I put Shokz OpenFit 2 earbuds through their paces on runs and in a noisy gym
Shokz have unveiled their new OpenFit 2 True Wireless Earbuds, which they say brings you 'groundbreaking open-ear audio.
And after trying them out for a few runs and a couple of sessions in a noisy gym, we can second their boast.
Arriving in Ireland this week, the new OpenFit 2 delivers superior sound quality and comfort - so much so that as soon as you stick them on, you forget you are wearing them.
We purchased Shokz Openswim headphones a year ago and they proved a game-changer when it comes to a pursuit that can often be cut short due to boredom.
But time melts away in the pool to the extent that, just last week, we did length after length after length for just under two and a half hours (6,000m - the goal is to complete a 10k swim by the end of the year)!
Having experienced the underwater sound quality of Shokz - achieved through bone conduction - and the 'am I really wearing them' comfort, we were looking forward to getting our hands on the OpenFit 2.
And they haven't disappointed.
The OpenFit 2 is equipped with cutting-edge technology that enhances your audio experience, allowing you to immerse yourself in rich, crystal-clear sound.
They use Shokz DualBoost™ Technology - two independent drivers that process low and high-frequency sounds separately.
This really does deliver a richer and more immersive sound quality, and it allows you to enjoy your favourite music and calls while still being aware of your surroundings.
This is particularly important when running in an environment where there is traffic - both vehicular and pedestrian.
The earbuds incorporate a new Upgraded OpenBass™ 2.0 Algorithm.
According to Shokz, this is engineered to deliver powerful and deep bass tones that are precisely directed to your ears.
By focusing on sound directionality, OpenBass 2.0 ensures that you can fully enjoy bass-heavy tracks while still maintaining clarity in the higher frequency ranges, resulting in a well-rounded listening experience.
Another innovative inclusion is their Improved DirectPitch™ 2.0 Technology.
This harnesses a variety of advanced engineering techniques to optimize how sound is delivered to your ears while minimizing sound leakage.
It ensures that the audio you hear is clear and undistorted, regardless of your environment, and is tailored to promote focus on your audio without disturbing those around you.
With two curious daughters climbing on me at one point while testing these earbuds, we can confirm that the audio blasting through the OpenFit 2 was heard only by yours truly, even though the sound isn't delivered by buds that sit inside your ears, but instead rest at the entrance to your ear canal.
Having worn a range of in-ear and overear headphones and earbuds in the past, the audio provided by the OpenFit 2 is superior to anything we have heard.
Once you download the app, you can control the sound, and monitor the charged status of both the earbuds and the case.
The different EQ options include Standard, Vocal (good for reading e-books or listening to podcasts), Bass Boost and Treble Boost. You can also customise and save your own EQ mode.
The fit is perfect, and that is down to the flexible ear hooks, which contour to the shape of your ear, and 'Ultra-Soft Silicone 2.0'.
The earbuds remain comfortable even during prolonged wear, while, just like their Openswim headphones, there is minimal movement even during the most hardcore of workouts.
They wrap comfortably around your ear even when wearing glasses and a hat.
Other features, such as physical buttons, make these one of the easiest earbuds to use, while there are many health-related benefits to wearing open-ear headphones.
These include awareness of your environment and the minimising of bacterial growth.
We began the process of reviewing the OpenFit 2 earbuds as fully paid-up members of the Shokz fanclub, thanks to their brilliant swim tech.
And when it comes to audio quality, comfort, battery life (11 hours on a charge and 48 hours with the charging case), we haven't been let down by their latest product.
Open headphones have long struggled to deal with the issue of inferior sound quality compared to their closed-ear or in-ear counterparts, but the OpenFit 2 goes a long way towards bridging that gap.
If you are looking for a summer fitness splurge, something to compliment your workout wardrobe, then OpenFit 2 could be the perfect purchase.
Shokz OpenFit 2 will be available from Thursday June 5 from DID or Harvey Norman and RRP is €189.99. They cost €236 on Amazon.
