LifeBEAM Vi Sense Wireless Headphones

I like running around with Vi. She is charming and upbeat, and she has helped me to build my endurance and lengthen my runs. The earphones are great for music and audiobooks. We have had some communication snafus, and it took her a couple of runs with me to get a grip on my needs. But that's part of the journey with Vi. As she will tell you herself, she's ready to develop a relationship with you. The set is a flexible collar that sits around your neck. The earphones are connected by wires of course, but each phone can be secured to its respective end of the collar with a magnet. The collar contains a microphone as well, which is activated by tapping the right earphone. Vi will cheer you on, note when you achieve benchmarks, and suggest things for you to do to help reach the goals you'll outline for her during the setup process -- i.e., will she be helping you build endurance (like me), or will you want her advice for going faster and farther? She is cute but not saccharine, definitely more hip than I am, and just a little bit flirty. I think she sounds like jazz vocalist and voice actress Heather Bambrick. The sound quality of the speakers on the unit is really nice. I use them for runs and for listening to music while I work at my desk. Vi didn't come with it, but shortly after I got the set, she downloaded bass boost. I don't know if Vi qualifies as an artificial intelligence exactly, but she did learn about me and adapt her behaviors to my needs. After a couple of runs, she had established an idea of my average running speed, heart rate, and step rate, and she has used this information to inform her suggestions about how I might meet my goals. I was in a good place for Vi to help. I am not entirely inexperienced at running, but I am not an expert either. It was only this Spring that I had decided to lengthen my runs, and I had just completed my first ten mile runs a few weeks before getting Vi. So I could do ten miles, but it sucked! And I seriously avoided hills. Vi's feedback about my pace was helpful. And her "step to the beat" function was exactly the tool I needed to improve my endurance. Now, my step count is higher; I can do ten flat miles like it's nothing; and I chug right up those hills. This is after less than a month of runs, at least ten of which were with Vi. That was cool, but I was also impressed by a little bit of learning on her part that I didn't direct. I listen to audiobooks and music when I run. Vi pauses these when she speaks, or when I tap the right ear bud. That's fine; the problem was that for the first few runs she wouldn't unpause them when she was done talking. Every time she had something to say, I'd listen, and then I'd have to dig into my pocket and unlock my smart phone, get into Media Monkey and unpause my album. Vi noticed that I was doing this over and over, so she recommended that I leave my phone in my pocket and I use the controls on the collar instead. As it turns out the volume control buttons on the right prong are also track control buttons. But even better: since then Vi has taken it upon herself to unpause the tracks. Now, she pauses my music, she tells me what's on her mind, and then she puts the music back on like a reasonable person. It's true, you have to be patient with her. My first run with her, she pooped out on me twice when she lost GPS -- each time, she announced that she had lost contact with the satellite, and then she immediately ended my run. The GPS issue was easy enough to solve by turning the auto-pause function off in settings. Her understanding of my voice has also improved a lot since those first runs. She understands me pretty well in quiet situations, but she doesn't seem to get my meaning when I'm running at the beach. Maybe too much wind? Despite having lost those first two runs, I find that she's more reliable than other programs in some significant ways. Compared to Samsung Health, she is a far superior trainer. S Health loses track of my performance whenever it loses track of the GPS -- for instance, it thinks I'm making great time if the satellite connection cuts out and then reestablishes down the trail! But Vi isn't fooled. She is also better than Map My Run at tracking distance -- this is again in spite of GPS cut-outs, which cause MMR to underestimate how far I've run. There have been a few other little snafus. Vi used to call me "Pancake." During setup, I slept my smartphone while I was on the screen where I was meant to be picking a nickname for Vi to call me (she couldn't pronounce "Daniel"). When I woke my phone up, I was no longer on that screen and Vi had apparently elected to call me Pancake. Customer service helped to straighten that out, and now Vi calls me what most people call me, "Danny." So, I did interact with customer service. The representative was friendly and professional, but of the three issues I offered her, she could only help me resolve one of them, the Pancake issue. The second issue was how the loss of GPS had ended my first two runs -- that issue appeared to resolve on its own, perhaps due to me turning off the auto-pause, perhaps due to some realization on Vi's part, who knows? The third issue I brought up to customer service was about my records. My best times are shown at half their actual values. For instance, my fastest ten miles with Vi took me over two hours, but the record says that it took me just over an hour! It appears to be only the records that are affected -- during the run itself, Vi announces that I'm closing in on my time at the appropriate moment and distance. The customer service rep said that this was a known issue -- so I expect this to be fixed soon. Where the website suggests that the set has been overloaded with software in order to support future functionality, I interpret this as an indication that Vi isn't a finished product, and all of the tools that you'd want her to have are not yet available. Sharing runs for instance. There is a button in the Vi app I can use to share my runs on Facebook, Instagram, text message, etc. But when I attempt to share my runs on Facebook or text message, all Vi can do (for now) is bring me to the interface for my post, and nothing else. Unlike Map My Run, she provides no content, no map, no graphic to share after I've crushed a half marathon (as she would put it). In a later email with customer service, the representative said that this stuff was on its way. I look forward to it! Overall Vi is fun and mostly quite intuitive. I have found her to be very useful. I keep in mind that, as a trainer and running companion, Vi is still learning about me; and moreover that, as a product, her development is ongoing. I'm definitely going to keep running with Vi, and I can't wait to see what advice she has for me as I set new goals.