Design and features:The Dash has integrated microphones and touch-sensitive volume, music player, call connect/disconnect, and activity-tracker controls for paired Bluetooth devices. Additional features include a built-in digital music player, and a built-in activity tracker with heart-rate monitor, step counter, and duration-timer functions that provides activity tracker feedback when used by itself and with the free Bragi app or other compatible fitness apps. Our tests showed the accuracy of the heart rate monitor to be very good and step counter to be excellent. This model is claimed to be suitable for swimming and to be water resistant to 1 meter; we found that the earphones sink rather than float, so keep that in mind when you go for your swim. The Dash comes with four pairs of ear pieces in various sizes, a USB charging/data cable, a charging cradle/recharger battery, and carrying case. The free Bragi app is available for download Apple, Android, and Windows 10 mobile devices.
Sound quality: We found the Dash delivers sound quality that falls in the good range - it reproduces music and voice reasonably well, despite the obvious shortcomings in its sound. The overall sound can best be summarized as soft, and indistinct, and somewhat full. Bass (as in bass drums, bass guitars, stand-up bass, etc.) has decent impact, but is soft and doesn't go deep. The midrange (voices, guitars, horns, etc.) is fairly even, but is somewhat hazy and congested (think sonic traffic jam). The treble (cymbals, the upper range of violins, etc.) is somewhat subdued, and the upper treble is muted. The sound is closed-in (sound-wise it is obvious that you have something plugging up your ears) and lacks a bit of liveliness. A slight hiss can be heard when there is no audio program to drown it out. There is no significant difference in sound quality between the Bluetooth connection and the internal music player.
Comfort: The Dash has a hybrid ear-insert/ear bud design - the earpieces insert into the ear canals and are intended to seal them as with typical ear-insert models, and they are also intended to be supported by the ear bowls like an ear bud model. Although this model came with four different size earpieces, the sizes change how they fit in the ear bowl, not how they fit in the ear canal. With the proper ear piece installed, fitting the earphone to the earbowl is straight forward, but it may take some fiddling to get the earpieces to seal the ear canal properly, and as typical of in-ear models, they produce a sense of pressure in the ear canal that might be uncomfortable for some. Some users, especially those with larger ear canals, might not be able to get a proper ear-canal seal. Failure to get them to seal in the ear canal reduces the level of bass and lower midrange and reduces the sound quality overall, which means users that can't get a proper ear canal seal will hear lower sound quality than this model optimally provides. Although they don't feel particularly stable, they didn't shake loose, even with vigorous head movement in non-swimming use. Three of our staff members, who were chosen because they were able get a proper ear canal seal with these earphones, used them during their swimming workouts and found that the Dash stayed in place and water didn't leak into their ears. During our initial test of this model we found the touch controls to be finicky, but updates to its operating system seem to have resolved the issues, and the controls can now be locked using the Bragi app to prevent them from being operated inadvertently. Some uses might find tapping on the touch control, as required to actuate some functions, causes ear discomfort.
