Review
Introduction
The Trekz Titanium is the latest design by AfterShokz for an open ear bluetooth experience. The Trekz Titanium brings many of the features one enjoyed with their prior bone conduction headsets into a new package. The choice of titanium for the construction resolves issues of the flimsy plastic and other materials from prior generations, while bringing an overall better sound quality and snugger fit. The Trekz Titanium connects over Bluetooth 4.0, and boasts a 6 hour battery life.
Inside the Box
Inside the box one finds the Trekz Titanium, USB charger, ear plugs, storage case, and the user manual. The box is a nicely designed square box measuring about seven by seven by four. Opening it may require the handling of a sharp object to break the glue points holding the box together.
Wearing the Trekz Titanium
The Trekz Titanium fits a lot nicer on my head than previous versions of AfterShokz which seemed to slide off. There is a smaller size being developed, but details will not surface until sometime in 2017. The Bone conduction ear pieces slides nicely onto my cheek bones and ed stable while jumping and running.
While wearing the Trekz Titanium, we have three buttons to manipulate. On the left ear piece, one will find the standard action button. Pressing it once will allow one to pause and play their media or other corresponding actions as directed by the app. Pressing and holding the button will prompt Siri, but after you hear the announcement, "Voice Dial.. On the underside of the right arm immediately behind the right ear, we have a covered charging port, and two button. the button closest to the ear with a bump on it is the power and volume up button. The second button is the decrease volume button. These buttons only work as the volume buttons if media is playing or VoiceOver is talking. If no sound is coming through the Trekz Titanium, pressing either of the buttons will announce the battery status.
Initial Setup
Turning on the Trekz Titanium, no lag time transpired between pressing on and hearing the welcome announcement. Immediately following the welcome message was the indication the Trekz Titanium was ready to pair. The entire process to pair with my iPhone only required a couple of seconds, and I probably spent more time swiping, than actually pairing.
Overall Views
As previously stated, the Trekz Titanium scores nicely in the comfort department. The sound quality greatly improved compared to previous versions, and definitely sounds better than cheap Amazon earbuds. While listening to Dr. Dre, voices are clear, but the bass and treble is present but not powerful. I was able to recognize VoiceOver with the rate set to 100% and mostly understand Voice Dream Reader set to 720 words per minute in a quiet office environment. Depending on how the Trekz Titanium is sitting on your cheeks will determine whether it sounds like a can or a decent cheap pair of earbuds. However, you are not purchasing these to obtain a crystal clear musical experience. Sound leakage has been contained, though still present. When using the Trekz Titanium for answering phone calls, your voice is understandable, but not clear. This limits its usability to answer regular calls and dictations.
Overall, I am happy with the purchase so far. After adopting the first couple generations of AfterShokz, the size, weight, balance, and sound quality drove me away. The Trekz Titanium resolves many of the issues, and I am looking forwards to wearing these in numerous situations. The 4 of 5 rating comes from the battery life. While 6 hours is doable, I prefer bluetooth headsets offers 12 hours for multi-day usage without charging. Secondly the issue with the Volume/battery buttons is not explained in user documentation, and required a bit of playing around to figure out.
Edit: I changed the voice quality while talk based on obtaining more feedback about voice quality. The first review came after talking to three individuals for about 5 to 15 minutes a piece, and this change reflects a few more conversations, dictation attempts, and a voice recording demonstrating my voice sounding as it in a can and a potential background sound needing to be explored a bit more. I am not changing the rating until I can verify from AfterShokz if this is a persistent problem or possibly a defect in my headset.
Comments
size
hi I was wondering are they larger then the old after shokz. the old ones were just a little bit to small.
Availability?
Before investigating this headset further i want to know if it's only Aftershokz that sells this particular model? If so, people living in Sweden can forget this model because Aftershokz only sell to the US and Canada. I hope i at least could get them on Amazon because then it would be worth investigating the price tag and at least put it on my wish list.
Size and Availability
Regarding the size, they feel about the same size as the prior generation, but with a little more secure fit. The titanium frames did make a difference for me and their comfort. Based on this, I am hesitant to guess how your experience might vary from the past. As for availability, I purchased through the crowd funding campaign, and not sure about their international sales. Since the campaign ended, one can only pre-order from the After Shokz website.
