Gear Review: Zungle Viper Bluetooth Sunglasses

The Zungle Viper has two main features: UV400 polarized sunglasses, which include bonfire reflective lenses along with the option to purchase other colors or replacements that can be quickly and easily popped in, and Bluetooth bone-conduction speakers, which puts the music and voice functionality of your phone right into the earpieces of the sunglasses.

Constructed into a sturdy-feeling matte plastic frame, the speakers make the earpieces slightly bulkier than a standard pair of sunglasses, though the look is in no way noticeably different at a glance. Each earpiece turns on and off independently of the other, allowing the user to adjust so that the sounds of their surroundings are still audible. The sunglasses charge through a USB cable that comes included, and with less than 1 hour to generate a full charge, the sunglasses have over 4 hours of sound to them—none of our bike rides, runs, or slow hikes were long enough to hear the sound fade out. The Zungle logo on the earpieces even lights up with charging: flashing red during charging, turning to cyan when the Vipers are fully charged. The logo also blinks when put into pairing mode, however, making the connection between our phones and the Vipers has been seamless and quick each time we've used them.

The sunglasses advertise themselves as being sweat and weather resistant, and even our high-intensity, sweaty workouts didn't seem to have any type of noticeable affect on the Vipers or their sound quality. The charging points in the earpieces don't seal, so it's probably a safe bet that these aren't completely waterproof.

Running through Bluetooth, volume is controlled on your phone or device, and notifications on your phone will chime in through the speakers. This may be useful when running a map app in your phone, with the direction prompts audible through the Vipers.

Small buttons along the bottom of the temples allow you to adjust volume, skip tracks up or down, play or pause tracks, answer an incoming call, or activate Siri or Google Voice and use your device via voice commands through the glasses themselves. These buttons are small and unobtrusive, and once you become familiar with where they are, they allow you to control functionality of your phone all through touching your fingers to your glasses frames. This took a couple uses to learn, but once we knew what each button controlled, it became a much easier motion than reaching into our pocket to pull out and scroll through a phone.

My only complaint about the Vipers is that the thicker build of the earpieces doesn't allow them to fold up as compactly as a normal pair of sunglasses, and they do not fit into standard cases. But this much is to be expected from sunglasses that are fitting Bluetooth functionality and a bone-conduction speaker into each earpiece.

In short, it's impressive the amount of technology that feeds into an outdoor or workout accessory like this. The Zungle Vipers are stylish sport sunglasses that allow you to integrate your workout soundtrack right into your glasses frames, with full control over volume, song selection, and your phone's AI controls.

If you want to set directions for a bicycle ride across unfamiliar city streets, it feeds right into your ears en route. If you want to listen to Spanish language-learning apps while laying out beside the pool, you can do it with these. If you want to run a 10K but keep the sound in one ear off so you can hear what's going on around you, that is possible. If you just want to turn up the operatic playlist from your music-streaming app while racing down open roads on your bicycle, easy!

Among Zungle's different style and color options, the Vipers pair the functionality of Bluetooth phone connection and bone-conduction sound technology with a build meant for active pursuits like cycling, running, and hiking.