Haylou Purfree BC01 Bone Conduction Bluetooth 5.2 QCC3044 IP67 Headphones

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Model: Haylou Purfree BC01
Price: MSRP Approx $99 - CURRENTLY ON SALE AT AMAZON UK £79.99
Website: Haylou Website
Review Reference: RC082

Manufacturer Specification:

• Brand: Haylou
• Model: Purfree BC01
• Driver: Specialist Bone Conduction transducers
• Chipset: Qualcomm QCC3044
• Mics: Dual Mic, cVc 8.0 noise reduction
• Frame Material: Titanium Alloy
• Codecs: AptX, SBC
• App Support: No
• Multipoint Connectivity: Yes
• Volume Control: Yes
• Gaming Mode: No
• Weight: 28g
• Quick Charge: Yes, 2 hours playtime from 10min
• Full Charge: 1.5 hours
• Battery Capacity: 165mAh
• Wireless Charging: No
• Single Use Playtime: Up to 8 hours
• Bluetooth Range: 10m advertised
• Bluetooth Version: Bluetooth® 5.2
• Bluetooth Protocols: HFP 1.7/ A2DP 1.3/ AVRCP 1.5
• Water Resistance: IPX67

Includes:

1 x Pair Bone Conduction Headphones
1 x Proprietary Magnetic Charge Cable
1 x Pair Foam Ear Protectors
1 x Quick Guide & User Manual

YouTube Review & Unboxing:



Introduction:

Welcome to the @regancipher review of the popular bone conduction headphones from Haylou, the Purfree BC01. This is the third set of bone/air conduction headphones I’ve reviewed in quick succession, and my third Haylou review after the Moripods and W1, but there is definitely something different about this release that gets the pulses racing - typically, Haylou TWS earbuds have been very decent, reliable budget tier releases that offer a satisfactory array of features at a very competitive price, but the Purfree are definitely competing at that ‘elite tier’ of bone conduction technology, aiming to knock Shokz off their perch with a release that not only offers stellar features, but arrives in a package that has all the hallmarks of a flagship product.

This style of headphone is designed to tackle a number of different use-cases. As a cyclist and runner, I can attest that finding something loud enough that still sounds good, is comfortable, stable and allows me situational awareness without reaching up to punch a touch control combination is very important, as it offers improved safety and usability. Naturally this is where marketing material for headphones like the Purfree are positioned, however, bone conduction has many other benefits too – for general use it alleviates the discomfort and ‘stuffiness’ induced by silicone tips, and the reduced leakage over air conduction ,or even semi-in-ear buds at times, makes them handy for using in offices or around the house. Through bypassing your middle ear and funneling audio directly to your cochlea via transducers vibrating against your cheekbones, this offers increases protection for your eardrum – those who have read my bio know I suffered from tinnitus for a long time, so this style of headphone is not without it’s merits. The only drawback has been the difference in audio quality between bone conduction and run-of-the-mill headphones, until now.

True Bone Conduction headphones are actually harder to find than you would expect. The majority of vendors out of China are simply taking their TWS technology and moving it to Air Conduction – the path of least resistance from a technical perspective. Air Conduction has its merits, but my experience with this style of design hasn’t been especially great – they tend to be rather bulky and uncomfortable, whilst suffering terrible noise leakage offering reasonable sound, albeit piped straight into your ears and potentially causing long-term damage if too loud.
Haylou have bucked the trend by actually designing a product that aims to negate all of those issues, and after a week on the regancipher test bench, I have to say it has been a resounding success to say the least!

Unboxing – 9/10

A flagship product needs a flagship unboxing, right? Haylou, have you been reading my reviews?! The unboxing experience with the Purfree is commensurate with the gravitas of the product – they arrive in a hard cardboard box 170mm x 135mm x 65mm in dimensions, with the key parameters listed on the back and a handsome Iberian model showing the Purfree off on the front. The slogan ‘hear the whole world’ echoes the sentiments of my introduction and their raison d’être – to allow you to hear your environment whilst maintaining a pleasant audible experience.



