Outlier Free Pro+ swimming headphones review

The Outlier Free Pro+ headphones come with a charging cable and little plastic case for the (included) headphones, but no overall storage case or bag.

Design and build

Although these are marketed as a set of headphones suitable for swimming, I’d suggest they are more for people who want a pair they can use for general use and occasional short swims, rather than regular long training sessions.

This is because Creative state in the spec that they are only protected against submersion in freshwater up to a depth of 1.5m for up to 40 minutes. In addition, the stated IPX8 rating does not include submersion in salt water.

For me, this suggests they’re more use for rainy runs and short swims. My pool swims are always at least an hour, which immediately puts these out of contention for training if you want to adhere to the manufacturer recommendations.

Performance in testing

In testing I have to admit I used them in the pool for sessions of an hour and they were fine. I didn’t use them for anything longer or in the open water/seawater.

Additionally, these include a microphone for taking calls which isn’t waterproof so before you swim you need to insert a teeny-tiny rubber bung into the hole. Now my eyesight isn’t that bad but even I found this a bit of a pain to do (and remember to do!) before a swim. Spare bungs are included in case you lose one.

So, with those things out of the way, what are we left with? Well, aside from those obvious drawbacks for swimming the headphones offer a pretty straightforward bone-conduction method of working.

Audio quality

Music is uploaded via MP3 drag and drop and on average you get about 10 hours of playback (based on volume etc) with a quick 10-minute charge giving you a full two hours, which is decent if you forgot to charge before a session. Memory capacity is 8GB which is pretty standard across this group test.

As well as that microphone, the headphones support Siri and Gooogle Assistant and you can connect two Bluetooth devices at a time to allow you to stream and take calls at the same time from two devices.

The ear tranducers here are adjustable meaning you can tweak the fit to suit which is a nice touch. The headphones also come in a choice of two colours: the orange and blue shown here which are easy to find in a kit bag, or a more muted blue and black option.

Sound quality here was good, but underwater I would have liked a mode that punched up the quality a little to avoid them sounding a touch muffled.

All in all, maybe these aren’t for keen swimmers, but a nice option for gym users or runners who like the odd dip.

Outlier Free Pro+ swim headphones specs

Price	$129.99 / £89.99
Waterproof rating	IPX8
Bluetooth	Yes
Storage	8GB