Shokz OpenDots 2 Review: Tiny Earbuds That Make a Surprisingly Big Argument for Open-Ear Audio

Most earbuds spend their lives trying to isolate you from everything happening around you. Shokz has spent years doing almost exactly the opposite.

The OpenDots 2 are the latest example of that philosophy, except rather than wrapping around your ear like a traditional pair of Shokz or disappearing into your ear canal like AirPods, these tiny things basically clamp themselves onto the side of your ear. It sounds slightly ridiculous until you realise how useful it can be.

They are designed for people who want music, podcasts and calls without becoming completely oblivious to traffic, coworkers, gym announcements or the person desperately trying to tell you that you’ve left your coffee on the roof of your car.

What makes the OpenDots 2 particularly interesting is that they aren’t just being pitched as specialised running earbuds. The month-long testing material supplied for this review covered everything from work and phone calls through to regular running and marathon training, and the OpenDots gradually became one of the most frequently used pairs in that rotation.

That is quite a compliment for something that looks like a pair of tiny futuristic earrings.

At A$339, though, they aren’t cheap. Shokz is asking proper premium-earbud money, so being clever and comfortable isn’t enough. They also need to sound good, stay attached to your ears and avoid becoming incredibly annoying after the novelty wears off.

Design / First Impressions

The OpenDots 2 use a clip-on open-ear design. One section sits close to the opening of your ear while the other rests behind it, joined by Shokz’s flexible JointArc structure. That means nothing actually goes inside the ear canal, which immediately changes how these feel compared with conventional wireless earbuds.

Each earbud weighs just 6.4g, so despite their slightly unusual appearance, there isn’t much hardware hanging off your ear. Shokz uses contoured silicone around the parts making contact with your skin, while a flexible nickel-titanium component inside the JointArc helps the earbuds adapt to different ear shapes.

The cleverest piece of design, however, might be something far less glamorous.

There is no dedicated left or right earbud.

Either OpenDot can recognise which side of your head it is sitting on, so you simply grab one from the case and put it on whichever ear you fancy. Shokz calls this Dynamic Ear Detection. More importantly, both earbuds can be placed into either side of the charging case.

That sounds hilariously insignificant when written down. It isn’t.

Wireless earbuds have been around long enough that we’ve apparently just accepted the ritual of picking up the wrong one, rotating it several times, discovering it doesn’t fit that ear and then quietly questioning our intelligence. OpenDots 2 remove the entire problem.

The charging case is also impressively compact considering the strange shape of the earbuds inside it. The case itself weighs 38.8g, while the complete package is approximately 51.6g. That makes it genuinely easy to throw into a pocket, backpack or running belt rather than treating it as another object that requires its own postcode.

Visually, I also think Shokz has handled the clip-on concept rather well. Open-ear products can occasionally look like you’ve strapped miniature Bluetooth headsets from 2008 around your skull. These are much cleaner and more discreet.

Key Features / Specs

There is considerably more happening inside the OpenDots 2 than their size suggests.

The important specifications include:

• Weight: 6.4g per earbud
• Battery: Up to 10 hours per charge, 40 hours including the case
• Quick charging: Five minutes for up to two hours of music playback
• Charging: USB-C and Qi wireless charging
• Water resistance: IP57 earbuds, IP54 charging case
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 6.1 with Multipoint
• Audio: Bassphere 2.0, Dolby Audio and custom EQ options
• Microphones: Three-microphone system including a bone-conduction microphone
• Controls: Tap and force-sensor pinch gestures
• Colours: Black, Grey and Pearl White

The battery figures are particularly useful because these aren’t really earbuds you should need to micromanage. Shokz claims up to 10 hours of music from the buds themselves and 40 hours once the charging case is included. If you somehow manage to run them flat immediately before leaving home, five minutes in the case can provide up to another two hours of playback.

Multipoint pairing also allows the OpenDots 2 to stay connected to two devices simultaneously, which makes considerably more sense on a pair of earbuds intended to move between work and exercise. You can have them connected to a laptop during the day and your phone alongside it without repeatedly entering Bluetooth menus like it’s 2011.

The Shokz app provides the usual battery information and firmware controls, but there’s worthwhile audio customisation too. Four preset EQ modes are available, alongside manual adjustment and Smart EQ, while Dolby Audio can also be enabled through the app.

And I would enable Dolby Audio.

It costs you a little additional battery life according to the supplied testing, but the improvement in sound is one of the strongest arguments for the OpenDots 2.

Performance

Open-ear earbuds have an obvious acoustic problem. They are trying to deliver convincing music into your ears while deliberately leaving your ears exposed to everything else.

That is rather like trying to have an intimate conversation in the middle of a Bunnings sausage sizzle.

Shokz’s solution involves its Bassphere 2.0 system, which uses two custom 11.8mm drivers working together, alongside MirrorPitch and DirectPitch technologies intended to improve bass response, direct sound towards the ear and reduce leakage. Shokz also says its redesigned diaphragm significantly reduces distortion compared with the previous design.

