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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