Size improvement and general thoughts after trying them out
I've had a pair of Trekz to try out for the last couple of days. The sound quality has definitely improved over the bluez as is the build quality. The strap around the back of the head is smaller than the plastic one on the bluez, closer to the sport version actually, but as it's titanium its obviously of far better build quality. I've made standard calls and Facetime audio calls with no problem at all and sound quality is great as I'm told it is on the receiving end too. Siri works well also though dictation could be better but maybe that's my Scottish accent that's the issue there! The only thing I haven't managed to do yet is the triple tap to go back one song when playing music. One tap play or pause and two presses skip forward is no problem but so far three skips forward then pauses. I'm assuming the triple press is a feature a la the standard apple iPhone earphones. For me though the most important improvement is the size. Although the sports fitted me fine, I didn't want a cable and as I have a larger than average head the bluez didn't fit at all. These are slightly larger plus as they are titanium they have just a bit more give than the plastic blues and although they are still a snug fit I can wear them comfortably for a few hours, plus I'm sure they will bed in more over time like a new pair of shoes would. Overall I'd say these are the best pair of Aftershokz so far and a worthy purchase, though they are around £20 dearer in the uk than the blues but worth it in my opinion. HTH
out site US and canada
out site US and canada, you can contact aftershokz on contact us page, IM in indonesia, close to my country is singapore thay saled.
not yet available on my country
VoiceOver Latency
Hello,
I was just wondering, based off of the Aftershokz website, the Trekz Titanium are using Bluetooth v4.1 and was wondering if there were any latency with VoiceOver when touching the screening and hearing VoiceOver in the headset?
This is a reason why I stayed away from using Bluetooth headsets that used Bluetooth v3 or older as there was always that half second lag that, after a while, drove me nuts. I bought the Sports and do enjoy them, but as anyone else, the cable is starting to get in the way.
Like I said, the site says that the Trekz Titanium use Bluetooth v4.1 and hopefully with this version, the latency issue has been resolved and that the time between touching the screen and hearing VoiceOver is instantaneous.
Thanks!
Bluetooth 4.0
Hi, Bluetooth 4.0 and above have resolved the latency issues. Actually, to get technical, the issues were resolved in Bluetooth 3.0+HS, but almost nothing actually used the HS spec so we didn't get the benefits. Go with Bluetooth 4.0 or higher and you won't have any lag, though both your device and headset must support 4.0 or later. If you have an older iPhone, for example a 4, you won't get the benefit of Bluetooth 4.0 even if your headset does support it. Any reasonably-modern iPhone will do 4.0 without a hitch.
Great on Bluetooth
Glad to hear that, I have an iPhone 6 Plus, so there is no worries there on Bluetooth versions.
Thanks!
microphone quality?
I was just wondering, would anyone be willing to make a small voice memo with these things to see how the quality of the built in mics is? I'm thinking about getting a set, primarily just because of the open nature of the headset but I'm just curious about the quality of the microphone if I call someone with these things.
Thanks.
also just as a side note for the OP of this review, not sure if review updates are possible but there is indeed a newer size out now, it's smaller than this one but not sure exactly how much smaller it is since I have neither
Microphone quality
I got these headphones on Monday, and been doing some testing, I can tell you that the microphone quality is quite bad, it isn't the key selling point of this headset, however, I won't expecting the quality to be this bad, the overall phone call quality from the phone ear piece or the speaker is better than the quality of the microphone, or at least that's the impression I got from the tests I carried out.
No Skip Backwards
I finally got my pair this week and so far so good. There is barely any latency and response is just as quick as when using headphones that plug in the headphone jack.
The only question I have is whether or not you can skip backwards when listening to music? I know if you double click, the music skips forward to the next song, but if you do a triple click, it doesn't skip backwards. In fact, it skips forward and pauses the music. Neither is there mention in the manual on how to do this.
Perhaps someone out there knows how to skip back, perhaps there is a little trick to make it work. Just thought I would ask.
The sound difference when connected to iPhone and Mac
Hi! I noticed one thing. When these headphones are connected to Mac they sound just perfect! But when they are connected to iPhone I notice that some things are cut off from the sound, like lows and mids are cut. I have to make a little bit louder to hear some things when I am at the noizy environment. Why does it happen? I am using an iPhone 8 with iOs 13.1.3 installed. Is it normal that there is such a sound difference between connection to mac and iPhone?
Shokz Volume Outdoors
When I am indoors the bone conducting headphones sound just fine. However, when I am outside, they can be a bit low. I have tried to increase the volume on the headset as well as volume on the phone. Does anybody know any tricks or hacks to get the volume higher?