Sure. You’ve heard of Beats and Apple AirPods, but have you heard of Bragi’s dashing new Dash Pro headphones? They’re headphones that are capable of real-time language translation and controlling your music with a simple head gesture. Here’s why you should start listening to Bragi.
Over the past three years, Bragi has learned a ton while reinventing, simplifying, and making the headphone much more user-friendly and capable of completing tasks (uncommon for headphones). The headphones operate on Bragi’s latest and greatest operating system, which will allow real-time translation through a partnership with the iTranslate app and simple, yet convenient gestures that will allow you to control your music by shaking your head a certain way. “We’re so early in this entire industry,” states CEO Nikolaj Hviid. “Sometimes I feel we’re a bit too early.”
When Bragi first released the Dash headphones, they weren’t able to achieve everything that Bragi wanted them to. They were, in fact, ways away from them being perfected. Now, three years later, Bragi is much closer to having the Dash headphones aligned with the original Kickstarter campaign promises.
Bragi is a German company that became extremely successful due to a niche Kickstarter campaign back in 2014 after releasing their Dash headphones. Bragi’s revolutionizing headphones allow you to perform a multitude of incredibly technically-advanced tasks, including playing music, measuring your health, controlling technical contraptions with the simple nod of the head, and allowing you to listen to the real world and digital audio all at the same time. “We still need to understand how we can apply sensors to pick up gestures so you can converse and interact naturally with a computer,” states Hviid.
Perhaps one of the unique tasks that the Dash Pro earbuds will be able to perform will be that of automatically detecting workouts. This feature would allow the Dash headphones to detect that you’re working out and communicate with Amazon’s Alexa. The headphones would then be able to turn up Alexa’s volume because they know you’re working out.
Another unique feature that the Dash Pro headphones are capable of is that of forming an incredible network and connecting nearby devices to share processing and storage power. These headphones aren’t a joke; they’re capable of some impressive data-processing on their own as well.
There are a few options to get you started with Bragi’s “ear computers.” The Dash Pro will cost a quiet $329. Bragi has partnered with Starkey, a company that creates products for the hearing-impaired, to create custom-made Dash Pro headphones. For a bit louder at $499 you can meet with a Starkey-approved audiologist and get your Dash Pro headphones fitted specifically for your ears and listening pleasure. The Dash Pro headphones will last roughly five hours on a single charge, while the carrying case will charge the headphones five times before needing to be re-juiced. The Dash Pro headphones will also pair more easily with your phone.
Hviid states that his team has greatly improved the audio quality, including the sound, noise cancellation, and voice-input. This is due to a brand new audio codec that the device uses.
Bragi wants to get into AI as well, which will allow the company to continue to diversify itself into a plethora of markets, including home automation. They’re currently developing a product called Patch, which can be expected later this year. They’ll be tiny, wearable sensors that you’ll be able to place anywhere, including on your ankle to track your workouts and in your home to vastly improve home automation. For example, placing one outside somewhere so when you pull into the driveway your garage door will open up.
Bragi is most definitely early to the game in a sense of audio headphones and earbuds or “ear computers.” They’re going to be a game-changing company that will be leaps and bounds ahead of the competition if they keep going at the rate they’re moving at now. Personally, I’m really excited to see who Bragi partners with, what products they continue to invent, and where the Dash Pro ear computers go. It’s an exciting time to be alive!
“The objective was to make computers in your ear that can sense who you are, what you’re doing, and how you’re doing it,” states Hviid. “We make ‘ear computers,’ we don’t make truly wireless headphones.”