The supplied testing suggests that the improvement is noticeable in exactly the area where open-ear products traditionally struggle: bass.

The OpenDots 2 hold themselves together. Bass has punch and, crucially, doesn’t seem to fall apart as the volume rises.

That doesn’t mean physics has packed its bags and gone home.

A good sealed in-ear headphone can still create greater isolation and deeper low-frequency impact because it has the enormous advantage of actually sealing your ear canal. OpenDots 2 don’t. They are deliberately allowing environmental sound to reach you, and there will always be a trade-off attached to that.

But within the open-ear category, the sound appears to have moved beyond the point where you merely tolerate it because the design is convenient. That’s important. I wouldn’t want to spend A$339 on earbuds whose main audio achievement is “surprisingly acceptable considering the circumstances.”

Dolby Audio also seems worth using rather than becoming one of those features everyone leaves disabled after the first afternoon. In the supplied testing, enabling it gave bass-heavy music noticeably more impact and helped the OpenDots 2 sound fuller.

Call quality is another important part of the upgrade. Each earbud combines two air-conduction microphones with a bone-conduction microphone, alongside adaptive beamforming and AI noise reduction intended to isolate the wearer’s voice.

During the month-long usage represented in the supplied testing, calls weren’t met with complaints about voice clarity. That’s a much more useful result than simply staring at the number of microphones and assuming three must automatically be better than two.

What It’s Like to Use

This is where the OpenDots 2 make the strongest case for themselves.

Putting something around the side of your ear rather than inside it takes a little adjustment mentally, but once they’re fitted properly, you don’t have the plugged-up sensation that conventional silicone-tipped earbuds create. Your ear canal remains completely open.

For office use, walking, commuting and general everyday listening, I can see that becoming addictive remarkably quickly.

You can have a podcast running while still hearing someone speak to you. You can walk through a city without removing one earbud every time you cross a road. For runners, the attraction is even more obvious because environmental awareness isn’t simply convenient when you’re sharing roads and paths with cars, bikes, dogs and people who stop dead in the middle of footpaths for reasons known only to themselves.

Security was put through a surprisingly aggressive set of tests in the material supplied for this review. The OpenDots 2 stayed fitted during vigorous head movement and a run without requiring adjustment. They even remained attached during the particularly dangerous athletic activity known as trying to remove a shirt while running.

That last one sounds silly, but it’s actually a decent test. Earbuds that survive repetitive motion can still get knocked loose when clothing brushes against them.

Shokz also rates the earbuds themselves to IP57, meaning sweat and wet weather shouldn’t be particularly frightening, while the case carries an IP54 rating.

There is one important distinction, though. Secure enough for running does not automatically mean they are the perfect workout earbuds for everyone.

The entire point of the OpenDots 2 is awareness. That’s brilliant when you’re outside. It becomes considerably less brilliant in a loud gym where someone has decided that everyone within 40 metres desperately needs to hear a remix of Pitbull at industrial volume.

There is no traditional active noise cancellation here. That’s intentional rather than an oversight, because sealing you away from your surroundings would rather defeat the purpose of the design.

For quieter workouts, running and situations where awareness matters, that works beautifully. For noisy indoor environments, I’d still want another pair of earbuds available.

The interchangeable left/right design also becomes increasingly sensible in daily use. You don’t need to look at microscopic markings before putting them on, and you can’t place the wrong earbud into the wrong charging slot because there effectively isn’t one.

It’s a tiny quality-of-life feature, but those are often the ones you notice most after several weeks.

What I Liked

The biggest thing I like about the OpenDots 2 is that Shokz hasn’t tried to solve imaginary problems.

The improvements are concentrated in areas that actually matter: sound, controls, calls, charging and everyday usability.

Bass performance appears to be one of the clearest generational improvements. Open-ear earbuds don’t need to compete directly with massive over-ear headphones to be successful, but they do need enough low-end presence that your favourite music doesn’t suddenly sound as though the bass guitarist called in sick.

The secure fit is another major strength. A clip-on earbud immediately raises the question of whether it’ll stay attached once you start moving, and the testing evidence here is reassuring. Running didn’t require constant repositioning or babysitting.

I also really like the lack of designated left and right earbuds. It is exactly the sort of feature nobody puts near the top of a specification sheet, yet it improves the product every single time you pick it up.

Then there’s the case. Small charging cases make a bigger difference than manufacturers sometimes seem to realise. If earbuds are supposed to become part of your everyday carry, making the case enormous is a brilliant way of ensuring they spend most of their life sitting on a desk.

Finally, the OpenDots 2 don’t force you to choose between listening to something and remaining part of the world around you. For work, walking and outdoor exercise, that can be far more useful than another pair of earbuds competing to see which can make a passing bus sound least like a passing bus.

What Could Be Better

I still don’t love touch controls.

Apparently the consumer electronics industry remains determined to make us stroke, squeeze and caress our devices when a small button would frequently work better.

Shokz has improved things here. The OpenDots 2 use a force-sensitive pinch control for their main functions, while tapping can also be configured. The previous rear tap interaction has effectively been removed from the default control setup, which should help reduce accidental commands, and the pinch gesture gives audible feedback when registered.

