technology

I purchased anker ear buds for everyone in my family after my apple airpods failed after 18 mos and they have been running strong ever since! Still 80% charged after a 2 hr half marathon. A week or two between case charges. Zero complaints on audio quality. Would never ask for the wire back or try to convince myself that audiophiles listen to music on their phones if they care about quality.

fuck touch controls btw

I've hated this from the beginning and people act like I'm crazy for it. So happy to be among my people here

I still use wired headphones, just now I have to choose between charging my phone or using my headphones because they use the same port now. (I bought one of those splitter things once but it didn't work for me, idk why. Maybe I just got a faulty one)

i used bluetooth for my car once and it totally fucked everything up. now when i use an aux cord it tries using both (even though i turn off the bluetooth) and produces crackling. fuck bluetooth

When they removed the headphone jack from almost all smartphones was genuinely when I stopped buying smartphones. fucking bastards lol

little individual buds with nothing to stop you from losing them down a storm drain or in the grass or whatever and no room for antennas or anything are just like, not that great of an idea to begin with, but fine, some people like them. Except bluetooth is such a dogshit protocol that designing a custom set of chips for both phone and earbuds that extend the protocol and are supposed to make everything run smoothly was the only way to get such a product off the ground and not be a flop. But it only takes one to be a trendsetter and then it kinda doesn't matter if the other copycat products are any good, everyone just wants the cool buds. If they don't work reliably you better just buy the latest flagship, your 2 year old flagship obviously is just dogshit and you can't expect phone manufacturers to actually test their products for compatibility. Oh and they might not work worth a shit with that flagship either, especially with the 2.4ghz band being so utterly destroyed by noise

And of course the batteries are typically completely unserviceable so the lifespan is like 2 years tops, maybe a bit more if you baby them and dont mind the degrading battery performance. All to "improve" away one of those technologies that basically worked great and didnt need it. I have headphones from 1975, another from the late 80s, another from the late soviet union/early independent ukraine, and some more modern examples, and they all work with any device with a headphone jack and reliably sound anywhere from fine to excellent. All but a few of the cheapest modern examples are basically infinitely repairable too, if the jack goes bad it takes 15 mins and little skill to resolder them. Occasionally the cord is annoying, but thats the price you pay for shit actually working reliably and not being a brief transition state of e-waste.

And don't get me started on Chi-Fi, the shit you can get for barely $20 now basically blows the pants off of any bluetooth ever made. And the mic quality of a wired mic that sits right next to your mouth is 5x better too

I will never forgive the person who started taking away the 3.5mm jack from phones. What an absolute waste of oxygen.

I've found this is one of the areas in the market where brands actually make a big difference, and some quality legacy brands clearly don't give a shit. Active noise cancelling is a godsend for someone like myself with ADHD or autism in loud spaces. Then there's some brands that have LDAC high quality audio over Bluetooth. I found that Anker Soundcore is pretty great in these respects, and they have some pretty inexpensive models. However, the controls on my now two year old models are hit and miss. I disabled the wear detection on the headphones, and the touch controls on the earbuds. The headphones don't respond to volume controls on the phone, and they don't work when connected to my computer so only the computer controls the volume 🤷‍♀️.

The earbuds were a design that is shit for staying in your ears while active, so I'd recommend carefully reading reviews and get a set that have the little stem that hangs down from your ear maybe?

Other than that, they sound really good, have tuneable eq, strong noise cancelling, and a lot of models of their headphones allow you to use an aux cord.

i love wired earbuds!!

i love spending $5 for high quality audio!!!

i love not having to worry about losing them because they're attached to my phone/computer!!!!!!!!!!

Good, cheap wireless noise-cancelling headphones are one of the few legitimately wonderful technological advancements of the last 10 years. Very few things help my with my ADHD as much as these fuckers.

Annoying coworker breathing like a 400 m runner? Headphones. Loud, stressful supermarket? Headphones. The little kid downstairs throws it's third tantrum of the day? You know it.

Cables can suck it. I will wrestle Bluetooth anyday before getting my head yanked back because I forgot my headset has a cable and i suddenly got up to get some water.