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Irish Times
3 days ago
- Irish Times
PwC Ireland boss focused on getting tech to do some heavy lifting
'The future is technology and you've got to lean in and embrace that,' says Enda McDonagh , managing partner of PwC Ireland , one of the Big Four accounting firms in the State. We're speaking in his office overlooking the Liffey in Dublin's north Docklands. The impressive double aspect view stretches down to Liberty Hall on one side and up towards Capital Dock the other way. 'It's a great view all right, but I usually have my back to it working on the computer,' he says. Technology is at the heart of the change that has been taking place on McDonagh's watch since he took over the reins at PwC almost two years ago. READ MORE 'The big thing we're trying to get after is a much better focus on the technology part of what we can bring to our clients,' he says, adding that PwC has long had a good reputation in that area. Artificial intelligence is the latest technology taking centre stage, particularly generative AI. 'We've got stuck into AI in a big way in the past couple of years,' he says. The firm converted to Microsoft M365, which brings Copilot capability with it. As part of a global collaboration with OpenAI , it has created Chat PwC to undertake tasks that 'previously would have been done by people manually researching, and helps speed up the productivity on a day-to-day basis'. Can he trust its accuracy? 'You always have validation checks, but because it's pulling from our own materials, it's very reliable,' he says. PwC is also using Harvey, a tax and legal tool, generating first-level content to use in the practice. McDonagh says AI is not replacing jobs at the firm. 'There hasn't really been any net replacement of our people with AI. We're trying to take tasks from our people in the administrative space and repurpose what they do,' he says. 'We're not seeing AI replacing humans, we're just seeing it changing what the human does in the dynamic.' Last year, PwC added 1,028 staff, including 383 graduates, to bring its headcount to 3,566. McDonagh says a similar number will be added in 2025, with 'broadly similar numbers' employed by the firm overall, reflecting the significant annual churn at professional services firms. PwC Ireland reported a 2.8 per cent increase in net revenue last year to €469 million . In gross terms, revenue was €569 million, up 9.6 per cent on 2023, but its 'expenses and disbursements on client engagements' rose by 59 per cent to €100 million. All the figures exclude VAT and relate to income generated by PwC's firms in the Republic and Northern Ireland. But it does not include the firm's advisory and consulting activities in the North, which are part of the UK firm and employ about 3,000 people. Advisory services was the big drag on PwC Ireland's numbers, declining by €16 million to €107 million. This included €63 million (up from €59 million a year earlier) in revenue from permitted non-audit services to entities that are audited by the Republic of Ireland firm of PwC. Its assurance and tax units recorded revenue increases of 9 per cent and 7.4 per cent respectively. McDonagh says the slowing down in its advisory business was a combination of fewer deals and more prudence from clients in terms of discretionary spend. 'What we've entered into a period of now is uncertainty, which is the worst possible thing for businesses,' he says by way of reference to US president Donald Trump and his flip-flops on tariffs . 'This ebb and flow period of going to bed at night and waking up in the morning and the goalposts have shifted again is the really tricky part. We are seeing a real slowdown in new investment allocations, M&A is on pause and there's a period of stasis.' Setting Trump aside, McDonagh says now is the time for Ireland to tackle its 'competitiveness issues', particularly around infrastructure, to 'stay agile' and continue to attract new investment. 'We're going to have to work harder than we have done in a while on the Irish story in the context of what's going on. The question for all of us where does the whole tariff debate land,' he says. In spite of the market being a 'bit more challenging', McDonagh says PwC's ambition is to 'keep growing' the firm, hiring in the right skills rather than making acquisitions. 'M&A would take place at a [global] network level more than a local level,' he says. PwC is the smallest of the Irish Big Four firms. EY is the clear leader with annual revenues last reported at €772 million for the island. KPMG's income was €625 million and Deloitte's €517 million. 'We just focus on what we're doing in terms of our own strategy. There are lots of apples and oranges in those numbers. We're happy with our own numbers ... when one of your businesses [advisory] is down by double digits and you're still able to grow and trade through, that's a good result for the year,' he says. In terms of this year's revenues, McDonagh is 'hopeful' of beating the 3 per cent growth achieved last time, while recognising the global economic uncertainty that exists. He declines to comment on the trends in pay and profits for Irish partners, amid reports that UK partner pay last year fell by 5 per cent on average while the firm's profits declined by 14 per cent. In the US, the firm has been laying off thousands of staff while profits in Asia-Pacific fell as scandals in China and Australia affected the firm. 