The Dash from Bragi is a wireless smart in-ear earphones. It started as a Kickstarter project back in February 2014. They promised to deliver the product from October 2014, with my own tier of pledge promised January 2015 delivery. Many Kickstarter projects miss their own time estimation, but this one is rather spectacular. Instead of getting it in January 2015, I finally received my unit few days ago (April 2016). That’s 15 months late. And I even had to change my color choice from white unit to black because the white units are going to ship even later.
Specs
Dash delivers its sound using high quality balanced armature speakers and connects to our phone using dual-mode Bluetooth 4.0 connection. It supports aptX for better audio quality. The battery is 100 mAh, which is good for 3 hours of music (or 250 hours on standby). The MagSnap charging case provides 5 recharges on the go, making it 18 hours in total.
These smart earphones do not need a smartphone to function, thanks to its own processor and embedded music player with 4GB storage. Both pieces have high-resolution optical touch sensor for interaction with user. It also sports 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyroscope, 3-axis magnetometer and heart-rate detector. We can use this product in the rain or even swimming without worry because it’s rated 1 metre waterproof.
Packaging and Design
The Dash comes in an impressive packaging. The unit is visible from outside while snapped magnetically to its charging case. When I opened the box, I quickly discovered book-like interface with some guide on what the product can do. A creative way to impress, but it will be a bit of a waste because most people won’t touch the box again after initial setup.
The design of the actual units are nice, simple and elegant. It looks just like what they promised in the Kickstarter project. It is a bit heavier than I imagined (16 gr), but not to the point of being uncomfortable. The charging case looks nice and the use of magnet makes it easier to “snap” the ear pieces quickly. However, I strongly feel that the charging case is too heavy (89 gr, plus metal cover that weighs 49 gr, making the total weight of 138 gr). That’s 8.6x of the weight of the main product. Building the cover using solid metal does enforce the feeling of “luxury”, but it’s very counter-productive with the idea of portability. I spent money trying to get lighter version of everything in my bag. From laptop, tablet, etc. Now why would I need to carry the unnecessary bulk of a charging case (that I have to carry with the units because I need it to charge my earphones) from a product that’s supposed to be “high-end”? To me, this is a very poor design choice.
Initial Setup
Just like many modern devices, these earphones came preinstalled by its own firmware. And it needs to be updated to the latest version. After quick googling, I found how to update firmware without much problem. However, apparently the process required me to charge the units using the charging case for at least 2 hours. And the process of firmware update can take up to 3 hours. So, total 5 hours before I could play with it because apparently once started, we can’t pause the process and must wait until it finishes. Since I happened to start the process at night, I went to sleep, hoping the 3 hours process has finished when I wake up.
Surprise, somehow the firmware upgrade was not finished because the charging case was running out of energy. So I had to repeat the 5 hours process once again. Admittedly, I was not really sure if I already charged the case for 2 hours on the first day. I assumed it was full because my Dash units glowed in blue (which indicate full battery). The naive me did not realise that fully charged Dash and fully charged MagSnap charging case are two different things.
After 5+5 hours of firmware upgrade, I finally could use my Dash. First, connecting to my iPhone using Bluetooth was easy. However, it took me a while to figure out that the right and left Dash must be connected separately. The right Dash connects to Bluetooth for music and it once set up, it automatically reconnects when I inserted the right Dash into my ear. The left Dash connects to the Bragi app to allow access to settings. I don’t know where I did wrong, but it could NEVER reconnect automatically. Every fucking time, I need to eject the connection and put the left Dash into pairing mode once again. This is a very poor user experience.
The next step of initial setup was to choose the right FitSleeve. Dash comes with 4 sizes of FitSleeve: XS, S, M and L. As I already learned from my other earphones, wearing earphones with the right size is the key to enjoy the best possible audio quality from a product.
Audio Quality
As this product is essentially earphones, then the main feature is essentially music and audio quality. How do these sound? Upon the first trials, it sounded bad. The highs felt too sharp and I can hear virtually no bass. It almost sounded like cheap $10 earphones. I was disappointed.
But on second day test, I discovered that different ways of inserting the Dash into our ears brought a completely different audio experience. When I actually inserted them right, the audio quality turned out to be good. Not exceptionally great, perhaps on par with average earphones on $100-$200 range. Too bad that it took me hours to figure out how to insert them right. And after few days of usage, I still occasionally couldn’t get it right.
The Bluetooh connection is nowhere near stable. I have used several Bluetooth earphones products and I never came across connection this bad. My music kept getting interrupted when I simply put my phone in my pant’s pocket. That’s less than 1 metre and ALL other Bluetooth earphones that I used before worked just fine in such situation. So, in order to keep enjoying my music I need to keep holding my phone on my hands. Totally non-practical.
I get it that this product is a technology innovation for super-small Bluetooth earphones. And to make it more impressive, there’s no cable connecting the left and right Dash. So after the right Dash receives the streamed music from phone, it needs to stream the music to the left piece. This is something that no commercial product has ever done before, and also the reason why it took so long for them to deliver this product. However, after more than a year of delay, surely as customer I can expect them to deliver something decent.
Other Features
I like the fact that there is a voice feedback everytime something happens. It does bring nicer user experience. Controlling the Dash is not difficult, but also not easy. The touch commands are pretty straightforward, but somehow I often needed to repeat a gesture 2-3 times before it worked.
The sound transparency is a useful feature. By turning it on, I can hear my surrounding when crossing the road or catching public transport.
Activity Tracker can track us doing exercise such as running, biking or even swimming. It also tracks our heart rate while doing activities. I personally would hope to be able to choose heart-rate tracking anytime I use the earphones, not just when I do activity. Apparently that’s not possible for now.
The available Macro is a nice bonus. When there’s incoming phone call, we can nod to accept the call or shake our head to reject. Too bad that the digital MEMS microphones with custom mechanical tuning, external auditory microphone and ear bone microphone are basically garbage. I could not have any decent phone conversation using these earphones unless I literally yell. And as you might agree, it is generally considered wrong to yell loudly in public transport. So I had to reject every phone call, disconnect Bluetooth and then make a call back using just the phone. Another very annoying compromise I had to make.
Conclusions
The Dash IS a product with new technology. No other commercial product has done this before (at least not a finished product on commercial mass-production level). So that alone is already impressive. I get that early adopter needs to be prepared of minor imperfections. Sadly, I have to say that as a consumer product, Dash failed to please me. It is usable, but with some annoying compromises that I don’t expect from a product with premium price-range.
Fortunately, most of the issues I experience today can be (theoretically) fixed by firmware update. So, I am looking forward for future updates. Hopefully it will bring the Dash to a “good” level of a product in the near future. Until then, this is definitely not my go-to earphones for everyday use.
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