Suunto Wing Review My partner and I have had a couple of weeks to review the Suunto Wing headphones and compare them to the SHOKZ equivalents we often use. TL;DR - Compared to SHOKZ, Suunto Wing is safer, looks cooler, is comfier, sounds better, is more innovative and is a bit more expensive. I guess you can sense where this review is heading, if you want to read more about the Suunto Wing, a summary follows and here are the manufacturer's details on Amazon. Launch Price: GBP169, Eur199, USD199 [wp-review id="84829"] How Do I Charge Suunto Wing? Suunto Wing is not QI charged. It comes with a power bank that itself can be charged from your mains supply. An electrical contact is made between the Wing and the charger when the two are placed together A 10-minute charge is claimed to give a 3-hour playback time. [gallery size="medium" columns="2" ids="84839,84843"] Alternative Bone Conducting Headphones I've only previously used Shokz (USA, UK) branded headphones but there are many alternatives ranging from $50 to $200 from these companies: Philips, Tayogo, YouthWhisper, Naenka, Haylou, Sanoto, UCGOU, Echaar and Creative. Follow the links if you want to learn more about them, perhaps only Creative & Philips will be trustworthy alternatives. We both found Suunto Wing more comfortable to wear. I guess head shapes differ. [gallery size="medium" ids="84842,84840,84841"] Suunto Wing - How do the controls work? The smart controls are simple: Two nods answer a call whereas two shakes of the head reject a call. Whilst playing music, two shakes skip a song. That's it. It works. No doubt there is scope to add more gesture controls there but that does the basics. The two black buttons on the underside of the right speaker are volume controls and the red button on the left stops and starts music. Press and hold the front of those black buttons to turn the headphones on/off. The buttons on the right side aren't buttons but rather HD microphones. [gallery size="medium" ids="84851,84852,84854,84853,84855,84856"] What light modes does Suunto Wing have? There are 3 red LEDs on each side of Suunto Wing. They're bright enough to get someone's attention...just. When in use they lower the battery life, I don't know how much by. Then there are three light modes - constant, flash and SOS-flash. I can't tell the difference between the SOS mode and the flash mode. When is a flash an SOS flash? IDK. Suunto Wing vs Suunto Sonic Suunto Sonic is 10g lighter and Eur50 cheaper. For the lower price, you get inferior IP55 waterproofing and none of the smart features ie lights or gesture control. There is a Lime colour option and Sonic isn't as cooly branded as the red Suunto Wing. [gallery size="medium" columns="2" ids="84838,84846"] Suunto Sonic is available from November 2023. https://the5krunner.com/2023/10/13/suunto-race-review/ Take Out Suunto Wind is priced sensibly compared to the upper end of SHOKZ range but set aside that is the greater brand awareness and trust with the SHOKZ brand. That said, Suunto will be trusted by its existing customer base, albeit little-known beyond that. Other than capitalising on the brand name, what Suunto's new owners might be trying to do here is to get a foothold in other sport-related tech markets to boost the awareness and sales of core Suunto products. I guess they also want to make money from these headphones and I assume that Suunto's owner already has similar products in its portfolio of companies. Apart from a chest strap what other running tech products could Suunto realistically make some money from? I'm struggling to think of meaningful alternatives - a foot pod would be one but Stryd is a patented product as a power pod so they can't do that. Anyway, it's a well-functioning and good-sounding product that will see our SHOKZ headphones returned to the cupboard. It remains to be seen if the pricing is right for wider acceptance in the market, it might be too high but this is the kind of product that can be readily discounted in sales. Price and Availability Launch Price: GBP169, Eur199, USD199 https://the5krunner.com/2020/11/23/jabra-elite-85t-review-comparison/ https://the5krunner.com/2018/06/20/aftershokz-trekz-air-review/
