Eyoyo LF-19 Bone-conducting headphones

Rating: 2/5

Review:
A good idea, but lots of problems

I was very interested to try these bone-conducting headphones, which were sent to me free for an unbiased review.  In principle they are an excellent idea and may suit some people better than me, but I had several problems with them.

The first thing to say is that the headphones themselves are basically a good, solid product – decent quality and with a good durable feel.  However, when I took the silicone tension band off to see whether it would help with positioning, the clip at one end which inserts into the headphones broke as I took it out, so I can't put the band back on again.  Not good.

Other problems I have had:

- They don't sit comfortably on my head: they are a bit small and aren't adjustable.  As a result, they aren't comfortable over my ears, I can't get the "speakers" to sit in the correct place on my cheekbones and they keep moving.  The makers advise that this may be because they are too small for my head.  I think this is right – but I don't have an abnormally large head, so a lot of people may have this problem.

- When at high volume (which doesn't sound loud to me) I feel them vibrating on my cheekbones.  The manual says "we recommend using silicone tension band" if this happens, but that didn't work for me.

- Probably because of the poor positioning, the sound isn't great.  It's not terrible, but the volume doesn't go very loud and the bass is weak. 

- There is a lot of sound leakage, which is very annoying to those around you.  This is an endemic issue with this type of headphones, and it may not be a problem if you're using them to run through the streets, but they won't do for private listening with others present.

- The manual is very unclear.  It says nothing about how to make hands-free calls, for example.  In fact, you do it by pressing the "multi-function key" on the left hand side – but again I only found this out by emailing the makers.  They tell me that the manual is being revised, but in its present form it is quite inadequate.

- Twice when I was trying to skip backwards, the music player in my phone froze and would not move out of "pause" mode.  Rebooting the phone was the only way I could start it again.  The makers now inform me that there is no "skip back" – only "skip forward" and "return to the start of the current track".  Again, this is unclear from the manual.

I am sorry to be so critical, but this is my honest experience of these headphones and it wasn't good.  Others may get on better with them and there may be improvements soon, but for now I can't recommend these, I'm afraid.