The Dash - Wireless Earphones That ALMOST Didn't Suck
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,850 words · ~9 min read
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oh no another Kickstarter project that
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lonus backed way back in holy crap March
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2014 with an estimated delivery date of
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January
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2015 all righty then well at least they
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delivered something which is more than a
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lot of kickstarters ever do this finally
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is the dash from bregy which raised over
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$3 million on the promise of being the world's first truly wireless inear
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headphones let's see how they did shall
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we tunnel bear is the easy to ouse VPN
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I give braggy full marks for packaging and presentation but companies that
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create successful Kickstarter campaigns are usually good at that stuff even if
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they suck at everything else the dash comes in an attractive box that opens up
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to reveal a Charming booklet style quick start guide that's built right into it
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then small compartments containing the small medium and large fit sleeves the
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extra small is pre-installed the magnetic charger cradle with the
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earphones pre-installed in it a sliding aluminum cover that fit very snugly over
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the charger with a clever slit to peek at the charge indicator lights on the
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earphones that can be activated by shaking them and finally a clip to keep
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from losing your earphones along with a USB cable cool and it gets cooler
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actually when you put them in your ear they start automatically talking to you
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hi I'm the dash explaining that the
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right side is for communication and music while the left
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is for activity tracking then they tell you to hold the right side until you
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hear the pairing sound which I never heard but when I fired up my iPhone it
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showed up in the list and connected in a couple of seconds making it a very cool
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and seamless experience out of the box and the goodness continues their Android
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app is well rated at over four stars with 5,000 downloads but it's the iOS
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one that I ended up using which was good as well when you open it up there's a
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slick animation for how to insert the earphones correct and instructions for
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connecting the app to the dash by holding the left ear phone for a few
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seconds one frustrating thing is you
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have to avoid using the earphones with any other apps in order to get the full
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functionality of the braggy apps so you can't make changes on the Fly while
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you're listening to music then you have to eject them from the Bry app once
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you're finished configuring not knowing this caused a glitch a couple of times
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where even after ejecting I could control music playback supposedly but I
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couldn't actually hear anything without refreshing the earphones by putting them
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into the charging cable weird anyway from inside the app you can select
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running cycling and swimming for the activity tracker you can also do it
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through the uh touch sensitive interface on the left earbud by the way but
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activity tracker stuff isn't really my thing so that won't be a big Focus for
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this video it is sick however that the earphones are waterproof to 1 meter
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which something I actually didn't know until they arrived and I read it on the
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box though in my defense I did back this thing like two years ago of course being
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able to wear them while running or swimming would count for nothing if they
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didn't stay in and stay comfortable and I've got to give bregy a lot of points
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here I was fully expecting the dash to
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be unreasonably heavy and uncomfortable due to their completely self-contained
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design battery drivers touch interface motion sensor microphones it's all in
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there and they managed to make them fit well enough and be light enough that any
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of these activities were no problem for me in spite of my extra Smalls size ear
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canals great job guys there are a couple of more app things I should cover before
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moving on there are gestures uh right now nodding and shaking your head to
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accept or reject a call neither of which worked in my testing but your mileage
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may vary with more gestures to come and each earphone has a regrettably
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non-configurable but surprising range of functions that you can access by tapping
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double tapping swiping holding and long
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holding including a transparency mode
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that sounds cool in theory allowing the Dash's microphone to pass surrounding
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sounds through to you with the speakers so you can hear them better but in
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practice makes very little difference since the microphone is not that
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sensitive to ambient noise and the earphones passive noise isolation is not
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a strong point of the product in the first place with or without music I
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could hardly tell the difference between the two modes I don't want the poor
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ambient noise sensitivity of the microphone to reflect that negatively on
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the product however the dash uses a Jarone microphone for phone calls that
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isn't supposed to pick up ambient noise
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I'll let you judge for yourself how well that works here though the audio
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recording you just listen to was recorded in room the one you're
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listening to now was recorded on a call to Brandon's iPhone
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on York City for comparison's sake I've
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got a few other microphones what you're listening to right now is being recorded
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on the iPhone 6s buil-in mic what you're
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listening to now is being recorded on the jbird BlueBuds X also a wireless
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earphone well not technically completely wireless I
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guess and this finally is being recorded on the first party microphone cable
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that's available for the Sennheiser I80 headphones that I use as my daily
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drivers battery life was frankly nothing impressive at around a few few hours per
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charge at best and I suspect most people will find themselves carrying around the
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charging case but there's good news here another thing I forgot the case has its
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own battery that charges up the earphones a few times so you only have
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to plug it in Via micro USB once per day
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all right lonus you teas when are you going to get to the meat and potatoes of
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this how do they sound they're okay
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actually better than okay surprisingly okay well-rounded pleasing sound
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signature with solid not overpowering base and reasonable Clarity in the
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high's okay I mean no they are not comparable to a similarly priced wired
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imem like my daily driver ie80s they
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have a shockingly high noise floor they don't get very loud and they're just
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playing not as good but considering all
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the additional functionality I'd have given sound
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quality a great score
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if the Bluetooth connectivity wasn't so
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shockingly bad across my time with the
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dash the first time I had my signal cut
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out I initially thought I had bumped the earphone causing it to pause while
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scratching an itch but it turned out that with my phone on the bed next to me
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even putting my hands near my ears caused the signal to cut out momentarily
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line of sight range is a pathetic 5 m
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but I found that having my head between my phone and the right earphone caused
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issues even at that distance and it gets
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worse with my phone in my pocket and I'm
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a short dude right leaning backwards is
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enough to cause the signal to crackle momentarily or even drop for up to a
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second at a time any body of water and
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we're made of water folks is enough to screw up the
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connectivity which means final conclusion time that in spite of all the
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positive things I had to say about this product in spite of all its innovative
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features and clever Design Elements I simply cannot recommend it even at half
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the price at $300 especially it's not
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enough to be a really cool touch controlled 4 gig in your mp3 player oh
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yeah you don't have to use Bluetooth it does have 4 gigs of storage but the
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wireless connectivity also has to work
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sorry braggy better luck next time I
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hope that you survive long enough to bring a dash2 to Market to take on the
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slew of similar products that have already started popping up between your
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Kickstarter campaign and now because I mostly really like what you've done here
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so let's say You're Building A mobile app and you're looking for a solution
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that unlike today's product doesn't get 90% of the way there
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have support staff to walk you through the process over the phone if you need
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them to their code supports Android iOS
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make it easy to offer multiple Mobile payment types including PayPal Apple pay
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single integration so to learn more and get your first
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who else is going to offer you that go to brain Tre payments.com
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