'If your revenue is growing at less than it did before, that obviously has an impact, but I'm not getting into it beyond the revenue figure.' The Irish firm was itself dragged into a scandal last year involving PwC in Australia when it was revealed that a partner in its Australian tax practice had used confidential information from government meetings to assist colleagues in winning new business from multinational technology companies. It emerged that former PwC Australia tax partner Peter-John Collins, who was banned from practising as a tax agent after sharing secret information, sought in 2015 to tap PwC Ireland's contacts with technology companies in the United States to share his insights. PwC Ireland repeatedly declined to disclose the identity of the individual in its firm who received the email. McDonagh declined to comment on the Australia issue, saying it had been dealt with 'at international level' by the firm and there was no issue for the Irish business. Back to the day-to-day business at home, PwC last September enforced a three-day-a-week policy for staff attendance in its offices (it has bases in Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick, Waterford and Wexford). 'The reason we looked for a three-day commitment is because our business is about people and one of our core philosophies is about high-performing teams and people being together in that team environment so they can learn and grow and foster. Getting that three days in the office is the right balance for us at the moment,' he says. McDonagh says attendance at its headquarters in Dublin peaks at about 1,600 staff on days midweek, a similar level to pre-Covid days. 'Fridays are a lost day to the city centre,' he says. 'Like most everybody else, we went into Covid not thinking a business like ours could operate remotely. The business was incredibly resilient. But a huge amount of how you develop as a professional is the learned experience of being in a team environment and learning from interactions. It's working well for us now.' Born in Southend in southeast England, his family returned to Ireland when he was two and McDonagh grew up in Tallaght, southwest Dublin. This was a time before the M50 and the Square shopping centre when there was a lot of farmland in the area. 'A lot of football and other games would have been played on those spaces back then,' he says. His late father hailed from Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, his mother from Clones, Co Monaghan. 'I'm a big GAA fan and I probably went to more Ulster finals [in Clones] as a kid growing up by dint of spending time with my mother's family in the summer,' he says. In spite of that childhood experience, he is a 'diehard Dubs fan, there's no ambiguity when it comes to that', but he always has a 'soft spot' for Ulster teams in the championship. His father worked in Irish Rail while his mother's family was behind a hardware store in Clones called Morgans. He attended Templeogue College for secondary school before taking a BComm business degree in University College Dublin and joining Craig Gardner Price Waterhouse (one half of what later became PwC) in 1994 via the annual milk-round recruitment sweep of universities that the big accounting firms all do. He later followed that with a master's degree in accounting, sponsored by the firm. Why accounting? 'I had a fantastic accounting teacher in the way that, in schools, you can get. That's what fostered the interest in accounting,' he says. He worked as an auditor, making his way up the ranks to manager level, at which point he took advantage of PwC's international transfer system to take a role in Boston in 2000, spending three years in the US city. 'I wanted to do something different. So I applied to go to the US and Boston came out of the hopper,' McDonagh says. 'Being Irish there is not culturally a shock to the system. Boston is one of the more European American cities if that's an appropriate analogy. The downtown area is not the block model of a lot of American cities. In terms of quality of life and opportunity, Boston at that time was brilliant. 'I also worked a lot with the pharmaceutical industry over there, so when I came back, with the growth in pharma here, it worked out very well for me.' In 2006, McDonagh became a partner in the firm, led the assurance practice and served eight years on the leadership team of his predecessor as managing partner, Feargal O'Rourke . He was chosen to lead the firm two years ago, taking over from O'Rourke in July 2023 for a four-year term. Will he go again for second term? 'That will be for the [146] partners to decide,' he says with a smile. 'I'm really enjoying the role. It's a privilege to lead a firm like this. As long as people want me around, I'm happy to stay. 'If you'd asked me in 1994 did I ever think I'd be sitting in a chair like this, I'd never have thought that in a million years. But there's an innate part of me that thinks I want to be the best that I can be.' CV Name: Enda McDonagh Job: Managing partner, PwC Age: 52 Lives: Blackrock, Co Dublin Family: Married, with three children: a 17-year-old son and 15-year-old twins (one boy, one girl). Hobbies: Big fan of American sports, having lived and worked in Boston for three years. Also a Manchester United season ticket holder and a 'diehard' Dublin GAA fan. Something we might expect: 'I'm a great believer in the importance of team. The highlight of any week is when I get a call from a client to tell me the team we have working with them have gone above and beyond to deliver for them.' Something that might surprise: 'Notwithstanding my well-known support of Irish sporting teams, I was actually born in England.'
