Truly wireless earphones became quite popular after the launch of the Apple AirPods. It must still be noted that Apple only popularised wireless earbuds. In reality, it was Bragi that introduced the concept of truly wireless earphones. The German wireless audio expert introduced the first truly wireless earphones in 2015 with the launch of the Dash. The Bragi Dash was not only truly wireless, but the company also touted them as in-ear computers. The reasoning behind the rather lofty claim was the wireless IEMs capability to track activities, act as a personal assistant, store songs, and function in standalone mode.
Bragi Dash Pro
Rs. 29,999What Is Good?
- Excellent design and build quality
- Extremely comfortable
- Good battery backup
What Is Bad?
- Sound quality is decent
- No aptX support
- Connectivity issues
- Overpriced
Although the Bragi Dash incorporated many features apart from true wireless design, the IEMs didn’t quite take off owing to plenty of reliability and usability issues. Bragi then launched The Headphone. Yes, that’s the actual name. It wasn’t as feature rich, but made up for that in the reliability department. However, The Headphone didn’t stand true to the company’s famous claim of making in-ear computers. To make up for that, Bragi has now launched the Dash Pro, which is a successor to the original Dash earphones. The company claims that it has got rid of all the issues that the original Dash had.
In a nutshell, the Dash Pro is supposed to be a Dash that doesn’t suck. Whether or not that holds true is what we’re here to find out.
The Bragi Dash Pro is touted to provide better battery backup, voice call quality, and reliability. These truly wireless earphones also pack 4GB of internal storage to store songs, heart-rate monitor, and accelerometer along with gyroscope to track activities, in addition to an inbuilt language translator. Although we aren’t quite excited about its add-on features, we are nevertheless excited to see if these truly wireless earphones can perform as well as wired headphones while also being reasonably reliable.
Bragi Dash Pro Review: Build Quality & Comfort
As expected, the left and right enclosures of the Bragi Dash Pro are truly independent and don’t have any wired connection between them. The earphones exhibit excellent build quality, and you can’t hear a creak no matter how hard you flex or twist the enclosures. The earphones incorporate a futuristic design and glossy black finish that endows them with a premium look.
The Bragi Dash Pro IEMs come with a portable carrying case, which can not only charge the earphones, but can also be used for data transfer. The case itself has an aluminium cladding and a premium feel to it. It can also charge the earphones from either an internal 2000mAh battery or by drawing power through the microUSB port.
The earphones have been designed pretty well and fit comfortably. These are, in fact, one of the comfiest wireless earphones I have ever used. Once you pop them in your ears, it’s easy to forget that they are even there. The earphones fit quite securely and can be used even during workouts without the risk of losing them.
Bragi has done a brilliant job of packing in so many components (such as batteries and other electronic components) in such a small package. The earphones are small enough to fit even small ears. Overall, in terms of fit and comfort, the Bragi Dash Pro exceed our expectations.
Bragi Dash Pro Review: Sound Quality
The Dash Pro is equipped with Knowles Balanced Armature drivers. The earphones also have passive noise cancellation, which works flawlessly at blocking background noise. Unfortunately, the sound quality from these earphones is not entirely satisfying. The low-end lacks punch, and that’s quite something considering that I’m not even a bass-head. If you are a bass-head. So if you are one, you might like these IEMs even less. What’s more, the highs are not very sharp either. Definitely not as sharp as you’d expect from IEMs that cost ₹30,000. The mids, however, sound decent.
The tragic truth is that the Bragi Dash Pro doesn’t sound nearly as good as wired earphones that are almost three times cheaper. However, that’s true for all wireless earphones as the technology is still in the nascent stage and still cannot match its wired counterpart in the quality game. That being said, the sound of these IEMs is nevertheless pretty decent for a truly wireless earphone.
Bragi Dash Pro Review: Connectivity & Controls
The Bragi Dash Pro is far from perfect as it does suffer from a few connectivity issues. Sometimes, the left and right earphones don’t pair with each other, resulting only in only one functional channel as the other remains switched off. These Bluetooth IEMs also have have a shorter range compared to other wireless Bluetooth earphones. You might want to keep your smartphone at hand for a stable connection.
The Bragi Dash Pro feature touch-based controls. However, the earphones don’t register touch inputs nearly as accurately as they should. I hope Bragi fixes these touch issues with future software updates.
When you connect the Bragi Dash Pro to an Android smartphone, the IEMs are forced to use the lower quality SBC codec since they lack support for aptX and aptX HD codecs. The SBC codec is incapable of carrying high quality sound stream, which severely affects the performance of the Bragi Dash Pro.
This is a problem restricted solely to Android devices since the Dash Pro support Apple’s own AAC codecs on fruit branded devices. Connect to any Apple device and the Dash Pros do a pretty good job of reproducing accurate sound. Having said that, Bragi should have nevertheless included aptX HD support for better sound quality with Android devices.
Bragi Dash Pro Review: Battery Life
Bragi promises a battery life of five hours with the Dash Pro. Our review unit managed to deliver only around four hours of audio playback with the volume set to around 75 percent. However, I think even four hours of battery life is pretty good, considering that you can charge the Dash Pro on-the-go with the provided case. Speaking of the carrying case, it still has the failure-prone microUSB port for charging. At this price, Bragi could have used a USB Type-C port instead.
Bragi Dash Pro Review: Verdict
There was a time when Bragi was the only choice for truly wireless earphones, but that isn’t the case any more. The earphone market is now filled with quite a few truly wireless earphones that can do what the Bragi Dash Pro does at half the price. The Apple AirPods for one. It doesn’t make any sense spending your hard-earned money on the Dash Pro.
That being said, the Dash Pro does have excellent build quality, great comfort, good battery backup, and decent sound quality. For Apple users, who for some reason don’t like the AirPods, the Dash Pro is a good alternative. Meanwhile, Android users are better off giving this one a miss.
