indoor pool gets too much interference from the building: all I got was static. Useless. Outside, if you're in a strong signal area, they might work OK.
- (3) But I bought them for #3: underwater MP3 player. And at that, it's pretty good... kinda.
Underwater earphones would fall out while swimming and I couldn't get a good fit. I used a swim cap over them to hold them in, but all that pressure on the ear buds and ear, gave me sort of swimmers ear and hurt. So that's why I bought a bone transmission that wasn't pressure on my ear.
These mostly stay on without the swim cap... if looped inside my goggles. Without that, they fall off. Or I can use a swim cap (or cut it into a large rubber band by cutting the top off the swim cap) and that holds these in place. And it doesn't put pressure on my ear. So it does work for what I need it to.
The music is not loud, even at max volume and with ear plugs -- but it's better than no music at all, or having my ear buds fall out or getting irritated from holding them in. So I'm happy with the purchase and the device -- as long as you ignore the first two functions that it claims to do, but doesn't do poorly.
That being said:
- the manual is written in Chinesenglish (something slightly better than Google Translate, but only a little). Companies that are too cheap to pay a native speaker to translate always concern me.
- They have an iPhone Application for it, but the requires some lame "will mail you a verification code" process that is clear as mud. And the code expires after 5 minutes, and they never got me the code in time.
- I had problems and emailed their support on Friday night... and they're closed for the weekend(?) so no response until Monday, with a lame code that would only work for 5 minutes, and they sent it at 12:08am. Their email you a code thing to create an account is dumb and annoying. That being said, if you ignore their app, it works fine.
- What I did is just plug the earphones into my laptop/desktop and it mounts like a USB stick and I just copied the MP3's in that way (instead of via their mobile app), and that works. Probably better, since I don't have to have two copies of my songs filling my mobile device.
So it is a mediocre implementation of something I want... and it's better than what I had. So despite some spotty support, a poor mobile app design, unclear marketing (on what the product features are), 2 of 3 features that don't work well (in the water)... but it does what I need in the 3rd feature, and that's good enough.
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Tags: Technology Reviews Swimming
