Smart sports headphones don’t often make it to the mainstream, but CES has a consistent home for new announcements. After Sennheiser debuted the Polar-powered Momentum Sport last year, the Suunto Aqua appears to be the definitive 2025 entry.
A pair of waterproof, bone-conduction headphones that use AI to help improve the wearer’s swimming technique, the $179/£175 are already available in the US and Europe.
They have all the hallmarks of a Shokz OpenSwim Pro, too. Not only are they available for around the same price, but they’re also similarly super light (35g), feature 32GB of built-in storage, and boast an estimated battery life of 10 hours (with 20 available from the charging case).
That’s ideal news for those who can’t store playlists from Spotify or Apple Music on their sports watch (i.e. every brand except Garmin).
Yet, the AI features Suunto is touting set the Aqua headphones apart from less-smart rivals. When worn in the pool (and seemingly in open water), they can identify stroke type, posture, respiratory rate, head pitch angle, and glide time.
As with the Form Smart Swim 2 – our current top recommendation for swimmers – users can receive real-time guidance, only with Suunto’s headphones this will be via an AI coach rather than AR prompts. Plus, a more thorough breakdown is available in the companion app after a workout.
With a glaring lack of full-sized swimming pools in the CES 2025 show halls, we didn’t get to grips with the Suunto Aqua during our brief ears-on.
However, we look forward to getting these in for a full test over the next few weeks. Only then will we see how they stack up to the 2025 competition.