When you slide the insert away you are left with an open-book-style box with the accessories – some foam ear protectors and proprietary USB-A charge cable, a quick guide walking you through the pairing process, and a user manual in English and Chinese. The instructions are very clear, and walk you through button functions, wearing method, headphone settings and how to activate multipoint connectivity (off by default), using diagrams and text to good effect. If there was an area that could be improved, it is perhaps the expansion of the manual to account for other languages, and maybe Haylou will add this in future releases should the Purfree give them the global exposure the product unquestionably deserves - however, if you need them urgently, you can scan the below QR for an electronic copy:



The foam protectors are OK – they are designed to block out noise if using in a particularly noisy environment where safety is less of a concern (on a train or airplane, for example). I have my own custom-molded protectors, so my testing was mostly done using them, but it was a nice addition all the same.

The charge cable, whilst proprietary and a little short on length, is far better than having a bulky USB-C port somewhere on the frame. Typically, this is an area that can compromise water resistance, so Haylou have used a magnetic smartwatch-style contact in order to charge the battery, and whilst some may complain, when you look at the bigger picture (ensuring water resistance and providing a reliable connection without compromising the design), it is a welcome addition.

The nicest thing I can say about the Purfree, is I would have no hesitations giving them as a gift. The headphones nestle inside the box and well-protected in a custom opening. Everything about the unboxing screams a premium product – with Christmas around the corner, were my kids or partner to give me these as a gift I would be over the moon, but since I have them already now I guess I’ll be making do with socks!

Ergonomics & Design – 9/10



Fit and build quality are probably the most important thing in Bone Conduction headphones. Balancing flexibility and durability to ensure that the unit is comfortable, without providing sufficient clamping force to provide stability required by many of their use cases is an area where most products of this ilk fall flat. That definitely couldn’t be levelled at the Purfree – they are beautifully, and thoughtfully, designed, and an absolute pleasure to wear.



The build quality – made from Titanium alloy – is very impressive. The product is almost impossible to bend out of shape, whilst providing sufficient malleability to assure those that wear glasses or have a slightly larger head (like me, on both fronts!) of a comfortable experience. The entire frame has a soft, rubberized skin-friendly silicone outer shell, with the flat edge of the transducers nestling comfortably against the contours of your cheekbones. The transducers in particular are housed in a very compact, space efficient design that is far more comfortable than something like the Shokz Openrun, which feel a little bulky by comparison.



Despite feeling incredibly lightweight – they weight just 28g, the Purfree still feel lighter on your head than even the 26g Shokz Openrun due to intelligent weight displacement, remaining very securely in place regardless of the extremity of your movements.



Even if you wear a hood, you don’t have the issue of the band slipping down and making contact with it either – whilst the rear band is extremely durable, it is also very thin, and combined with the thoughtful, rounded shape of the edge of the transducers prevents movement away from the cheekbones, and thus ensures impressive overall stability. With many bone conduction headphones, you will find the audio can degrade very quickly as they relinquish optimum contact with your cheekbones, and whilst I’m sure this would also be the case with the Purfree, their design mitigates the risk of that happening much greater than typical bone conduction offerings.



The headphones are IP67 water and dust resistant, meaning they will more than cope with a splash of rain and storage. I took them out on a few cycles and runs in the rain with no issues at all. Whilst IP67 will (in lab conditions) sustain 1m of water for around 30 minutes, it is not advised to swim with IP67-rated products. Very few competitors can offer this (it requires further redesign) so swimming is out, but all other exercises in all weather conditions are fine, and showering would probably be fine too. Fortunately, the footprint of the transducers is such that the front profile of the headphones is still relatively discrete, and they don't make your ears stick out either - always a bonus!



I tested the Purfree on long runs, long and short bike rides, around the house and in an office environment. I found no discomfort in any of those scenarios, with no requirement to adjust them at any point either, exceeding my expectations in terms of practical usage.

Functionality – 8.5/10

The Purfree have three buttons – a tactile, silver Multi Function Button (MFB) on your left ear (as pictured in the Ergonomics and Design section), on the right ear you have the charge connector and a Volume + and – button (as pictured above).

Volume + turns the unit on when held down for a couple of seconds, but on first use, hold it down for around 5s and it will take you straight into pairing mode. If you want to immediately move to multipoint, you then hold the MFB and Volume + straight after initiating pairing, and the small LED on the frame will flash white. At this point, connect your first device to HAYLOU BC01, switch the unit off (holding + down for 2s), switch it back on and straight into pairing (holding down + for around 5s), and initiate connection on your second device. Then, go back to your first device and reconnect, and voila, you’ve initialized multipoint. Admittedly, an app would have been nicer to automate this, but it’s pretty straightforward and easier than it sounds. Once you’ve done it once, no need to do it again – if you want to add an alternative device, just put it back into pairing and multipoint is still retained.

