I was heavily torn looking for some nice earbuds for my daily bicycle rides.

I have the Bose Quietcomfort1 earbuds which worked great but they were big/ugly and after two years I partially blew out the speakers (excessive use at max volume daily haha).

I really wanted to upgrade to the Bose QC2 earbuds, but I heard a LOT of negative complaints - like unusually high.

Finally I splurged when I saw Bose.com selling factory-refurbished QC2 earbuds for $199 with warranty.

Overall I’m pleased - they are a nice upgrade from my QuietComfort2 earbuds.

For me the decision came down to comfort - when exercising or bicycling I needed a nice earbud I could “lock” into my ears. Sound quality and top-tier ANC was necessary for the transparency mode so I could enjoy music while bicycling safely through intersections (to hear cars and such)

I’m fairly confident Sony’s release timeline indicates that the XM5 earbuds are due to hit the market very soon - I’ll bet you’ll see the XM4 earbuds go on sale soon as that happens.

Eventually I plan to splurge on a set of Bowers & Wilkins PI7s2 which are basically IEMs with dual drivers for each earbud (they add a tweeter for the highs in addition to a dedicated low/mid driver) - but B&W is a much smaller brand and they’re still relatively new to the earbuds game. I’m letting things evolve a bit more before I splurge on their top-tier luxury earbuds haha