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Listening to music during a workout can boost pace and distract you from fatigue, whether you’re exercising on dry land or in water. For the water babies among us, whether your exercise of choice is swimming, surfing or paddleboarding, or even if you just enjoy running in the rain (to each their own), the choice of waterproof headphones has never been greater.
As water disrupts Bluetooth, you can’t just wear regular headphones and stream the music from your phone if you’re exercising underwater. Waterproof headphones for swimming have built-in music storage, so the sound streams directly from the headset. Any tracks you’ve downloaded to your laptop, phone or tablet need to be synced to the headphones before you start your session.
There’s a little more flexibility if you’re not fully submerging yourself but you still need to look for a waterproof rating of IP67 or above, which means the headphones can withstand 30 minutes of being in water at a depth of 0.5m.
The design of waterproof headphones for swimming has improved a lot in recent years, as technological innovations have helped reduce the size, and streamline the shape, so they’re not as heavy or bulky as they used to be. Prices have also come down as the technology’s improved, so we were intrigued to find out the differences between waterproof headphones at different price points.
Without further ado, let’s dive into our pick of the best waterproof headphones on the market.
How we tested the best waterproof headphones
We put each pair of waterproof headphones to the test for a week, while carrying out a 2km solo swim session, an interval session with flippers and pool buoys, and while running on dry land, to see how they fared there, too. We rated the headphones on how easy it was to download songs, and how our music sounded underwater, in terms of clarity and bass.
The best waterproof headphones for 2024 are:
- Best waterproof headphones overall – Shokz open swim: £139, Amazon.co.uk
- Best budget waterproof headphones – Cyboris swimming headphones: £36.99, Amazon.co.uk
- Best waterproof headphones for comfort – Guudsoud store bone conduction MP3 headphones: £52.49, Amazon.co.uk
- Best waterproof headphones for swimming and running – Naenka runner diver2 swimming headphones: £125.50, Naenka.com
- Best noise-cancelling waterproof headphones – LG tone free fit UTF8 waterproof earbuds: £157, Amazon.co.uk
