We may earn a commission from links on this page.I love my bone conduction headphones. I wear them when I’m running so that I can hear traffic approaching. I also love them for noisy environments where I need to put in earplugs—since the headphones don’t require my ear canal to be open, I can use earplugs and still be able to hear my bone-conducted music. But there's no denying that bone conduction headphones offer a rather different experience than traditional earbuds. What’s going on with this strange technology, and what are the downsides? I’ll explain. SHOKZ OpenRun Bone Conduction Headphones $109.95 at Amazon $179.95 Save $70.00 Get Deal Get Deal $109.95 at Amazon $179.95 Save $70.00 How bone conduction worksNormally, when we hear a sound from something around us, the sound waves travel through air until they hit our eardrum, located inside the ear canal. The eardrum vibrates in time with the music—really, the frequency of the sound—and transmits that vibration to tiny bones located in what’s called our middle ear. That's the only part of hearing that you'll need to understand for this explainer. But if you're curious, after the vibrations get to those little bones, they are then transmitted to the inner ear. There, in the cochlea, the sound waves are translated into signals sent to our brain and then further processed into our perception of sound. All of that is outside the scope of this article, though. We’re just interested in how the vibrations get from our headphones to the middle ear.There’s another way to vibrate those middle ear bones, though: you can do it directly, by sending vibrations right through the head. According to legend, Beethoven would bite his conducting wand and hold it against his piano, so that he could “hear” through his teeth. You can try this right now, with any old earbuds: turn on some music and hold your earbud’s speaker against your tooth. You’ll hear the music. Wild, huh? You can even buy novelty lollipops that play music through your teeth—bite down on the candy and you'll hear a song. AMOS Music Lollipops, 4-Pack Gift Box $21.59 at Amazon $29.99 Save $8.40 Get Deal Get Deal $21.59 at Amazon $29.99 Save $8.40 We actually hear bone-conducted sounds all the time. Every time you speak, you’re hearing your own voice through bone (and soft tissue) conduction and through the air. (That’s probably why your recorded voice sounds so different from what you’re used to hearing when you talk.) Stick your fingers in your ears and speak out loud, and you’ll hear just the bone-conducted portion. Bone conduction headphones take advantage of this phenomenon. Like all headphones, they have tiny little speakers. But instead of pointing those little speakers into our ear canals to vibrate the air and then our eardrums, the headphones are designed to press their little speakers against a bone—usually the cheekbone right in front of the ear. Technically, they are also conducting the sound through soft tissues like skin, muscle, and fat, but the bones do a really good job of transmitting sound and are what the technology is named after.Are Shokz and other “bone conduction” headphones really conducting sound through bone? Yes, they work through actual bone conduction, but not only bone conduction. Some of the sound gets transmitted through the air as well. People don't always believe this. I've seen Reddit threads where people were arguing over whether bone conduction is bullshit, so here are two experiments you can do with bone conduction headphones to understand both parts of what’s going on. First, wear them normally. The little speakers will be on the bony spot right in front of your ear. Turn on some music. Now pull the speakers gently away from your head, so they’re no longer making contact. Yes, you will still hear the music, but it will be tinny and quiet compared to when you were wearing them normally. This shows that bone conduction really is delivering a lot of the sound that you're hearing.Now, wear them normally again, but plug your ears with your fingers (or, if you like, a handy pair of earplugs). The sound will be different—a bit deeper is how I would describe it. It almost seems like it gets louder. The headphones definitely don’t need air-based access to your eardrums to get sound through to you. This shows that with only bone conduction, you get most but not all of the sound from the headphones. Some headphones use a hybrid approach on purpose. The Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 headphones have an extra set of speakers for air-based transmission in addition to the speakers intended for bone conduction. This tends to give a better balance of frequencies, and thus better sound quality than headphones that use only bone conduction. Is bone conduction safe for your ears? Bone conduction is neither better nor worse for your ears than traditional headphones, because ultimately the same thing happens in each: Your cochlea (which is the part of your ear that’s damaged in the most common types of hearing loss) receives the vibrations either way. Too-loud bone conduction headphones are bad for you, just like too-loud regular headphones.There is one way that bone conduction headphones can be better for your ears, as I noted above: If you’re in a noisy environment, you can wear earplugs to protect your ears from the loud sounds around you, and you can wear bone-conduction headphones to deliver a bit of music to fill the silence. I started wearing the earplugs-and-headphones combo this summer when I was doing a lot of outdoor workouts near a loud air conditioner (I also realized that the sound of dropping the bar was actually pretty darn loud as well, dropping the bar being a routine part of Olympic weightlifting). So I got some Loop earplugs, and found that not only could I still hear my music through my Aftershokz Aeropex Mini (an older version of what is now the Shokz OpenRun Mini), I was able to turn the volume to a near-minimum and still hear it just fine. Overall, my ears are getting a lot less noise exposure, so that’s a win-win. Loop Experience 2 Ear Plugs $27.95 at Amazon $34.95 Save $7.00 Get Deal Get Deal $27.95 at Amazon $34.95 Save $7.00 What are the downsides of bone conduction headphones? There aren’t any health or safety downsides (as we discussed above), but you aren’t going to get pristine sound quality through bone conduction headphones. Some are better than others, and you should always check out reviews and try headphones in person if you want to make a buying decision based on sound quality. But in general, the upside of bone-conduction headphones is also their downside: Since Shokz and the like don’t block out ambient sounds, the sound that reaches your ear is a mix of the music you’re playing on purpose and the noises of the world around you. When I wear bone conduction headphones with earplugs, I don’t get great sound quality either. Just like your voice sounds different with your ears plugged, the sound mix of bone conduction plus earplugs is not quite the same as what you’d hear through a good pair of quality headphones. Personally, I find these minor downsides are balanced by the advantages that bone conduction headphones provide. I don’t need to hear my podcasts in crystal-clear audio while I’m running; I just want to be able to tell what the hosts are saying while also listening for approaching cars. When I do want to listen to music in high fidelity, I do that at home, with a nice pair of noise-canceling headphones.