I use $5 wired buds and they are great, well worth the extra $ over the $2 buds that I used to use.

Airpod style buds have always seemed nuts to me. Three more tiny items (two buds and the charging case) to lose? Each with its own battery to fail? But there are lots of them now at under $20 that look perfectly fine. Are $200 ones really better? I’d need convincing.

Some of this is personal preference, but I thought they were absolute trash. I basically got them for free after credits when I picked up my new pixel and I ended up returning them anyway and spending credits on random accessories. They do not sit well in my ears, I hated the weird noise cancelation that actually makes you disoriented without really canceling noise and the sound is poorly calibrated no matter what I tried listening to.

I just picked up SoundCore Liberty 4 Pros for $100 and they check every box. So comfortable I forget I have them in my ears. Noise cancelation is superb. Tested in data center and on airplane. Sound quality is subjective, but I love it. New charging case shows battery level for each side and allows adjusting NC level without having to use the app.

Ugh. From what I can tell, wireless earbuds are only a few months from being ewaste. Their batteries degrade, can’t be replaced, and then they’re hard to recycle.

I got the fanciest earPods during the pandemic, and the batteries lasted 18 months. They were like $400 Canadian.

As much as I like the form factor, I don’t have the cash to spend $250 on pixel buds every couple of years.

Fairphone has buds with replaceable batteries. If I get buds again, I’ll go for those.