Damson has announced the launch and availability of the Headbones wireless bone conduction headphones in the UK, which allow the user to listen to their music while leaving their ears open to hear their surroundings. 

The Headbones use the temporal bone in front of the ear to send audio vibrations to the inner ear and we had a quick play with them at the Wearable Technology Show in London to see what they were like and how they feel.

We found the Headbones lovely and comfortable to wear and the Flexi-fit adjustable strap makes them easy to customise to your head. The main part with the controls sits on the back of your neck, while the ear pieces go over the top of your ear to allow the pads to rest on the top of your jaw bone. 

The arms are foldable so they can become nice and compact for slipping into the accompanying case for commuting, and there is a an 3.5mm auxiliary line in and out for connecting the supplied in-ear headphones if you are on a busy train or plane for example.

The Headbones feature #HearEverything bone conduction technology and audio is connected via apt-X Bluetooth, while a microphone is also present allowing users to take phone calls from the paired smartphone hands-free. The built-in battery is charged via Micro-USB and is said to offer between 8 and 20 hours of playback time, or up to 300 hours on standby.

According to Damson Audio, the Headbones use the company's Incisor Diffusion Technology (IDT) and utilises the acoustic properties of the human skull and its natural ability to work in tandem with the inner ear. When we tried them at the show in London, we found we could have a perfect conversation with the people we were with, while still hearing the audio playing through the headphones.

We could feel and hear the vibration and it was a little annoying, but this is probably something you get used to. There was some interference too, but we would be interested to see how these perform when we aren't in a noisy exhibition hall as we suspect the experience will be quite different.

At only 80g, we found the Headbones lovely and light to wear and the audio was clear and loud from what we could tell during our short amount of time with them. The Damson Audio Headbones have a frequency response between 60hz and 20khz and they are water resistant against sweat and rain to IPX5.

We like the idea of cycling with our music but still being able to hear what is happening around us so it will be great to get these in for full review to see how they perform.

The Damson Audio Headbones are available now for £99.99 at Damson Audio.