BASN AirS1 Air Conduction Bluetooth Headphones Review

Explore our comprehensive review of the BASN AirS1 Air Conduction Bluetooth headphones. Discover their unique features, comfort, battery life, and sound quality. Perfect for an active lifestyle, these headphones offer a reliable and cost-effective solution for your audio needs.

Overview

The BASN AirS1 Bluetooth headphones are designed for those who have an active lifestyle. They feature an open-ear design utilizing air conduction to get the audio to your ear (we’ll talk more about this in a bit). As well, they have an IPX5 rating, meaning they are water-resistant, sweatproof, rainproof, and splashproof.

Design & Comfort

The BASN AirS1 is mainly made of plastic but feels extremely solid and well-built. The rubberized wire cable that connects the earbuds is solid but very flexible, meaning you don’t have to worry about being too rough with it. Runners, cyclists, and those who frequent gyms will feel at ease with how durable the AirS1 is, meaning you can focus more on your activity instead of worrying about damaging the headphones.

The AirS1 utilizes a magnetic charger. While I don’t like proprietary charging solutions, the magnetic charging cable works extremely well and snaps into place quite securely. Overall it’s very well implemented.

Comfort

There are two ways to wear the AirS1. With the ear tips and without the ear tips. Without the ear tips installed the earbuds sit beside your ear and the audio is piped towards your ear. With the ear tips, though, the tips do sit slightly inside your ear canal, but they do not get pressed in the ear. Both methods are extremely comfortable, and with the headphones themselves being so light (around 20 grams), you hardly notice they are there. The advantage of the headphone’s “air conduction” design is that you won’t get ear fatigue from them as there are no ear tips pressing inside your ear. As well, compared to bone conduction headphones this is also an advantage, as some people (like me) are prone to headaches or just general uncomfortableness from them. I had no issues with comfort for the AirS1, and they solidly stayed on my head and ears during my running and gym workouts.

Features

1. Air Conduction

The BASN AirS1 uses an air conduction design to get the audio from the earbud to your ear. This essentially means the audio waves are channeled to your ear by the driver and housing design of the headphones. This is needed as the AirS1 is not your traditional Bluetooth headphones or earbuds. They do not cover your entire ear, nor do they have tips that are inserted in your ear. Instead, they sit beside your ear and the audio is projected towards your ear canal. This is rather unique and the only other headphones that operate somewhat similarly are bone conduction headphones.

The air conduction method prevents any hearing fatigue and also allows you to hear the outside world as they don’t seal your ear. This is a huge advantage when working out, or running in a city, as you will be able to listen to your music while still being able to hear the world around you.

2. Water Resistance

The AirS1 has an IPX5 rating (water-resistance, sweatproof, rainproof, and splashproof). I got to try this out firsthand as it rained on my very first run outside with these. Thankfully, because they are water resistant, I had no issues and was able to do my 20-minute run as the rain got progressively worse throughout the run. Since the AirS1 is also sweatproof, I didn’t need to worry about sweating while wearing them. The IPX5 rating can assure those who want to use these for workouts that they won’t have any issues with them.

3. Battery Life

BASN claims the AirS1 has an 8-hour battery life for music playback. I was able to get pretty much exactly 8 hours when using the ear tips. Without the ear tips installed, battery life went down to just over 7 hours for me as the volume needed to be louder to compensate for no ear tips directing the audio to my ears. Charging is also quick, with 10 minutes giving you an hour of playback time, and just under an hour giving a full charge.

Operation

The operation of the AirS1 is fairly simple. There is one button on the headphones. Holding for 3 seconds turns it on, and holding for 5 seconds turns it off. Press once to play/pause, double press for the next song, and three presses to activate your device’s voice assistant. You can also answer an incoming call with one press, and end the call with two presses. All this works exactly as it’s supposed to. The button is rather well placed on the underside of the right earbud and is solid enough so that you won’t accidentally press it when adjusting the headphones. The clickiness is rather satisfying actually.

I have one gripe though. The AirS1 has a voice notification for powering on, powering off, pairing, and a successful connection. This voice notification is extremely loud, and there is no way to adjust it. Even without the ear tips installed it’s very loud. I’d like to see BASN adjust it, through a firmware update if possible, mainly because I could see those who have sensitive hearing to be negatively affected by this.

Sound Quality

In this price range, expectations are not usually high for good-sounding audio, especially for Bluetooth headphones. Especially for Bluetooth headphones that sit beside your ear rather than in it. I can say though that I was pleasantly surprised by how good the sound quality was given the design. We are not going to get audiophile levels of quality in the bass, mids, and highs. That being said, the audio is clear, there is decent bass present, and the mids and highs are separated enough that you can still enjoy the music. There is a lack of liveliness to the music, but as previously stated, this is hard to achieve even for many in-ear Bluetooth headphones. Applying an EQ, such as a Jazz or Rock preset, does the job of nicely brightening up the sound and giving a bit of life back to the music.

When you are exercising you generally don’t focus on music quality too much, you just want to be able to hear it clearly. The AirS1 definitely accomplishes this, both with and without the ear tips installed. As well, just going for a walk with them the audio quality is good enough to be enjoyable.

Sound Isolation and Leakage

The air conduction design of the BASN AirS1 means that it does not isolate the outside world from you. You can almost compare it to Apple’s transparency mode on the AirPod Pros, except outside noises are less pronounced and more real since you are really hearing them. At the same time too, the audio is clear.

You would expect with this design that there would be sound leakage. Yes, there is, but not as much as you would think. The volume can go pretty loud on these, but oddly while it sounds loud to you it’s barely audible to anyone around you. This is especially true when using the ear tips. I had to really crank the volume level up for audio leakage to be audible in an outside environment. At this volume, though you’re in damaging eardrum territory, so the odds are sound leakage is minimal in most situations.

Microphone

The headphones include an ENC MEMS microphone. This microphone is designed to cancel outside noise and focus on your voice. I didn’t use the microphone too much, but I did try a couple of calls while running and the person on the other end was able to hear me clear enough, and I them.

Final Thoughts

The BASN AirS1 knows exactly what its job is, to be a reliable and no-nonsense headphone for workouts, running, and cycling. It does this job very well and looks very good while doing it too. The AirS1 is priced at $39.99. There are not a lot of Bluetooth headphones at that price, with these features, that sound this good. If you’re looking for a sturdy pair of Bluetooth headphones for an active lifestyle, that won’t break the bank, and won’t fall apart after some use, then I can safely recommend the BASN AirS1 Air Conduction headphones.