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Irish Times
OpenAI's Sarah Friar: ‘Am I worried about deep fakes? Yes'
When Sarah Friar announced she was stepping back as chief executive of neighbourhood tech platform Nextdoor, she had a plan. 'I felt I had done all I could – inject big growth into the system. I'd taken Nextdoor public, I made sure the balance sheet was really robust, I'd done a lot of work on the product and kind of rebuilt the whole site from scratch,' she says. 'I wasn't feeling though that my growth trajectory was still like this. I felt like I was plateauing a little. And frankly, I was at a stage of life where, ironically, I thought maybe I wanted to retire and take a break.' It didn't quite work out that way. Within a few weeks, OpenAI came calling via Larry Summers, tapping her to be the company's next chief financial officer. Friar was intrigued. 'All the delusions I had of this beautiful life I was going to lead? Bye. I'll go back to working really hard,' she says. 'But how could I say no? It was just an incredible moment for technology, and that's certainly lived up to that promise. I feel like I've gotten a front-row seat to incredible outcomes.' READ MORE That was in June 2024. Almost a year later, Friar is at the Dublin Tech Summit, discussing everything from AI safety to the future of the sector. The general consensus from those who have heard her speak is that she is the adult in the room, a voice of reason in an industry that has given people cause for concern. 'I felt I had a skill set that Open AI needed. It definitely was going to need to raise money, needed to be kind of respected in the markets with investors. It hadn't really had a business plan. Finance without strategy is really directionless, but strategy with no finance is totally toothless – no one can get anything done. 'I felt like I could bring that,' she says. 'Also it was a company that was growing at speed, and then culture is really important. So I felt like I could be that leader that isn't just going to stay in my lane.' OpenAI lit a fire under the generative AI industry when it surprised the tech world with the public launch of ChatGPT . There were teething problems, particularly around hallucinations, where the technology would make up facts and supply inaccurate information to queries. But Friar says many of those early issues have been resolved, or at least vastly improved. The introduction of reasoning models has also made the technology smarter, and ChatGPT now has memory so it can learn from its interactions with people. Friar is a frequent user of AI herself, a habit that predates her time at OpenAI. 'I was definitely one of those people who was on the wait list the minute [ChatGPT] hit Silicon Valley, and everybody wanted it. First, all I did was create rhymes. For Nextdoor, I did my holiday speech to the company in rhyme, which I thought was so clever and I'm mortified,' she says. 'That's versus moving to real outcomes today: personalised education in school, drug discovery.' She points to Moderna, which uses the technology for personalised doses for vaccines, college students using ChatGPT as an educational aid to learn about complex problems. Finance without strategy is really directionless, but strategy with no finance is totally toothless – no one can get anything done — Sarah Friar It also functions well as a wine sommelier, Friar says, particularly with the technology's ability to use your phone's camera. 'I take a photograph of the label, and you can say, tell me about this wine. What should it pair with? How should it taste like? Is it good to drink now?' Since Friar joined, OpenAI has announced two funding rounds: the $6.6 billion (€5.8 billion) Series E funding round in October 2024, and the blockbuster $40 billion round in March, the largest private tech funding round to date. In total, the company has raised $57.9 billion across 11 funding rounds, with backers that include Microsoft and Softbank. AI is widely considered a bit of a money pit, one that the companies involved are hoping will pay off. Innovation and ambition are expensive, not to mention the ongoing cost of serving up answers to queries and deeper research requests. These days, ChatGPT offers a range of subscriptions for users who want to get more out of the system – unlimited use, building their own custom GPTs, enterprise-level access. But the majority of OpenAI's users – 95 per cent, Friar says – are still on the free plan. OpenAI has no plans to try to force these users to pay. Instead, it will use the more expensive subscriptions to support that access. ChatGPT's plans range from $20 to $200 a month. 