My old ones broke two days ago and I needed new ones. I chose earbuds from NOTHIHG because according to reviews they are really good for the money. Now, their app is asking me to accept this privacy policy. Maybe this policy is just some general place holder for other products because they sell phones too. And they would have browser history there. Or I could use the earbuds without the app. But the default tuning on them is very bass heavy and I need to change that.
I use DNS resolver on my phone with a lot of filters, so this shit will get blocked. I think I will bite the bullet for now but this is probably the last thing I bought from this company.
“Get these instead” “links to out of stock headphones”
jk I’ve heard those are good. I also highly endorse returning to wired headphones. I got one set of wireless earbuds (sony xm3) and while wireless is nice the battery longevity sure isn’t. Thankfully changing the battery is easy on these but it’s a proprietary battery that’s expensive and impossible to buy through legit channels. And good luck if you have airpods or whatever, it’s technically possible but a goddamn nightmare to change that battery
For full headphones I still use my hd600s from like 2003, the marbled ones they don’t make anymore, and yet my wireless headphones that cost almost the same price 20 years later would die after 20 minutes making them useless.
The hd600s aren’t great for like doing stuff outside or moving around but I do use them wirelessly with a Bluetooth dac. The battery in that has lasted a few years because it’s not extremely tiny to fit in an iem and when it does die (I assume) it’s just a basic lipo pack or maybe an 18650 (or similar) that’s much easier and cheaper to source
Wired headphones are the way to go for sure, assuming the wire and pads are easily replaceable (which is basically always the case unless they’re so cheap they’re considered disposable). I can’t ever imagine paying hundreds for headphones that rely on a battery again unless battery technology changes significantly
That’ one reason why I can respect Sony’s WH-1000 series (that’s the over-the-ear Bluetooth ones). They have a headphone jack so you can use them as regular headphones with a male-to-male cable. That can extend their useful life by a bit. So it’s not all doom and gloom on the Bluetooth front.
I am getting rapidly disillusioned with “true wireless” earbuds, though. Far too fiddly and breaky. I had fewer issues with cable telephony than with TWS touch controls.
I HAVE to use the audio jack because the BT function went kaputt in less than a year or so. As a poor person I’m still pissed about that because I was once more trying to pay a little more for something that lives a little longer and then they just break on me faster than anything else I had. Not even sure if I should bother buying expensive replacement pads since the stock ones are getting iffy already as well.
Does that power them?
and for what’s it’s worth the earbud equivalent of those is what I was referencing. at least for the xm3 variant the batteries are pretty simple to change out at least. I wish they had gone with a cell that was cheaper and easier to obtain but that’s also partially on the actual battery vendors who refuse to sell directly to consumers or even to parts distributors like mouser or digikey and will only sell in huge volumes to vendors like sony or whoever.
In the land of Bluetooth in ear headphones they’re definitely one of the most repairable models out there, but I just don’t think it’s worth bothering when a cable isn’t that big of a deal and you can still ultimately make cabled headphones wireless in a way that will usually result in headphones that last exponentially longer
No. A bluetooth headset (or any wireless audio thing really) has to contain a bluetooth radio, a digital-analog converter, and an amplifier. The signal goes through all of that before it reaches the speaker. The aux input bypasses all of that and goes directly to the speakers, using whatever DAC is on the other end of the cable. It’s purely an analog signal connection and can’t power the electronics. It also means that when the battery inevitably goes cack, you can still use it with a wire.
Some expensive headphones, like the Focal Bathys, offer USB-C input, which essentially turns them into external sound cards. Excellent video, watch the entire thing.
The cable for the audio doesn’t power them. In that mode the noise cancelling also doesn’t work. So it’s really useful but you lose features using the cable. But I think the mic works. Although it sucks anyway.