MATTER: Jaybird Vista Wireless Sport Headphones, Podcasts and Sweat

One of the amusing experiences of moving into mid-life is reflecting on change. It’s fun to regale my kids with tales of how we used to live, like how we used to have a phone wired to the wall. which had a rotary dial. A what? ‘Hold on, I’ll show you a picture on my phone.’

‘And get this: we used to carry portable CD players around with sleeves of discs! It was so annoying when your disc would skip as you were walking, roller-blading or whatever, and worse, when they’d get scratched. Then this MP3 thing came onto the scene for about a minute. . . . ‘

The technology that changed the game in so many ways, and heavily influenced the subsequent progression of cell-phone design was of course the iPod. The iPod’s uninterrupted play, portability and storage capacity opened the possibility of listening to just about any of my music whenever, wherever I wanted. Fitting music to mood and activity instantly became not only possible, but ‘necessary,’ and the mixed-tape of old was reborn in the form of the playlist.

‘Party JAMS’! ‘Study music.’ ‘Christmas.’ ‘Hey, do you have a good playlist for riding inside?’ ‘I’m going to make you the most awesome playlist for your wedding!’

During the iPod honeymoon period, I was so amped about my new ability to colour riding with whatever music I owned, I went so far as to wear my Sony full-coverage headphones while riding to and from school in Montreal; wooooo! I quickly realized that was a terrible idea - how did I even work them around my helmet? - and thus began about a decade of listening via Apple’s wired earbuds. They were so permeable to ambient noise, I could wear them in both ears. I’ll never forget riding up Haleakala, the 60km volcano ascent in Maui, while listening to LCD Soundsystem.

Indoors, while riding the trainer, those headphones were not nearly good enough at blocking out the ambient noise, and there was no way I’d blast my speakers while my family was in the house, let alone sleeping. So I rode in a pair of wired stereo headphones, saturating them in sweat daily, sometimes overheating my ears.

Outdoors, I got out of the habit of listening to music while riding after the novelty of the iPod wore off. I had no qualms about this, as I value listening to how my bike sounds as I ride. It was my foray into podcast listening a few years ago that drove me back. Once I’d gotten into a few banger shows, I came to love taking easy path rides in the evening, absorbing pods like a sponge. This was an enriching experience.

#PODCASTLIFE REVERBERATIONS

Podcasts now occupy an important aspect of my daily life, and I can’t imagine myself reverting to a pre-pod reality. There have been a couple interesting unforeseen consequences stemming from #podcastlife.

Easy now.

First, podcasts helped me refine my ability to ride truly easy when I needed and wanted to. You might be surprised to learn that many, many bike riders don’t know how easy an easy ride (aka, ‘recovery ride’) should be. While listening to an intellectually stimulating podcast, I clue in that I’m riding too hard if I lose the plot. Keeping it actually easy allows me to focus my mind on the pod.

The show that got me hooked on mellow pod-rides:

Walking can be better than riding.

The second unexpected consequence of integrating podcasts into my daily life is that they changed how I experience walking. Since I was a kid, riding a bike from point A to B was always my preference. If I could ride, I’d ride; why walk? ‘Walking is slower, it’s boring, I don’t have time for that.’ While living in Montreal for five years and having kids saw me adopt walking as a pleasant mode of transit, I wasn’t ‘into it’ per se. While my wife got into doing exploration walks from home with the kids, I maintained the default perspective that if a trip would be further than a couple kilometres, I’d obviously ride.

That default morphed over a couple years of walking instead of riding the 2k from work to weekly chiropractor appointments at lunch. My sense of a ‘short walk’ grew as I enjoyed being able to focus on podcasts; I was doing something both productive and enjoyable; win/win. It felt good to shrink my daily risk envelope too.

On the back of what became daily lunch walks, I made a big shift in the summer of 2019: I stopped riding my bike to work. I’d come to think of a 3k walk as ‘nothing’, and after riding my bike for 100 hours in July, I didn’t really think I needed more saddle time. For a while I walked my bike to work, in case I needed to get somewhere quickly later in the day. I never did, so I stopped doing that soon enough. It was a pleasure to head out the door each morning with a pod rolling, stimulating my mind and setting up my day on a positive note. It took awhile for my hips to adapt to the big days, where I power-walked up to 20k for meetings and things, and I’m certain I could have been fresher for cyclocross if I’d not been doing that, but I didn’t and still don’t care. I now consider walking a necessary and wonderful yin to the yang of cycling, a counterbalance in a multitude of ways. And listening to podcasts was integral to the process of arriving upon this perspective.

The show that transforms walks into journeys:

Why wireless?

On paper, wireless in-ear headphones seemed like a good idea. My wired earbuds were totally useless for riding indoors, annoying while riding outdoors - mainly because being tethered meant I had to carry my phone in a jersey pocket, rain presented an issue regarding phone protection, taking photos from the saddle was inhibited by the wire, and it would inevitably get pulled around and need re-adjustment regularly during rides. At the gym, being wired to my phone sucked because it required fitting the unit into shorts that were not designed for such a brick. I often used my wireless over-ear headphones for this reason, but that’s janky when you’re not in an upright position. I figured there had to be a better way.