That’s better.

I would still take a proper tactile button.

Physical controls are easier to locate when moving, more predictable with wet hands and considerably more glove-friendly. The pinch system is a reasonable compromise, but it’s still a compromise.

The other limitation is simply inherent to the concept.

Because your ears remain open, the OpenDots 2 cannot isolate you from noisy surroundings in the way conventional ANC earbuds can. Bose makes the same concession with its Ultra Open Earbuds, which also deliberately omit noise cancellation.

That means trains, aircraft cabins, loud gyms and busy indoor environments can overwhelm your audio more easily. Turning the volume up can compensate only so far before you’re defeating half the reason for using open-ear earbuds in the first place.

I therefore wouldn’t want the OpenDots 2 to be my only headphones.

I’d want these alongside something with proper isolation.

And at A$339, that becomes a slightly awkward sentence.

Price and Competition

The Shokz OpenDots 2 cost A$339 in Australia at the time of writing. That places them firmly in premium wireless-earbud territory rather than the “interesting little running accessory” category.

Within Shokz’s own range, the first product I’d look at is actually the OpenDots Air. Those cost A$219, a substantial A$120 less, while retaining the basic clip-on open-ear concept. The OpenDots 2 justify their higher price with upgraded Dolby Audio, Bassphere 2.0, a three-microphone system including a bone-conduction mic, wireless charging, IP57 water resistance and additional tracking features.

If your priority is simply comfortable open-ear listening for podcasts, casual music and commuting, saving the A$120 on the Air makes plenty of sense.

If you’re buying this design because you intend to use it constantly, particularly for calls and music, the OpenDots 2 are easier to justify. Better audio becomes considerably more important when you’ve got the things attached to your head for several hours every day.

Then there’s the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds, probably the most obvious external rival. Bose also uses a cuff-style open-ear design, provides physical button controls and offers up to seven hours of playback per charge. The Australian Bose store currently has them reduced to A$299.95, although its published regular pricing is higher.

That temporary Bose discount makes the decision more interesting. I’d strongly consider the Bose if physical controls are a priority or you prefer its particular approach to spatial audio. The Shokz counter with longer claimed earbud battery life, stronger IP57 protection and that wonderfully simple interchangeable-earbud setup.

The larger question is whether you actually need open-ear audio.

If most of your listening happens on aircraft, public transport or in noisy offices, I’d spend the money on excellent ANC earbuds instead.

But if you’re constantly switching between work, walking, exercise, phone calls and situations where remaining aware of your surroundings matters, the OpenDots 2 begin making much more sense.

Who Is It For?

Runners are probably the easiest recommendation.

The combination of an open ear canal, secure fit, low weight and IP57 protection makes a lot of sense outdoors. You retain awareness of traffic and other people without resorting to running with a single conventional earbud installed, which always looks slightly like you’ve misplaced the other one.

They’re also an interesting option for people working in environments where completely shutting out the room isn’t desirable. The ability to listen to something while remaining available to coworkers is one of those features that sounds mundane until you’ve spent years repeatedly pulling earbuds out every time someone approaches your desk.

Frequent callers also benefit from the upgraded microphone setup, while Bluetooth Multipoint makes moving between a work computer and phone considerably easier.

I wouldn’t recommend them first to someone whose priority is maximum sound isolation, huge bass or travelling on aircraft. That’s simply asking a product designed around environmental awareness to do precisely the opposite of what it was built for.

I’d also think carefully if you’re purely curious about clip-on earbuds. At A$339, curiosity has become an expensive hobby. The A$219 OpenDots Air gives you a cheaper entrance into essentially the same style of wearable.

But if you already know that open-ear audio suits the way you live, the additional refinement of the OpenDots 2 becomes easier to appreciate.

Verdict

The Shokz OpenDots 2 are one of those products that make far more sense after you stop judging them like conventional earbuds.

They aren’t trying to seal your ears, annihilate background noise and trap you in a private Dolby-powered bunker. They are trying to make audio fit around the rest of your day.

And the evidence from the supplied month-long testing suggests they’ve become remarkably good at it.

The fit held through running without constant adjustment. Audio quality, particularly bass performance at higher volumes, has taken a useful step forward. The microphone system proved dependable for regular calling, and little touches such as interchangeable earbuds and the tiny charging case make the OpenDots 2 more convenient than their odd shape initially suggests.

They’re not flawless. I still prefer real buttons, open-ear audio remains vulnerable to noisy environments, and A$339 is enough money that I’d want to be absolutely sure this style of earbud suits me before buying.

But I understand why a pair like this could slowly start replacing conventional earbuds for everyday use.

That’s the clever part of the OpenDots 2. They don’t necessarily sound better than every sealed earbud, isolate better or offer more technology. Instead, they remove one of the biggest irritations of wearing headphones all day: the feeling that listening to something requires disconnecting yourself from everything else.

For running, walking, working and everyday listening, I’d put them near the top of the clip-on category.

Just keep your ANC earbuds around for the plane.