Audio-Technica has announced a new version of its open-ear cartilage conduction headphones the company says deliver improved sound and better battery life. The headphones use a technology that’s similar to bone conduction headphones from companies like Shokz and Suunto but instead deliver sound through the softer cartilage around your ears. The approach still leaves the ear canal open so you can hear what’s going on around you, but the headphones are more comfortable to wear and offer better sound separation.
The Audio-Technica ATH-CC500BT2 are currently available in the UK for £119.00 and the rest of Europe for €139. That’s about $145 to $150, but the company hasn’t said if or when they might be available in the US.
The technology behind the headphones is based on research first shared in 2004 by Professor Hiroshi Hosoi, who’s now the president of the Nara Medical University in Japan. Instead of sending sound to the eardrum as vibrations passing through the bones in the skull, vibrations from the ATH-CC500BT2 travel through cartilage causing the wall of the ear canal to vibrate and generate sound waves that eventually reach the cochlea.
Cartilage conduction headphones require less pressure against the head than bone conducting headphones to effectively transmit sound, potentially making them more comfortable to wear for longer periods. The technology is also better at producing stereo sound, Audio-Technica claims, because bone conduction headphones tend to merge left and right signals in the cranial cavity.
The most compelling reason to choose the Audio-Technica ATH-CC500BT2 could be battery life. The company says you can listen to music or podcasts for up to 20 hours between charges or use them to make calls for around 10 hours. For comparison, the bone conducting Shokz OpenRun Pro (which don’t feature an additional air conduction speaker like the newer OpenRun Pro 2) only offer up to 10 hours. However, the OpenRun Pro feature smaller battery modules on their headband and weigh 29 grams — compared to 32 grams for Audio-Technica’s headphones.
The ATH-CC500BT2 are charged using a standard USB-C cable and plugging them in for just 10 minutes when they’re dead gets you about two hours of use. There’s no ANC, but they do include AI-powered noise reduction technology designed to filter out unwanted background noise, including wind, picked up by the microphone while you’re making a call.
The headphones are IPX4 water-resistant so you can wear them out in the rain or during especially sweaty workouts, include Bluetooth multipoint connectivity so you can easily switch between using them with two different devices, and support both Siri and Google Assistant for voice commands and receiving audible notifications.
