Snorkel Set vs Underwater Earbuds: Two Tools, Two Completely Different Goals

What a training snorkel actually trains

A training snorkel — the center-mount kind that holds position over the forehead, distinct from a recreational reef snorkel — constrains breathing through a narrower-than-natural tube. The published evidence supports several adaptations from sustained use:

• Respiratory-muscle endurance. Illi’s 2012 meta-analysis of respiratory-muscle training in healthy athletes found endurance benefits ranging from 1-15% across studies, with the larger effects in lower-trained populations Illi 2012.
• Diving-response training. Schagatay’s work on dynamic apnea documented the trained diving-response — bradycardia, peripheral vasoconstriction, increased breath-hold time — in swimmers exposed to repeated controlled hypercapnia Schagatay 2011.
• Stroke-mechanics decoupling from breathing. Because you can breathe at will (head-down), the snorkel lets you isolate stroke technique from breath timing — useful for fixing a one-sided breathing habit that locks rotation into one direction.

The flip side: it’s a training tool, not a freediving tool. If your goal is open-water swimming, recreational snorkeling, or cardio-only lap work, a training snorkel doesn’t serve those goals directly — though the respiratory-endurance carryover may help.

What underwater earbuds actually do

Modern bone-conduction underwater earbuds (the category Shokz OpenSwim popularised) bypass the ear canal entirely — sound transmits through the cheekbone to the cochlea, leaving the ear canal water-fillable without affecting audio. The relevant published evidence is the broader music-and-exercise literature:

• Reduced rate of perceived exertion (RPE). Karageorghis and Priest’s 2012 review synthesised dozens of studies showing music reduces perceived effort at fixed workloads by roughly 10% in submaximal exercise Karageorghis & Priest 2012. Terry’s 2020 meta-analysis confirmed this effect across exercise modalities Terry 2020.
• Pace-matching to BPM. The synchronisation effect is real but smaller than popular fitness media implies — about a 5-8% effect on cadence at moderate intensity. It vanishes at near-maximal efforts.
• Improved adherence to long sessions. Bigliassi’s neuroimaging work demonstrated music engages reward-system pathways during exercise, which is the proposed mechanism for the well-documented adherence effect Bigliassi 2019.

What underwater earbuds don’t do: change your respiratory training. They don’t make you a better swimmer mechanically. They don’t build lung volume. Their job is to get you through more pool time at the cardio intensity you’d already programmed.

When the snorkel is the right answer

• Your goal is freediving, breath-hold sport, or competitive open-water with cold-water surge.
• You’re working on a one-sided breathing habit that locks stroke rotation.
• You want a respiratory-muscle training stimulus that doesn’t need a dedicated device or 20 minutes off the water.
• You’re training for an event where the breathing rhythm is constrained by the activity — surfing, water polo, lifeguard certification.

When the earbuds are the right answer

• You’re doing 30-60 minute pool cardio sessions and you’ve been skipping them.
• Your goal is general cardiovascular fitness, not swim-specific performance.
• You want to pace stroke cadence to BPM — useful for tempo work.
• The pool you swim at has long open-lap sessions with predictable conditions (not a busy public pool where situational awareness matters more than music).

The waterproofing rating game — brief

For earbuds, the rating you want is IPX8 — rated for continuous submersion beyond 1 meter. IPX7 means “briefly submersible” and isn’t enough for lap-swim use. IPX5 and IPX6 cover water spray and brief immersion only; ignore them for swim purposes. Pool chlorine and ocean salt-water test the gaskets differently than fresh water — a quality bone-conduction model rated IPX8 from a manufacturer with swim-specific positioning is the safer bet.

Snorkels don’t have ratings; what matters is purge-valve design, mouthpiece silicone quality, and tube diameter (training snorkels deliberately narrow to add restriction). See our deeper coverage in what snorkeling actually trains.

Practical takeaways

• Different categories. A snorkel changes what your respiratory system adapts to. Earbuds change whether you actually finish the swim that drives the cardio adaptation.
• Most lap swimmers want both, used on different days. Snorkel-set days for breathing-pattern and apnea work; earbud days for cardio adherence and tempo work.
• For respiratory-muscle training carryover, the published evidence supports 8-12 weeks of regular use to see measurable effects (Illi 2012).
• For earbuds, IPX8 is the rating to insist on. Bone-conduction handles full submersion; in-ear models are largely unsuitable for lap swimming.
• If you only had budget for one and your goal is general fitness, the earbuds win — they protect the workout from being skipped. If your goal is competitive or skill-based swimming, the snorkel wins.

References

Related: waterproof earbuds for swim workouts; what snorkeling actually trains; music BPM and workout pace; open-water swimming: breath cadence and cold acclimation; cold-water vs warm-pool swimming.