'We needed to build a business model that continues to support a lot of free use,' she explains. 'For all the rolling of eyes on the Twitterverse, for people who want to do a lot of coding, a lot of deep research, things that take a lot of tokens, they are delighted to kind of pay that amount of money. 'If you take my husband, he's an investor. He effectively thinks of Deep Research as like his analyst, and he's like $200 a month. I would not even get an analyst to work for me for a month for that. And so I think if you see the value, you get there.' Although OpenAI does not specify revenue figures for its products individually, Friar says the $200 a month ChatGPT Pro hit one milestone sooner than the rest - reaching $100 million in annual recurring revenue in a short time. The bulk of OpenAI's users are outside the US, necessitating its overseas expansion. This is where Ireland has benefited; OpenAI has made Ireland its European headquarters, a point of pride for Friar, who is originally from Co Down. There are plans to grow the Irish office, she says, as OpenAI seeks to expands its European presence. 'We do have a very vibrant Dublin office that is starting to grow and it will get big over time because it can be an office ... where we can put research and apply it potentially over time,' she says. 'It's a really good place for what we call FDEs – forward deployed engineers – who tend to work alongside a customer to help bring their wildest AI dreams to some sort of fruition. So we are definitely investing in Dublin.' However, the EU does not have the greatest reputation among companies that are trying to move fast and create a new industry, with regulations intended to put guardrails on technologies such as AI seen as a hindrance to the sector. Friar says that while OpenAI welcomes regulation, it is possible to overdo things. 'Particularly in a young technology where we're still all somewhat figuring out and it's moving at the speed of light,' she says, 'I think you can get into a way over-regulated environment and I think that's the place where the EU does need to be careful and mindful.' As the technology has advanced, so have concerns about its use and the potential for bad actors to weaponise AI. 'Am I worried about deep fakes ? Yes; that's a malicious actor moment. But also, if someone's going to stop it, I think it's technology on the other side. I think this goes back to being responsible with what we roll out,' says Friar. 'We don't say that we've got it all, we know everything, because that would not be very humble and also not very true. But this is where we have to go – work with regulators, work with governments, work with research institutes. 'And I think if you get enough of the right, the good people on one side, you'll continue to keep the technology safe but you're not going to be able to keep it in a box. It's just not a tenable outcome.' OpenAI has made some big moves recently. The company has signed up Jony Ive, the former Apple designer, to create a device that will bring AI to people without relying on a smartphone. The device itself remains a mystery for now, but Friar seems enthusiastic about the partnership. 'Every tech era has had the thing, the substrate. The internet age, I don't know if it happens without the PC,' she says. 'When you got to the mobile phone era, the touch screen is what made the phone. 'In the world of AI, we are still, like, these devices force us to talk with our thumbs. How do we create a much more holistic view of a substrate to work on top of it? I don't think we've had that springboard moment where we're like, oh, there's all of this intelligence, now what could really happen?' Ive, she says, has done really well in the last two big generation shifts in the tech industry. But it isn't just about him; there is a whole team behind his IO company with the expertise to take the ideas into reality. [ Can Jony Ive replicate the Apple magic at OpenAI? Opens in new window ] The stakes are high on this one. Not only has the company spent $6.5 billion on buying IO, but it is also trying to succeed where others – most notably the Humane AI Pin – have crashed and burned. Sold off for parts to HP, Humane now lives on as a cautionary tale. But OpenAI seems confident that the partnership with Ive will pay off. 'What we've bought with IO is that holistic picture,' Friar says. 'Maybe we're not the folks who will win on the device, but we've certainly injected a lot of excitement into the ecosystem right now, and I think that's only good for, ultimately, where we're trying to go in the age of intelligence if the whole ecosystem is vibrant.'
