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2 Live Crew with kids in the room: Airdrive headphones review

Do you want to listen to music or a movie while still hearing someone talking …

Many headphones seek to make their mark by cutting you off from the rest of the world. Canalphones block out ambient noise and allow you to focus purely on the sounds you're hearing from your laptop, iPod, or other music device. The Airdrives go in a different direction, bringing you the sound from your device while allowing you to continue to hear what's going on around you.

It's an intriguing concept for runners or parents who need—or simply want—to listen to something no one else can hear while still paying attention to ambient sounds. Right now I'm watching Blade Runner on my laptop and listening to the dialog while writing this; my son just asked for popcorn to go along with the kids' viewing of The Last Mimzy. I'm starting to see the draw here.

We've looked at other devices that were supposed to deliver this sort of experience, but they came up short. The Airdrives sit on the outside of your ears and send the sound into them. That leaves your ears open to hearing other things, and it also means that the experience is comfortable; this is a product you can leave on for hours without getting a headache or feeling like your ears are being stressed. That's rare with even expensive canalphones.

The sound coming out of the Airdrives is accurate; it's a simple thing to pick out voices and notes and some small details, but you lose fidelity and bass response using these instead of your favorite set of earcans or canalphones. There simply isn't a way to get sound into your ear while keeping both the highs and the lows without some degree of noise isolation.

The design of the model we were given to review is novel: the buds rest outside of your ears and the cable loops around back to keep the fit snug. It takes a few minutes of fiddling to get them to fit perfectly, but once you get used to it you can slide them on and off with little trouble. They stay snug even during heavy activity, such as running or biking. There are other models with hard plastic supports for a different fit, but we can't speak to how comfortable that design is.

For $32 this is a product that is perfect for the small market of people who need to hear what's going on around them while listening to a private audio source. R-rated movies while the kids watch cartoons? Music while working out so you can hear people talking to you in the gym? Making a snack while playing attention to Activision's earnings call?

OK, that last one may be a bit specialized, but if any of those situations sounded like something you would be interested in (and you don't mind losing some audio fidelity to get it) this is a very good buy.

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Channel Ars Technica