Shokz OpenDots 2 Review: Same Great Fit, Much Better Sound

The Shokz OpenDots One were already some of the best open-ear earbuds I had used when I reviewed them last year. They were ridiculously comfortable, sounded better than I expected for the form factor, and had enough battery life that I rarely had to think about charging them. There was just one thing that consistently bothered me: they weren’t quite loud enough.

This was especially noticeable outdoors, where the open-ear design naturally has to compete with traffic, people and everything else happening around you. I could crank the OpenDots One to maximum volume and still occasionally wish it had a little more oomph to cut through all that noise. The OpenDots 2 then fixes that, and then some. 

At first glance, you would be forgiven for wondering what Shokz has actually changed. The earbuds look virtually identical, the case is almost exactly the same, the fit feels the same, battery life remains unchanged, and most of the core experience has been carried over wholesale. But after spending some time A/B testing the two, the difference in audio performance is dramatic enough that the OpenDots One suddenly sounds noticeably lower quality by comparison.

We will get properly into that later, because sound is easily the biggest change here. For now, what you need to know is that Shokz has taken something I already liked a lot, left most of the good bits completely alone, and focused its efforts on the one area that genuinely needed improvement.

It helps that the OpenDots 2 is also slightly cheaper this time around. The OpenDots One launched at AED 749, while the OpenDots 2 comes in at AED 699. You can occasionally find the older model for around AED 599, but availability seems a little spotty. If you are buying into the series fresh, the newer model is already looking like the obvious choice.

Design, Comfort and Features

Put the OpenDots One and OpenDots 2 next to each other, and honestly, good luck telling them apart. 

The earbuds themselves look practically identical. You still get the same clip-on design with the speaker sitting just outside your ear canal, connected to the battery compartment behind your ear through Shokz’s flexible JointArc. Even the weight has barely changed, dropping from 6.5g to 6.4g per earbud.

Shokz says it has refined the JointArc on the OpenDots 2 so it adapts better to different ear shapes and distributes the pressure more evenly. I can’t say I notice any meaningful difference, though. They feel exactly the same to me.

Comfort was already one of the best things about the OpenDots One, and the OpenDots 2 remains just as absurdly easy to wear. I have worn them on long walks, through weight-lifting sessions at the gym, around the house while working, and even while aggressively shaking my head to music like an idiot, and they stay put.

More importantly, there is still practically no sense of pressure on the ears. I can wear them for hours and eventually forget they are even there, which is exactly what happened with the original pair. Whatever Shokz has changed with the JointArc may help people with different ear shapes, but for me, the fit was already excellent and remains so.

The charging case has barely changed either. My review units for both generations are black, and putting them side-by-side reveals only a couple of tiny visual differences. The lid on the OpenDots 2 has a slightly darker grey finish, while the Shokz logo is now printed in a much more visible solid black instead of the almost-transparent branding on the original.

Beyond that, they might as well be twins. The dimensions, weight, shape and thickness all feel the same, and the build quality remains excellent. The hinge still opens smoothly, the magnets pull the earbuds firmly into place, and the case remains compact enough to disappear into a pocket without creating an unsightly bulge. 

One useful upgrade you cannot see is water resistance. The earbuds now carry an IP57 rating, up from IP54 on the OpenDots One, while the charging case itself is now rated IP54. That’s a decent improvement for something you are likely to wear at the gym or while walking outdoors, and gives you a bit more peace of mind if you get caught in heavy rain or absolutely drench them in sweat.

The interchangeable earbud design also returns. There is still no dedicated left or right bud; just clip either one onto either ear, and the earbuds automatically figure out the correct stereo channel. Shokz now calls this Dynamic Ear Detection, but functionally it works much like before. It is a small convenience, but one I continue to appreciate because you never have to think about which earbud you are grabbing from the case.

Controls are where I have noticed a more useful refinement. The OpenDots One used a combination of taps on the JointArc and pinch gestures on the rear section of the earbud. It took me a while to learn exactly where to tap on the original, and even after nearly a year of use I would occasionally miss an input or notice a slight delay when pressing or resuming playback. 

Since I already knew exactly where the touch area was, there was no learning curve this time around. But I have actually found myself using the pinch controls far more often on the OpenDots 2 because they feel noticeably more tactile and reliable. Pinching the little drum-shaped section sitting behind the ear gives you much clearer feedback, and I rarely feel the need to use the tap controls anymore.

Bluetooth has also been upgraded from 5.4 to 6.1, although in practical use I haven’t noticed any difference. Connections have been stable, multipoint works as expected, and switching between devices has given me no problems.

Shokz Companion App

The OpenDots 2 uses the same Shokz companion app, and it remains clean and straightforward to use. The main screen shows individual battery levels for both earbuds and the charging case, along with quick access to Dolby Audio, EQ modes, gesture controls, multipoint pairing and Find My Earbuds. Dive into the settings and you can also toggle Smart Wear Detection, the interchangeable left/right earbud feature, and a new Drop Alert feature that makes the earbud play a sound if it detects that it has fallen.

Gesture controls are quite extensively customizable as well. You can assign different actions to a single pinch, double pinch and pinch-and-hold for each earbud, alongside the tap gestures. There are also the usual Standard, Vocal, Bass and Private EQ presets, a customizable EQ and a new Smart EQ feature that attempts to create a sound profile based on your preference. More on that in a bit.

Overall, the app isn’t bursting with features compared to some competitors, but I don’t think it really needs to be. Everything important is easy to find, the interface is clean, and there isn’t much digging around required to change something.

Audio Quality

This is where OpenDots 2 really earns its keep.

