Hello,
I’ve been using a pair of $20 no-name BT earbuds from Amazon for the last few years and they worked well enough for me, but the quality is starting to show in physical problems. The electronics still work fine but the charging ports have come loose etc. It’s time for new earbuds and I would appreciate input.
I use the earbuds only with an Android phone (Google Pixel 6 Pro), and I don’t use the assistant or AI or voice commands. My current earbuds have a terrible microphone so I can’t make calls with them - improving this would maybe be nice but is not a big deal.
Features:
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Price - Under $150 maybe? Soft limit I guess
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Touch controls of some kind - mandatory. (start stop, volume)
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Wireless charging of the case/battery pack - very cool, would be nice. Not mandatory
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Case charging connector - USB-C I guess but Micro USB is fine. No Proprietary chargers because I tend to lose cables
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Built-in assistant / AI / voice control - I won’t use it and I don’t want it. As long as I can ignore it I don’t care what features of this type are included
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Noise cancelling - Some is better than none but I don’t need ultra-deluxe sound deadening 2000 pro 2.0
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Sound quality - don’t care. I’m not an audiophile, and I can’t tell the difference between bitrates. I mostly listen to spoken podcasts and audiobooks, only occasionally music
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Toughness - I won’t wear them in the pool or in a sandstorm. I dropped the current ones only vary rarely
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Shape - I prefer the replaceable rubber ear tips (what are they actually called?) to the hard nubs
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So…what about current bluetooth devices are “enshittified” or did you just see the word on your word-of-the-day calendar and have to use it?
Enshittification is used for platforms that are great in the beginning, and then slowly are designed to wring money out of their users. Bluetooth anything doesn’t really fit that description.
Non-shitty I think was what they meant, but what life is this if we can’t cram a buzzword in every click bait title?
I don’t want earbuds that need their own app or a subscription to something or interacting with some dang assistant. I just want ear buds that work.
Yeah, that’s not a thing. Interacting with an assistant is just simply the fact that you’ve got a microphone on. If you connect it to a phone with an assistant…tada, it uses that mic. And earbuds with their own apps on a smartphone are how they do the things like EQ adjustments, because bluetooth doesn’t have a standard for that; and get this – the apps are completely optional on all of them.
Fairbuds.
That’s the current best Bluetooth ear buds with user replaceable batteries that can be found at your budget. But they’ll be used.
Beyond that, check out ifixit for their repairability reviews. But you won’t be paying 150 for anything else, even used. Lowest I’ve seen fairbuds go for is about a hundred, and they were in good shape. Lowest I’ve seen the repairable Sonys reach is about 200, used. And don’t ask about the bang & olufsen set, which is pretty much the best out there overall that’s repairable, though I’d have to look up that model.
With true wireless buds, you either pay for crap that’s useless when the battery fails (unless you’re seriously skilled with rebuilding such things), or you pay out the nose for stuff you can keep going. What really sucks is that the prices on the better ones that you can’t repair aren’t even lower than the repairable options.
Having seen people go through high priced buds in a year or two and then the buds essentially die because they won’t hold a charge, there’s no way in hell I’d ever spend more than about thirty on a set that I can’t swap them out without soldering. But you gotta pay up for the ones worth having, or be patient and be willing to buy used. Sometimes you can run across refurbished buds from repairable models as well, and they tend to hit about 3/4 of the original price.
That’s good advice, thank you very much.
Which Sony’s are repairable?
It’s the Wf-1000xm3.
How is the sound sync? Ive been keeping an eye on their forum for a while and one thing I keep seeing is when watching videos, the sound to video synchronisation is enough to cause unhappy customers, I’d love to get some at some point but thats a significant wrinkle
On the fairbuds, I don’t own them, I’ve only used them on loan for a few days.
That being said, I didn’t notice any sync issues on YouTube, or the one movie I watched via HBO’s service.
Fairphone is making easy to repair earbuds just under $150. You should probably have a look at them of you want a pair of earbuds that last.
Oh I’ve heard of them, thank you for the reminder.
I just bought a set of Cambridge Audio Melomania M100 for $120, fantastic all around earbuds, but the best feature is that the voice (for when it’s pairing and whatnot) can be set to the actual voice of Matt Berry, which is perfect for any fans of The IT Crowd or What We Do in the Shadows.
Ooh, that’s a heck of a compelling feature. I’m sure it’s not as exciting as well that, but what if it said “This is regular human bartender Jackie Daytona reminding you to keep the volume within safe levels!”
I’ve been using the PineBud Pros for a while now and have liked them a lot. They’ve lasted longer than the airpod pros I had beforehand and the noise cancellation isn’t perfectly silent or anything but it’s definitely good enough for what I want noise cancellation for. They don’t have wireless charging out of the box but there is technically a community project that adds it if you have the skill set to take them apart and modify the case/PCB, but that’s obviously a lot of work lol. They also sell individual replacement earbuds and the case if one breaks which is a plus. Pine64 is a pretty cool company too, all of their stuff is pretty community driven and sold with very little markup, and since it all runs open source firmware they’ll keep getting updates for a long time most likely (not really applicable to the earbuds unless you manually update them, but still).
I have Jabra Elite 4 Actives and they have been great to me and meet your requirements. I would look at the newer offerings in that line and consider them as well.
Thank you, friend. These do look nice. Some of the reviews mention having to push on the bottom of the device to turn on the touch controls for volume and play/pause. How does that really work?
I’m not sure what ones you are looking at. The Elite 4 active(at least my version from over a year ago) don’t have any sort of tap or slide control.
Mine have tactile buttons on the outside face. The interface uses presses, press and hold, or multiple presses to control them.
I was reading about the 7 and 8, but perhaps I misunderstood buttons as touch controls.
The earphone community here recommended earfun to me. A couple years ago I picked up a pair of Air Pro buds, about $80. They’ve been great.
I’ll check them out, thank you.
Can’t say enough good things about the Soundcore Liberty 4 NCs I’ve got (Anker). Sound good, good ANC, good fit, decent battery life.
Thank you very much for the rec.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DB2DSVWF
I bought those 6 months ago, so I can’t say they’re “for life” but I really like them, and they’ve held up well so far. Looks like the ivory colored ones are the only ones listed now, but the ones I got were black / black case.
I won’t ever spend more than $60 on a set of headphones because they either get lost/broken/etc.
Interesting shape, thank you for the recommendation.
I picked up a pair of xiaomi redmi buds 5. They’re like 30 bucks, and they meet all your requirements! They have an app, but it’s only a requirement if you want to custom configure the noise-cancelling, voice passthrough, etc etc. They just plain work over bluetooth without an app. The tips are silicon rubber and it comes with 3 sizes, so they’re replacable
Heck, that sounds great. Thank you!
I bought my Earfun buds for about £50 and so far they’ve worked well, they can connect to multiple decides simultaneously, they have touch controls, noise reduction, and replaceable rubber tips in various sizes.
Thank you for telling me about them!
I have the same brand and they work well enough, but constantly fall out no matter what size tip I use. I recently found out they can survive being dropped in a bucket of water after falling out while washing my car though, so at least they are durable.