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Irish Times
Driverless cars will take longer to get on to roads than advocates anticipate
The UK government has indicated a delay to at least 2027 for its plans to start rolling out self-driving cars on British roads. Governments, at least those in democratic societies, should stop putting a number on it, particularly as the challenge extends far beyond the technology itself. Think of Apollo 11, indeed the whole Apollo programme. Getting humans to the moon was quite an achievement. There were issues along the way, most notably the Apollo 1 tragedy. The methods both for testing the technology and execution were, however, relatively easy to control. The total number of people at risk remained low because of the nature of the endeavour. Everyone involved, including everyone at risk, was an expert to some degree in the field. The risk factor could be mitigated enormously. Now think about the microwave oven. It was invented in the 1940s, about a decade before the first person went into space. Yet it didn't become a household item before the 1980s, more than a decade after Neil Armstrong took his stroll. READ MORE Every fear, founded or unfounded, about the technology in microwave ovens had to be tested substantially. The end user was rarely going to be an expert and fears had to be allayed. [ Would I use a driverless taxi again? It obeyed traffic signs, stopped for pedestrians and drove cautiously Opens in new window ] There were elements that took years to fix, such as evenly cooking an item. Then there were infrastructure issues including the method of power supply to homes coupled with the increased demand. When you factor all that in, no wonder it took so long. Self-driving cars have managed the moon landing bit. Their problem is the chilled or frozen ready meals part, including telling chilled apart from frozen. For full disclosure, self-driving cars would be quite beneficial to me. I don't drive and have no desire to ever learn. Having a vehicle that just brought me places while I played with my phone oblivious to the world would be fantastic. But having them on actual roads in a regular form is still a matter of fantasy for quite a few reasons. Getting approval for roadworthiness is more than a government, or rather the executive branch of a government, waving a magic wand. In pretty much every functional democracy on earth, there are agencies or departments that focus on rules around transport The technology is the obvious part. It has come an awfully long way. As a feat of engineering it merits real credit. The improvements made in terms of recognition of pedestrians, animals, other vehicles and even inclement weather conditions are considerable compared with when the hype began. The problem is that great isn't good enough. Quite frankly, amazing isn't a high enough standard. When interacting with the public at large, anything short of perfect is a problem. No combination of lidar, radar and camera technology has yet hit a standard that could be considered flawless. The contention in defence of the technology might be that plenty of accidents occur already on our roads due to simple human error. The difference is that there are penalties for making mistakes on the road or being reckless up to and including the option of prison for the offending parties. Putting a robot behind bars isn't really an option – and even less so penalising the person who designed or programmed the robot. Beyond the functional technology, there's an enormous logistical challenge – really a combination of enormous tasks. Across Europe, let alone Ireland, the road system varies substantially – even to the extent of driving on different sides of the road. All of that data needs to be manageable for a driverless vehicle. Solving that includes relying on technology beyond the control of self-driving car makers. GPS is the big one here as gaps in coverage are a real problem that human drivers have to navigate for themselves today. The biggest issue is administrative, however. Getting approval for roadworthiness is more than a government, or rather the executive branch of a government, waving a magic wand. In pretty much every functional democracy on earth, there are agencies or departments that focus on rules around transport. That's the barrier before a taoiseach or prime minister can think of giving a green light. Rightly, those agencies have rigorous standards because their first priority is the safety of everyone on the roads including pedestrians – not just the advance of technological convenience. Their second is optimising the flow of traffic. Self-driving cars have to clear onerous hurdles on both of these which, again, involve macro factors beyond the control of the manufacturers. If this negativity is sounding repetitive, that's rather the point. I've had a selfish interest in this technology succeeding for a long time. In 2017, I was told we'd see regular use by 2020; in 2019 it was promised by 2023. Granted there was a pandemic but all of the makers missed the wider point. Factors they cannot and never will control are inevitably going to slow the process. To be approved, they have to be safe and convenient for everyone. Apollo 11 was never going to get into a pile-up near a toll booth on the M50. It had literally nothing in its path. The very purpose of a self-driving car is to work in a crowded space. Fitting in takes time. Advocates of the technology keep underestimating how much time it will take.