I already liked the sound quality of the OpenDots One quite a bit, especially considering they are open-ear earbuds, but I always had one problem with them: they just weren’t loud enough. Indoors they were mostly fine, but take them outside for a walk, or into a gym with music blasting in the background, and I would regularly have them sitting at 100% volume wishing there was just a little more. The OpenDots 2 fixes that problem in a big way.

Shokz is still using dual 11.8mm drivers, but there is now Bassphere 2.0 with a redesigned acoustic chamber and diaphragm, along with something called MirrorPitch which supposedly directs sound more accurately towards your ears. I am not going to pretend I can tell you which technology is doing what, but after repeatedly switching between the OpenDots One and OpenDots 2, the difference is very obvious.

With Dolby Audio enabled on both and volume set to 100%, the OpenDots 2 sounds around 20-30% louder to my ears. That’s obviously not a scientific measurement, but the increase in volume is immediately noticeable.

More importantly, it actually fixes the problem I had with the original. I like listening to podcasts while working out, and with the OpenDots One I would sometimes struggle to hear the speakers properly over whatever terrible music my gym decided to blast that day. With the OpenDots 2, that happened far less often. Of course, these are still open-ear earbuds with no ANC, so enough traffic, people or loud music will eventually overpower them, but they are considerably easier to live with in noisy environments now.

The other downside of the open-ear design is sound leakage. At higher volumes, people around you will be able to hear what you are listening to fairly clearly. There is a Private EQ preset that reduces this somewhat, but it doesn’t completely solve the problem, so don’t expect much privacy if you are sitting close to someone.

Like the original, Dolby Audio is basically mandatory for me. Without it, the OpenDots 2 are simply too quiet and lose quite a bit of what makes them sound so good. Turn it on and you get more volume, better bass presence and a fuller sound overall, without ruining the tuning in the process. So yeah, I just left it on all the time.

The one annoying thing is that you can no longer use Dolby Audio and EQ together. If Dolby Audio is enabled, all of the EQ presets are disabled. So if you like using Vocal mode for podcasts, for example, you have to give up the extra volume that Dolby Audio provides.

I don’t particularly mind because Dolby Audio sounds good with pretty much everything I throw at it, but it is still a weird limitation. On the OpenDots One, you could have both.

The new Smart EQ didn’t do much for me either. It plays a series of A and B samples, you pick whichever sounds better, and it eventually creates a profile based on your choices. I went through the process and somehow ended up with something that sounded worse than the Standard preset. And since using Smart EQ also means losing Dolby Audio, and therefore a sizable chunk of volume, I didn’t see much reason to stick with it.

As for the actual sound, bass is still going to be thinner than a proper pair of in-ear earbuds. There is no seal here, so you are never going to get that deep, physical punch. But the OpenDots 2 has enough bass to give music proper body and energy instead of sounding thin or lifeless. 

“Seven Nation Army” is a good example of this. The bassline has enough weight behind it to carry the track properly, while “Tauba Tauba” by Karan Aujla has a nice bit of low-end warmth without everything turning muddy. It is still unmistakably open-ear bass, but there is enough of it that I never felt like something was missing. 

The bigger improvement is in the mids and highs. The OpenDots 2 simply sounds more resolving than the original. Vocals are clearer, instruments are easier to separate and there is noticeably more detail coming through, especially on busier tracks.

“Chocolate Chip Trip” by Tool made this particularly obvious. There is much better definition between the different drums and percussions, and each hit is easier to pick out instead of everything blending together. Switching back to the OpenDots One immediately after makes it sound flatter and less detailed by comparison.

The highs are smooth as well. Even at higher volumes, I never found them sharp, piercing or shouty, which is important because I tend to be quite sensitive to that kind of tuning. 

I wouldn’t say the soundstage itself has become noticeably wider. It can initially seem that way because the OpenDots 2 is simply louder, but once I tried to mentally account for that, the overall sense of space felt fairly similar to the original. The real improvement is in clarity and separation rather than everything suddenly sounding much larger.

Dolby Audio can still make voices sound slightly processed, particularly with podcasts, just like it did on the OpenDots One. I have gotten so used to it by now that I barely notice it, and with music it isn’t really something that bothers me at all.

The OpenDots One still sounds good on its own. But when you sit down and A/B the two properly, the OpenDots 2 is clearly better. There is more volume, more bass, more detail, better separation and just more energy across the board. Going back to the One after listening to the 2 doesn’t make it sound bad, but it does make it sound noticeably lower quality.

Call Quality and Battery Life

Call quality is mostly average. People I spoke to could hear and understand me without any major issues, but the voice quality itself isn’t particularly impressive. It sounds a little thin and compressed, which I also noticed with the OpenDots One. It is perfectly fine for phone calls and meetings, but if call quality is high on your priority list, these dots won’t cut it.

Battery life hasn’t changed from the OpenDots One, and that’s perfectly fine because there wasn’t much wrong with it in the first place. Shokz still rates the OpenDots 2 for up to 10 hours of playback from the earbuds and 40 hours in total with the charging case.

Quick charging has improved, though. A five-minute charge now gives you around two hours of playback, whereas the OpenDots One needed 10 minutes for the same amount. The case also still supports Qi wireless charging, so you can drop it on a charging pad whenever it needs topping up.

Should You Buy the OpenDots 2?

OpenDots 2 doesn’t reinvent what Shokz already got right with the original, and I think that’s the correct move. If you already own the OpenDots One and are happy with the sound, you don’t need to upgrade. But if you’ve always wanted more volume and better audio quality, the OpenDots 2 fixes exactly that. For anyone buying into the series for the first time, this is the one to get.