When you switch the unit on, you are greeted with a ‘Welcome to Haylou, Battery High/Medium/Low’ message. This is a stronger vibration than you’ll experience when listening to music with them, so don’t be alarmed. You then hear ‘Connected’ (twice if you are using multipoint). Touching either volume button when no media is playing tells you how much battery is remaining. Aside from that, the only use for the Volume buttons is for volume, keeping the schema intuitive without over-complicating it.

The MFB takes over at this point – play/pause or answering calls is a single tap. Double tap progresses to next track, triple tap goes back. Press and Hold for Voice Assistant. The buttons are responsive and you either get a spoken confirmation or beep when they are initiated. Alternative beeps for Volume Up/Down would have been the cherry on top, but simply getting a tangible response is good enough and certainly welcome.

Audio – 8.5/10

Audio on Bone Conduction headphones has always been a challenge when compared to traditional earphones or headphones. Limitations to technology and the human body means Bone Conduction doesn’t really lend itself to frequencies lower than the human voice, so generally this type of headphone has suffered from poor low frequency representation and elevated (but muffled) mid range.

The Purfree goes about as far as you can in optimising audio for headphones of this form factor. Without ear protectors, you get crispy trebles that provide ample detail and texture without over-egging the pudding. Lower mids are elevated, offering reasonably full bodies kick drums and a nice gentle midbass return that, whilst not troubling the quality you get from TWS, is a chasmic improvement over previous iterations of this form factor, and easily comparable to the most recent Shokz Openrun release in terms of clarity and punchiness.

Adding ear protectors lifts the lower (and midrange) frequencies but unless you have extreme sound around you, I’d avoid them. In truth, you may need them when in extremely busy environments – I tested the Purfree at Gatwick Airport, and the environmental noise exceeded the maximum volume – possibly the only area I could see for improvement. Higher volumes will increase the vibration – which takes a little getting used to, but eventually you won’t notice it, and the occasions you’ll need to have them that loud anyway are few and far between – in most environments, the volume is more than sufficient.

Leakage is not obviated completely – the sound is slightly louder than, say, a phone, and certainly louder than most TWS, but far quieter than Air Conduction offerings. It is certainly suitable for spaced-out desks in an office, but in a very quiet room they are still audible, as is always the case with such designs.

I’ve tested several bone and air conduction headphones over the years, and the Purfree are by some distance the best and most balanced sounding offering so far, to the point the quality is almost comparable with semi-in-ear buds such as the Samsung Galaxy Buds Live, whilst offering countless practicality benefits over and above earbuds. Compared to the Shokz Openrun, you’re getting a slightly cleaner, more open sound with better separation. Strings, pianos and female vocals come across clearer on the Purfree. The Shokz Openrun outperforms the Purfree on low-frequency response, offering a fuller bass representation, albeit with a closer, less expansive soundstage. The Openrun also offer higher volume, but the vibration is more powerful, and less easy to ignore. Leakage is also higher on the Shokz. My personal preference favours a more open soundstage, so the Purfree satisfied me audibly in that respect.

The Purfree use the Qualcomm-native AptX codec on Andorid, and this offers almost lip-sync latency levels with videos on the likes of Netflix and YouTube. The codec defaults to SBC on IOS without any noticeable degradation in audio rendition.

Calls – 7/10

Calls on the Purfree are facilitated using dual microphones, utilising the Qualcomm-native cVc 8.0 noise reduction feature, and they do a very decent job of conveying your voice even in noisy environments, far better than the Shokz Openrun in this respect.

In my ‘Airport’ call quality sample, they handle engine, rail and aviation noises pretty well, lifting your voice sufficiently so you are at least coherent.

Indoor calls where you have less ambient noise to complicate the dual-mic array fare better, with decent weight and legibility to your voice.

In general, your voice admittedly lacks a little of the clarity you get from earbuds, where the mic is closer to your mouth, but it is certainly possible to hear you on phone calls, and again, impressive given the form factor constraints.

