It’s no surprise that now even earphones have become “smart”. The Dash is Bragi’s newly launched wireless “smart earphones”. It does more than connect to your music player by Bluetooth; it has a built-in drive that you can store music on (meaning you can take it anywhere without lugging a phone or music player around); it has a fitness tracker that responds by voice feedback and records heart rate, steps, duration, calories and distance; and can be fully controlled and customised through an app that’s available on the App Store, Google Play and Microsoft.
In all fairness, for this review, I did not have the opportunity to give the fitness functions a go. So here’s my 10 minutes with The Dash at my desk:
review by Adele Chan
SOUND
— The mids are clear and vocals come out beautifully.
— The lows are a bit muddy.
— Overall sound is balanced. It’s not as good as the sound you’ll get from B&O’s, but it’s definitely better than anything from an Apple or Samsung.
PROS
— There’s a 4GB in-built drive in the in-ear units, so you can actually store music to play direct from the earphones. That’s about 800 songs without the need for a smartphone or MP3 player!
— You can check the battery level by shaking the earphones and seeing what colour it shows (red is low, blue is full).
— The earphones fit comfortably in the ears. I can shake and shake my head and they do not fall out.
— The Dash detects immediately when the right unit is pulled out of the ear and stops the music. Music resumes when the right unit is put back in.
— It’s waterproof. Wow!
— It offers decent noise isolation.
CONS
— The sound on the left earphone kept going in and out. I think it was due to the angle I put it in my ear. It’s annoying and I needed to adjust the angle or touch the left unit to get the sound going again on that side.
— The tapping sequence to get from one command to the next takes getting used to. It’s not intuitive; you need to study the manual if you don’t want to end up frustrated.
— The maximum volume could go higher. I can’t imagine using this in an airplane; everything will sound so soft.
— The whole unit with the charger and sleeve is heavy and a tad bulky. I wouldn’t be able to slip it into a clutch bag, much less the pockets of my skinny jeans.
VERDICT
I’d be very happy if I received these as a gift. They’re fancy. The earphones feel solid and well-built. The price though… I wouldn’t buy these myself; the price doesn’t quite justify the quality of the audio. I need good audio when I listen to music, and would rather put my money towards the wireless B&O earphones — though they don’t fit in the ears as well as these Bragi’s, and have a wire to connect the left and right earbuds. BUT, if you’re not an audiophile and don’t expect top-of-the-line audio quality, the $428 price tag will make you the envy of your friends because these earphones look slick, and you can take them swimming!
The Dash by Bragi, $428, available at truewireless.sg and most leading audio and consumer electronics retail stores in Singapore now.
