New earSHOTS Action Headphones Just the Shot

New earSHOTS action headphones are just the shot with a propietary magnetic ear clip system so they never fall off says our multi-tasking tester Steve Leeder.

I seem to go through stages of wanting to ski with music or not and riding my bike is usually just a no way cause I never have headphones that will stay in my ear but when I was sent a pair of earshot’s a little while back I figured it was definitely time to get back into it.

Opening up the box the earSHOTS seemed kind of big but they looked cool so I was conflicted. I jumped on the website and did a little bit of research and got really excited.

earSHOTS started like most other very cool products, a smart person, Kiwi James Bell-Booth, was training for a race, the challenging T42 through Tongariro National Park and was always getting frustrated with his headphones falling out and always needing to be readjusted.

I mean, I guess those are the major reasons I don’t – didn’t! – ride with tunes. 

His idea was to add magnets to the earphones so once you put them on they don’t move. Seems like a good idea.

First thing was to make sure I could actually use them when I got to the trailhead, so I synced up my phone and played a bunch of music and had my girlfriend call me a couple times to make sure I could answer and hang up.

With the click of a button all that was done really quickly, like easier than most things. Right away I was impressed with the fit.  I have either weird or tiny ear holes cause I actually can’t get many earphones to fit very comfortable at all and in turn usually opt for big headphones or some built in system.

My current MTB trail helmet covers my ears, so when I pulled it on the earSHOTS fell off right away and I thought “Oh great not even going to get to try them”.

But I was able to push them up into place after I put my helmet on and everything was cool. I wasn’t able to blare my music super loud but that’s probably a good thing, I should be able to know what’s going on around me as well.

As soon as I was onto trail the real testing began, rock gardens to drop to jump line.  This should bounce anything out of place if its going to move and it didn’t.  I didn’t have to adjust them even a little bit. 

The sound was very clear, I had one phone call while riding and I could easily hear everything the other person was saying, remembering what they said was a different story but we will blame that on me not the earSHOTS.

The inbuilt microphone works fine for people to hear you as well.

After a couple hours on trail there was still plenty of life and that’s actually one of the rad things about them.  The case is also a charging dock.  If you give the whole set up a full charge, you’ve got 20 hours of riding.

The actual earSHOTS only hold 4 hours (totally enough for any ride I’m going on) but when you get back you chuck them back in the case on they charge again 4 more times so that’s awesome, for a road trip as well when you’re swapping charging phones and everything else.

You can also use one ear only in ‘Solo Mode’.

After this ride I feel I’ll be riding with tunes for a while now and solo mission into the mountains this winter are going to be awesome. Maybe I’ll dance up the skin track.

I guess the only thing I will be interested to see in the winter is if the cold will affect the battery life of the case for recharging.

I love finding cool new tech that actually works better than the old stuff and not just something made smaller or added a few gimmicks to sell another something the World doesn’t need. 

Training in the gym, mega climbs in the mountains or even as hands free device while driving earSHOTS are pretty awesome and will be staying in my gear kit.

Check out more and buy a set – they are only available online – from the earSHOTS site here. They cost $NZD 169.75 with free shipping in NZ or Australia.