From the first day of Bragi’s Kickstarter, the Dash was all about fitting dozens of ideas into one product. It seemed almost too good to be true, and over the next two years that suspicion bore out — though the product was capable of wowing us in a few product demos along the way, the overall experience of the production version was a mess. Bragi tried to do too many things, and the result was that it did none of them well.
The most egregious fault, though, was that audio streaming was consistently unreliable. Your phone had to be in a front pocket or else the connection would constantly cut out, and even there it had trouble staying steady.
No more switching pockets to make up for bad Bluetooth
The promise with the Headphone was that, by stripping out all those extra sensors, Bragi would free up space for the Bluetooth radios to better communicate with the phone. And guess what? It worked. After a few days of using them as my main earbuds I can say that they haven’t cut out once in any reasonable setting. I’ve put my phone in every pocket, thrown it in my bag, and no matter what the connection stays true. It took me setting down my phone and walking about 40 feet away before I started to experience hiccups.
This is a huge deal, if only because the biggest problem that plagues wireless earbuds is that Bluetooth connection between them and the phone. In all the ones I’ve tried, only two have passed this test: the Erato Apollo 7s, which were still far too expensive and one-dimensional, and the Samsung Gear IconX earbuds, which have terrible battery life and are only really an option if you’re a Samsung user.