As I was thinking about whether someone with my use cases would want/need earphones connected together, Apple introduced their AirPods. These things totally freaked me; how could they possibly make sense for folks doing gnarly stuff, like taking a scarf off? Wouldn’t they just fall into a sewer or something? I don’t know, because I wasn’t willing to spring for a pair to find out. But after doing some research on more affordable alternatives targeted to the outdoor sport market, I enquired with Jaybird about lining up a test, and they were kind enough to sent me a pair of their Vistas to try.

Design, Function and Performance

Jaybird’s Vistas ($239.99 CAN) are built for the demands of outdoor sport, and consequently take a rather different form than AirPods. Silicone ‘fins’ anchor them securely in the ears without reliance on the buds being tightly fitted into the ear, three sizes of which are provided. After 8+ solid months of use, including cyclocross training, I’ve never had a bud fall out; success!

6 hours of run time, and 10 more stored in their storage case translates to lots of use, especially in the context of riding outside, where I almost always only use one earphone, which yields 12 hours run-time. This lets me hear ambient noise well, which is important for road safety and even hearing what the bike is doing while off-road. Sound quality is normally excellent, including while on phone calls, and their sound even auto-tunes for single or double earphone use; sweet!

The exception I’ve experienced is when using the Vistas on the trainer paired with a Surface Pro tablet. I haven’t been able to discern where the distortion I experience comes from, but it’s not a deal breaker. Numerous pairing challenges with this device suggest it’s BT function is the problem.

I experience signal break-up when around microwaves, which happens at home, and in a few locations in pass through locally. Bluetooth range is far enough to avoid annoying break-up; I can almost make if from my desk at work to the water fountain 20m away without issue. In the house I can get away with one floor of physical separation. Weird disconnections seem to be part of the deal with BlueTooth devices, as I get random disconnections from all my BT devices when connected to various computers and phones. That’s modern life, I guess. . . .

The must-listen show for those interested in the stories behind the designs that shape our world:

While walking, I tend to use just one earphone, to ensure I maintain a vigil on what’s going on around me. I keep the left ear open, same as while riding. This also helps me speak with folks at stores or whatever, as two earphones in the ears, while silent, cut out too much ambient noise to converse. There are other options on the market that use bone conduction to transmit sound waves, leaving the ears open to ambient noise. I can see value in that format, but If I had to choose one format of the two, I’d prefer in-ear, because there are more occasions when I prefer to block out ambient noise than not. For example: while on the trainer, while working in a loud environment, while flying on planes.

On the trainer, I wear both earphones, and they cut out the ambient noise of my Kurt Kinetic unit really well. I don’t have to jack the volume to hear the audio of the cyclocross race or whatever I’m watching.

The Vista’s storage case doubles as a portable charger, extending their battery life on the fly, as a ‘quick charge’ provides an hour of play time; handy! The earphones are waterproof to the industry standard IPX7 level, which is suitable for all but full-on immersion. So, yeah, you could shower with them, but that’s not really what they’re made for. Rain? Yes, send it. Riding inside on a trainer and sweating buckets? Yep! SuperSoaker fights? Absolutely. I’ve seen not indication that they’re affected by the ample sweat I put out while riding inside, or the rain I’ve ridden in numerous times.

After about 4 months of use the volume in my right-side earphone had faded to an inaudible level. Back and forth with Jaybird didn’t yield a solution - they thought it was a firmware problem - so they sent me a replacement pair. Since then I’ve experienced no further issues after another 4+ months of us; I wanted to hold off on posting this review until I felt confident in their lasting function. I’m satisfied, and imagine I simply had a unit with some sort of odd defect.

Jaybird has created a free mobile app with a few cool functions I’ve tapped. The most useful is probably configuration of each earphone’s single pushbutton. There are numerous options here, but I’ve been happy with a simple one: right side makes volume go up, left side goes down. A long hold turns them on and off, and also pauses/plays. While using single earphones, one has to use the phone or whatever device to control the other volume direction.

Conclusion

I’ve really enjoyed using the Vistas for cyclocross rides with music, road rides with podcasts, trainer rides while watching movies and races, and lots and lots of walking. I feel the Vistas are definitely secure enough to not worry about losing while doing any sort of riding and running, and probably lots of other adventury things. If I were to change anything about them, I’d want them to be lower profile, so that I fall asleep wearing them, particularly while travelling. They protrude enough to put uncomfortable pressure on my ear when my head is on its side. Surely results will vary on this front, and I’m sure they will shrink in time, as electronics tend to do. At the moment, I don’t consider this a deal breaker, given the security the Vista’s design delivers, and I’m not actively looking for an alternative.

With the extra riding inside that came with COVID-19 protocols through March and April of 2020, I was on the trainer even more than usual; almost every day. Reliable use of the Vistas while sweating pedaling nowhere in the basement contributed to my sanity; a bond was formed. I can’t really imagine what I’d do without them. . . .

Thanks for reading all the way through! If you’d like to snag a pair of Vistas, this link will get you 10% off retail (Canada and US residents). Just make sure you click the appropriate country you’re in.