Earbuds, how hard should they be? Earbuds are one of those things that I have spent too much time dealing with and trying to get right. I use earbuds for two things mainly; at the gym up north and walking the dog down south. At the gym I just need standard earbuds, as long as they fit well. I don't need noise cancellation although it's nice. Down south I need almost the opposite, essentially I want something open air so I can hear traffic coming and be aware of my surroundings.
Up north I had until recently been using Jabra Elites. They were fine. Good sounding workhorses. I usually charged the case before each session, but even if I didn't I could usually get as much as four hours out of them. Of late, though they had gotten flaky -- occasionally telling me the battery was low when I had just changed them or, more recently, only one of the two earbuds functioning. My experience with relatively inexpensive hardware is that once it starts to flake, the end is near, no point in trying to save them.
So I began looking at reviews. First off, Amazon reviews are notoriously inaccurate and often outright fraudulent. I have purchased at least one product that included a coupon that promised a $50 amazon gift card to me if I posted a five star review and sent them documentation of doing so. That 4.7 rating, even if there are thousands of reviews, is suspect. Secondly, you have to be careful about professional looking review sites, as often as not they are bought and sold, giving good reviews to anyone who will send them free stuff to review, even if the thing sucks.
After a good bit of exploration I came to the conclusion that Anker Soundcore A are the consensus best value. I took a shot, and they do sound very, very good. Time will tell if they hold up as well as the Jabras. They have a nifty application that administers a hearing test and adjusts the sound level as needed. That's nice. My first impression, beyond the beautiful sound is that they are unbalanced -- the left ear is ever so lightly lower volume than the right or perhaps my left ear is weaker, although the hearing test didn't find that. I was hoping for an old fashioned balance control in the app but I couldn't find one. Maybe it's the seal and I just need to try a different set of silicone pads. Either way, I have to give the 'buds good marks. Anker Soundcore A40 lives up to its good rep.
Down South it's a different problem. The best solution I found was bone conduction headphones. These transmit music through vibrations to the bones in your ear rather than forcing sound through the ear canal. Or something like that. In any event you get to privately hear your music without anything blocking your ears at all. It's kind of strange at first but then you don't notice it. The only difference between them and regular earbuds is that you can hear every sound going on around you, which is what I need when walking the ridiculous dog.
My first set was from a company called Kaibo that I bought through their kickstarter. At first they sounded spectacular, I was stunned by how high quality the sound was for bone conduction. The problem was the damn things would not work. Half the time only one side would function. And the touch controls were so sensitive that even just adjusting them on my head would trigger a power down or a song skip or something. Even when I wanted to take an action, the clicks and swipes to adjust them were so complex and the instructions so inscrutable I couldn't figure it out. Finally I went onto their support site about the one side cutting out and found it was quite a common complaint. They offered a workaround that involved moving files on your laptop and performing some sort of ritual that many people reported did no good, and was not available to anyone who didn't have a Windows laptop. When Mac users asked what they should do, the response was "Find a Windows laptop".
Eventually I got so frustrated with them that I threw them in the trash. That was my second participation in a kickstarter and both the products I was involved with ended up being trash.
Still, I was sold on bone conduction and the big name in bone conduction is Shokz. I bought their cheapest model because although I was sold on bone conduction, I had a bit of shell shock from Kaibo. Also because the cheapest model had actual buttons, not touch controls, which I hate. Well the Shokz work well. And I appreciate the buttons, but the sound is pathetic. It almost sounds like mono. There is very little definition. It's listenable, but just barely. Functionally I like the Shokz and I may upgrade eventually in the hopes of better sound quality, but for now I'll live with it as I have spent WAY too much money on earbuds just to get to this point.
I'll stop now having written almost 1000 words about earbuds and wasting a fair amount of your time if you've gotten this far.
Addendum: Speaking of sound, one thing I have noticed is that most of the young people I know seem perfectly happy to listen to music through the horrible tinny speakers on their phones. I can't stand it. It sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. How can you appreciate music that way?
