I have a pair of Apple Airpods and they’re… ok. They seem to be no more flaky than the average bluetooth thing. But they don’t really fit my ears very well. And after a few years the batteries are starting to not last very long, so I anticipate replacing them in the near future.
I see there are many many competitors out there. Which one should I try next?
Features that are important to me:
Not a tremendous pain in the ass to switch between an iPhone and a Mac laptop since I do this a few times a day.
Actually fit my ears (which probably means some kind of changeable rubber tips)
Case that’s not way bigger than the Airpods case (the internet claims that it’s 1.74 x 0.84 x 2.11 in) because I keep it in my pocket with my phone.
Touch/tap/whatever controls for play and pause that don’t require getting my phone out.
Works if I just have one in (specifically the right one). In fact, I’d be willing to buy just the right one if that exists.
Case can be opened and pod removed with just one hand.
I’ve heard good things about the new Samsung Galaxy Buds:
I have Bose Soundsport Wireless, which I love, but they have a wire connecting the two buds. They fit really well, and I had a really hard time finding earbuds that fit and stay in. They also make the Soundsport Free, which have the same fit.
I could never get iPhone-style buds to fit snugly. And, I do a lot of walking while commuting and they would get even looser. If that’s your problem, the Bose style might work better.
I read in one of the reviews that the sound controls (bass, treble, etc) are not really available on iPhones for the Galaxy Buds.
The Bose case is pretty big, as are the earbuds themselves.
Those Jabra ones show up as highly rated everywhere I’ve seen. I don’t have them so I can’t really personally recommend them, but I see a lot of people wearing them.
That’s mostly my problem, but the cord across the back is a non-starter for me.
I often need to just use one earphone to listen while still being aware of other sounds.
I have an infant who will 100% grab any wire and pull it if she’s in arms reach. A significant amount of my use of wireless headphones is listening to a podcast while trying to coax her back to sleep.
Looks like everyone but Apple realized that people have ears of different sizes and shapes and designed changeable flexible rubber parts to handle that. But Apple has Courage, so that’s cool too.
Both the Jabra and Samsung have a mode where they let ambient sounds in. My guess is that they pipe the microphones to the earbuds. So, you may not even have to remove one.
I’d say go with the Samsung, given your experience with Jabra, except that the iPhone-Samsung experience seems sub-par.
If I decide to go with pure wireless, I’m probably going with the Jabra, given all the positive reviews.
Good luck with the Jabra elites. I bought a pair and even after using every single earpiece could not get them to sound good at all. They were bad for me to the point of sounding worse than my $30 soundpeats that do fit my ears.
I am doubly reluctant to buy another expensive pair although I still have my eye on the Sony WF-1000XM3s.
Got the Jabra ones yesterday and have been using them for a bit.
On my 6-point list of things I care about:
Switch between iPhone and Mac: Excellent! Better than Airpods in fact. These things can pair with both devices simultaneously, and whichever one is playing audio plays through. This is so much better than having to fiddle with bluetooth settings, even ones that are available from the phone lock screen. I’m honestly surprised that this wasn’t mentioned more and is a huge selling point for me. When I first tried to pair my computer and the little voice said “two devices connected” I thought “uh-oh”, but then it just worked seamlessly and did exactly what I wanted!
Actually fit my ears. Far better than Airpods. Still not perfect, but good enough.
Case that’s not way bigger than the Airpods case. It’s a bit bigger. Not way bigger. Fine.
Touch/tap/whatever controls for play and pause that don’t require getting my phone out. Yes, although they’re buttons rather than touch-sensitive.
Works if I just have one in (specifically the right one). Yes. But only the right one. This is a minor bummer because one way I was able to stretch my Airpods as the batteries got worse is to use one, then switch when the battery died. This let me use them continuously with minor fiddling on each switch until the case ran out. Since you can only use the right one or both of them, I won’t be able to do that. Not a problem with full battery life, but as they age this will become more of an issue.
Case can be opened and pod removed with just one hand. Fail. Maybe I’ll get it with a bit more practice, but so far the case is kind of hard to open and unlike the Airpods with their long microphone stalk and gentle magnetic pull, I almost always manage to drop the other one if I try to open and remove/replace one-handed.
Other thoughts: the ambient sound mode works but it is weird. There are drops and stutters whenever the audio you’re playing starts/stops, and at a few other times. And of course everything is repeated through the speaker, which is a strange artificial way of hearing things. I might get used to it, or I might just continue to use one.
It’s true. I’m very much not an audiophile, and I generally listen to podcasts and audiobooks in semi-noisy environments, so I’m both unqualified to answer effectively and don’t care that much.
There are lots of reviews of the sound quality of these things. But so far I’ve found none that answer the critical questions of whether I can get the thing from my pocket to my ear with one hand while trying to coax a baby to sleep with the other or whether it takes seventeen clicks to switch from one device to another.
The Jabras are much louder, since they actually seal in my ears. I’m listening to them on 30-50% volume where I used to listen to Airpods on 80-100%. And my understanding is that in side by side audio comparisons, louder almost always sounds better. So I’m not sure I could give a good review on that front even if I really tried.
They fit better than the Jabras. They’re a bit smaller and lighter. The case is slightly smaller and it looks like I could learn to get one out one-handed since there’s a little bit of magnetic force holding them in.
Unfortunately, switching from laptop to phone is kind of a pain.
But they’re a total non-starter for video. Audio from a number of different video sources lags by about a quarter second. Totally distracting.
I know they’re not exactly what you wanted but look at AfterShokz. They’re bone-phones; they don’t go in your ear, they sit in front of your ear & you hear sound by vibration of the bones in your head; therefore, you could have them on & still hear ambient sounds. Because they’re wrapped around (fairly close) behind your head & ‘stick’ to your head (when you take them off & put them down, their natural position is to cross so they are using that tension to hold them tightly on your head) they won’t be as easy for a little one to yank as a wire will.
The only issue is that in noisy environments the ambient noise tends to drown out the music they’re playing. They do come with a pair of foam ear plugs, but that kind of defeats the purpose of not having anything in your ears. IOW, they’re great for running on the roads, I can hear cars coming; however, they’re not so good for listening to music in the bar afterwards for post-run shmoozing.
Yeah, my Bose wireless earbuds lag with some video sources, not with others – on Android, VLC lags and XPlayer doesn’t. I can’t believe that video lagging hasn’t been solved.
Seems like the Jabras will be the choice for you. I wasn’t sure whether those and the Samsung were sound isolating – I don’t really like that. I end up hearing myself breathe, and I can’t hear traffic while commuting. I guess I’ll stick with my wired-wireless Bose for now.
Those look neat but I can’t imagine they’ll fit in my pocket with my phone. And there are other reasons that that design won’t work for me. I need individual buds that go in my ears.
I did a bit of reading on lag, and apparently newer aptX bluetooth sound profiles are supposed to make this better. What surprised me is that the Samsung Buds are Bluetooth 5.0 and the Jabras are 4.2. I expected the Samsung ones to be at least… not worse than the Jabra ones. But they are much much worse.
