The Bragi Dash Pro headphones offer decent tracking, but real fitness junkies may still want to go for a dedicated sports band or smartwatch, but for those who see fitness tracking as an added bonus to a great sound, the basic fitness tracking capabilities might be helpful. The Dash Pro - What´s Inside; The Dash Pro - Bragi OS; The Dash Pro - The Dash Pro Charger & Battery; Getting Started. The Dash Pro - Quickstart Guide; The Dash Pro - The PerfectFit; The Dash Pro - The Bragi App; The Dash Pro - Bluetooth Pairing Process; The Dash Pro - The EarTouch Interface; Features. The Dash Pro - Listen to Music; The Dash.
Extensive 1-week Review of the dash pro
I received my Dash Pro Tuesday last week on Tuesday and have spent many hours with it every day since then. My experience was great for the most part, but I also detected a few minor issues - thanks to my OCD-like investigating personality ;-)
Here's my report:
First thing: Bluetooth: The connection is great. Absolutely no problems here imho. I didn't experience any stuttering with it running in the park, no matter which pocket I put my iPhone 6S. When I'm at home I can walk across most of my apartment and I need at least two walls in between me and my phone (or MacBook Air) before I experience any dropouts.
Sound: I'm a professional musician by trade (violist) with very finely tuned ears. I have some background in recording techniques as well as electronic music production. I mostly listen to Jazz, but also some electronic music and R&B type stuff as well as classical. I have to say that (after getting the fit right) I'm kinda blown away by how great the Dash Pro actually sound.They sound better than my Shure SE-215 in-ears which are highly regarded and where my daily drivers before. They don't have quite the amount of bass that the Shure have (which I thought was a little too much anyway) but you can still get plenty of thump and they definitely have the upper hand on clarity/details and accurate representation of sound.
![Pro Pro](https://icdn3.digitaltrends.com/image/bragis-the-dash-pro-starkey-inearcu-640x640.jpg)
All of that holds true only once you get a proper seal. I can't stretch how important that is. I already knew (from having molded ear-protection made a long time ago) that my ear canals are WAY wider than most people's and even with the largest tip I couldn't get a proper seal. So I had to take the tips of my Shure in-ears and mod them a bit to make them work with the Dash which ended working up very well. I now get a perfect seal and they are fitting so comfortable and securely that I can wear them all day long without any discomfort. Conclusion: if somebody says they sound tinny and don't have enough bass it just means that they didn't get a proper fit/seal. In terms of volume once I got the proper seal they also get plenty loud. I usually listen to them at two steps under maximum volume. They don’t get blastingly loud though, so people that usually listen at ear-damaging volumes might be forced embrace healthier habits ;-)
Fit: I’m using them with the small silicone sleeve which seemed to fit best with my ears (my ear canal is big, but the ears themselves aren’t). Bragi suggest that you EITHER wear the sleeve for working out (better hold in the ear) OR the tips for just listening (better seal), but I recommend for people to mod the sleeve (once they find the right tip) and cut off the very top (the flap) so that you can use both at the same time to get great hold and seal. In my case I didn’t need to cut the flaps because the Shure tips would just slide over it and sit neatly behind it. If people want to see pictures of what I did, I can probably upload some. You can see that you might need to adjust them a little bit but this just comes with the nature of everybody having slightly different ears and you end up with something that just fits and hold sooo much better than Apple’s AirPods for example. I never had the feeling they would ever move while running for example.
Now to some problems I discovered: I’m not sure wether it’s only my Dash Pro or if it’s a general problem: My left Dash pro’s touch control becomes unresponsive once I’m outside in very bright light. When I turn my left side away from the sun it starts working again, but in direct light, they just don’t react properly. The strange thing is that my right side doesn’t have that problem at all, so it might just be a problem with my unit. Besides that the touch controls work very well once you get the hang of them.
Another thing that I discovered is that the volume balance between my left and right dash isn’t perfect. It’s something that most people would probably never notice, but I can hear it. It becomes obvious once I set my iPhone’s sound output to mono (in accessibility settings) because then it starts sounding like the sound isn’t perfectly in the middle but coming slightly from the right side. I made sure that it wasn’t just a seal problem of the left side and even experimented with putting the right dash into the left ear and vice versa but that reversed the imbalance and so I think it’s the Dash and not some issue with my ears. As it’s the left side that’s softer it could just be that my left Dash has a problem (as with it’s touch in sunlight). I do hope that this is not a dirty trick to boost the battery life (maybe because the left side is using more batteries with it’s other chips and they can extend it that way - just a speculation…). I ordered another pair of Dash Pro for my friend which should arrive in a week and then I’ll be able to tell if it’s a general problem or just my Dash Pro. Anyway this was a pretty easily problem to solve because I can just go into audio settings of my phone (or computer) and shift the balance very slightly to the left. Then they are perfectly balanced for me.
Battery life: I haven’t done any systematic testing on this, but I was using the Dash Pro probably around 8 to 10 hours every day. Just by putting them in the case when I didn’t use them for a moment I never ran into the issue of them running out of juice. I didn't time it exactly but considering how long I was listening to music non-stop 5 hours seems very believable to me. Totally great in that regard imho.
Other thoughts: The audio transparency feature is awesome. It works very well in the sense that music still sounds exactly the same, except that you suddenly hear outside noises - and it’s even directional! And also the windshield option which you activate by another swipe on the left side forward does a great job at reducing wind noises that you’ll hear otherwise when wind is blowing at you. What Bragi calls “super hearing”seems to be implemented by default. High frequencies seem to be boosted quite a bit above normal level, so you feel a little bit like you suddenly have “dog ears”. It probably works better this way to hear sounds or voices through your music, but I also wish they had the option to turn off super-hearing to make it even less apparent that you wear them when you don’t play music. One thing I noticed was that sounds that have a lot of super-high frequency content (like shaking a bunch of keys) create some kind of distortion that sound like a “bitcrusher effect”. But it’s not really unpleasant, more an oddity than an inconvenience.
It’s amazing to take a shower in the morning and listen to music at the same time. The first time I did that felt very surreal.
Using the Dash Pro as a headset for talking on the phone works well, but it’s not as clear as when using the phone the normal way according to people on the other end. It also seems to work much better indoors then outdoors where the sound can bounce back from the walls. When I was talking on the phone outside somebody said I sound like I’m “wrapped in cotton”. But they could still understand me.
I haven’t gone swimming with them yet, but will do that in the next few days and be able to report back.
Wrap-up:
Even with those minor issues I do still recommend the Dash Pro whole-heartedly. I showed them to a few friends and two of them already put in their order because they were so amazed by them. The most important thing for me is sound and they exceeded my expectation in that regard. Bluetooth connection and battery life are great as well and those were probably the biggest concern with the original Dash so I’m glad that the Dash Pro holds it’s promises there.
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