By Omar Billawala

It started off as a Kickstarter project which raised a dozen times more than its initial quarter-of-a-million dollars goal.  Now, the Dash is off and running.  If not evident from the above picture, the Dash is a true wireless (no wires even connecting the right and left earpieces) in-ear headphone that is oh so much more.  It combines a laundry list of functions–high quality speaker, mp3 player, bluetooth, microphone, fitness tracker, heart-rate monitor, oxygen saturation level, waterproof–the dash can do it all.  Or, at least quite a bit, and more coming as the company has released a development toolkit so all manner of apps can be created.

The Dash includes 4GB of flash memory and so can play music independent of a bluetooth connection to a phone.  It is waterproof and can be used when swimming.  It includes a 3-axis accelerometer, a 3-axis gyroscope, and a 3-axis magnetometer–with these capabilities, if you did not want to wear it, you could use is as a sophisticated game controller!  Paired with a phone, the Dash can be a pedestrian bluetooth headset, but, paired with a phone and with properly designed apps it could be a walkie talkie, a fitness tester, a remote control,

The Dash does have some weaknesses.  It does not have noise cancelling abilities.  It’s battery life is only about three hours when playing music with the sensors enabled.  I am also not sure I would want to wear them while surfing without securing them with a leash (provided).  But, all things considered, the Dash is a technological marvel, weighing in at a mere 13 grams for each earpiece.

The Dash is being shown at the Consumer Electronics Show next week.  Preorders are now being taken on Bragi’s website for $299 with estimated availability in April with full support for IOS and Android.