****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I am hard of hearing and wear behind-the-ear hearing aids, but I've recently discovered that bone conduction headphones work rather well for me, bypassing my hearing aids entirely. This is great because when I want to play games with headphones, the hearing aids can limit my options—mostly to large, heavy over-ear headsets.After trialing some inexpensive sets that delivered just enough to make me curious, albeit with just okay sound quality and noticeable latency, I went looking for other options, and came across the Creative Outlier Free line. (I believe any of the line is probably a good choice, but I specifically chose the Free+ because of its adjustable transducers and because I didn't need the built-in MP3 player or extra water-resistance for swimming.)The Free+ does not have an adjustable band, but the loops still settle on my ears just fine after the band wraps around my large head. They aren't the lightest bone conductors I've tried, but they're still comfortable enough, even when sharing space on my ears with my hearing aids and my glasses.Pairing with the Switch is pretty easy, after a little bit of confusion with the manual—just go ahead and do "manual pairing" when you get your first headset set up. From there on out, the only complexity is just dealing with the Switch's awkward way of dealing with Bluetooth headphones. (Sometimes the Switch just plain needs a reboot, sadly…)What wowed me right away once I turned them on was the sound quality. It was much crisper and clearer than I was expecting right out of the gate. I had, of course, been primarily trialing low-end bone conductors thus far, but I think it even gave the Shokz OpenRun set that my friend let me try a run for its money.The adjustable transducers may or may not be something you need. I didn't need them for sound quality, but I did find that being able to rotate them back a little was a bit more comfortable. Most of the comfort came from just finding the right position for the whole band on my head.But then came the main event—low latency mode. Clicking the mode button four times will switch it in and out, and when it's on, there's no longer a huge delay between audio and controls or video anymore. The sound doesn't suffer except in extremely rare circumstances I can count on one hand, when it garbled for a split second.I'm thrilled with these. I'm looking forward to using them with my games for a long time to come.