Battery Life – 9/10

The Purfree are not quite battery monsters, but they top the charts in bone conduction, offering an impressive 8 hours, and even increasing the volume and using multipoint didn’t seem to compromise this. I still had battery remaining after a full day of use, including calls, which certainly topped 7 hours, and they are still as we speak running with around 20% battery remaining as I approach the 8 hour mark – very impressive.

Not only do you get the benefit of long battery life, the all-important quick charge feature offers an additional 2 hours playtime from just 10 minutes juice, and the total charge time is around 90 minutes. As previously mentioned, it’s a proprietary cable as per Shokz and other alternatives.

Other features

Multipoint connectivity is usually reserved for high-end headphones or TWS, so it was nice to see this included in the Purfree, and once initiated it doesn’t skip a beat, working flawlessly. Connectivity is Bluetooth 5.2, and connection is rock solid, easily exceeding the 10m advertised, and never dropping on fast moving bike rides or runs.

Another really nice feature is the ability to change the language of voice prompts. This can be initiated by holding the Volume + and - button as well as the MFB for a few seconds. There are quite a few languages in there - perhaps 5 or 6 - Chinese is definitely in there (I recognised some of the words from trying to decipher FIIL voice prompts!) but I can't be sure of the others - best to contact Haylou for clarification.

The Purfree doesn’t come with a carry case unfortunately – this is a shame, and is something I would like to see in the future - maybe Haylou can offer one as an accessory, in the same way they have replacement straps for their smartwatches.

Summary

It is easy to see how the Purfree managed to pick up the German Red Dot Design Award this year. With this release, Haylou have brought to the market one of the most impressive innovations of 2022 that I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing.

Maybe that bold statement is in no small part down to me being their target audience – I cycle around 100km per week, run around 15km per week, use the gym twice a week and have suffered from tinnitus in the past – so naturally a lot of the Purfree’s value proposition appeals to me – but even so, this is not my first rodeo – I’ve tested many such headphones in the past and been left perennially disappointed. That certainly hasn't been the case with the Purfree.

Haylou have managed to balance comfort and stability in a beautifully-crafted design that looks and wears extremely well. It is the small, nuanced details that Haylou have got right here, deploying the right materials, shape and finish where other vendors tend to cut corners. The only minor oversight is the lack of app support and carry case, but it is possible to EQ with Wavelet and you can pick up generic cases on AliExpress, so this is certainly not a deal-breaker.

If you’ve tried bone conduction before and been disappointed, or have always avoided it because of cost or limitations in audio, now may be the time to give it another go. The Purfree top the charts for comfort, stability, durability and battery life, and are also priced really competitively – at current market price they are on sale on Amazon UK at just £79.99 – this is almost half the price of the Shokz Openrun, performing at least as well and in some cases better. Their flagship-style representation also makes them the ideal gift – grab them while you can at the 11.11 discounted price (link at the top of the review)!

Price Weighted Score: 88%
Raw Score: 85%

Previous Haylou Reviews:

S35 ANC Headphones
Purfree Buds
Purfree BC01 Bone Conduction Headphones
W1
Moripods

About Haylou

The brand name Haylou is taken from the homonym of the English word "Hello". We believe that we can resonate with the sea through conch and listen to the voice of the ocean together, and we can also listen to the voice of users through Haylou and share the beauty of the voice together. Haylou is the messenger of sound and the medium through which we resonate with our users.

Haylou is a brand belonging to Dongguan Liesheng Electronic Technology. Dongguan Liesheng Electronic Technology, established in 2015, is a subsidiary of Dongguan Hele Electronics, having secured Series A funding from Xiaomi technology, becoming one of the earliest members of the Xiaomi Ecological Chain. Hele Electronics and Liesheng Electronic are the OEM for Xiaomi's Mi / Redmi Airdots, and their portfolio of products includes smart and sports wearables as well as a comprehensive range of audio products.

Haylou's product portfolio ranges from wireless audio, smart wearables, to IoT and other categories. And its business has covered more than 100 countries and regions, serving tens of millions of users around the world. We are committed to establishing a digital health ecology by integrating a "user-device-data" scenario via technological innovation. Embracing the values of "Empowering & Awakening", Haylou aims to inspire you to keep challenge, explore your potential and find a better self.