And to think of all the fucking batteries going into e-waste because of them. They managed to cram 3 into TWS earbuds

Well i guess it has pros and cons. A pro would be for example that you can connect it to the bluetooth speakers in your car, or any other device where cable wouldn't do. A con is that cable is simply more sturdy and less fickle.

The same goes for internet connectivity. All bigger servers are connected over cable, because it simply is more reliable and has higher throughput than wireless. But also, with wireless, you can move around the house without worrying about stumbling on cables and accidentally plugging them out.

I like when I'm walking through home depot and the audio starts to break up. It's like, " hey dipshit, you left your phone on the bike."

Many new phones don't even have a digital audio converter built in anymore, so the basic USB C to 3.5mm pass through dongles don't work. You have to get a dedicated DAC dongle and many can't even charge the phone while they are in use, it's insane.

I've always used the $20 ones and they work great, have a 50 ft range and last for a few days before I have to charge them.

I have a pair where the battery is shot and can’t be replaced, not sure why I didn’t see that coming or why I maybe did and didn’t care at the time.

My next phone is going to have a headphone jack again for podcast listening, I do most music listening on an old ipod anyways.

you really would think bluetooth would be good by now and not routinely a pain in the ass but no

I can still find headphone jacks, tho you have to look. I finally had to give up on getting one with a removable battery a few years back and that really pissed me off

Bluetooth is shit for music and should be replaced with something that can do lossless audio

I tried out wireless earbuds and they fucking suck. Shelled out for some decent sennheiser momentum 4 in ears thinking I'd get decent quality....

• bulky little box that doesn't fit in my millenial skinny jeans pockets anywhere which was not a problem with wired cos i just thread through my fucking clothes duh
• heavy ear pieces rly hurt my ears after an hour of use
• the active noise cancelling amplified certain noises like talking to painfully loud levels. Transparency was turned off
• apt-x with lossless still sounded worse than my shure in ears
• the right earpiece came broken it always thinks its in my ear
• shitty firmware that takes ages to update and cooks my phone doing it?????? Have to interface with a clunky app to change settings which require me to remove the headphones to change them
• always felt like someone could yoink them out of my ears at any point
• lossless codec breaks when i go outside for some reason and i have to drop it to high quality instead
• multi device pairing is broken and when my laptop outputs a sound while I'm listening to music via my phone it deafens me with glitches audio
• if its not deafening me with anc/glitchy audio the headphones are actually significantly quieter than my shure in ears
• randomly the right earpiece will click which apparently is a common fault with the headphones
• returned and refunded

Shure wired in ears with replaceable cables will always be the goat absolutely nothing beats them they last for years and never break and the audio quality is perfect along with foam eartips that actually isolate the noise (invaluable for my sensory problems). If thats too pricey lots of chinese earbuds now have replacable cables which wasn't the case when i got my first pair of shures over 10 years ago. Killed them by accidentally running them under a tap after a solid 6 years of daily use. I'm sorry i ever doubted them

When I was using my Sony Xperia, the headphone jack was pretty darn nice. I got some truthear hex IEMS and honestly the isolation was better than any NC headphones I've used, but I may just be lucky w the fit. Bluetooth is cool, but so much e waste will become of true wireless, and even just most battery powered headphones because of the difficulty replacing battery. I know fairphone headphones have a replaceable battery which is neat. IEMs are pretty cool. You can get cable replacements, Bluetooth adapters, and straight to USB cables too. Can recommend

Controversial opinion but I think if you can afford them wireless bone conduction headphones are neat. I wear them while walking or riding a bike and still have situational awareness. I can play computer game with them while my partner watches TV. I often forget I’m wear them because they not in my ears, just over them.

I found ear buds just do not like the distance from my ears to the pocket my phone lives in (upper thigh, front pocket).

Headphones were a lot better, but broke in that one spot they always do (earpiece swivel bracket). >.>

I stole 20 dollar skullcandy airpods from Walmart and they still work 2 months later surprisingly. Sounds as decent as airpods too