My noise-canceling, Bluetooth headphones in 2004 ran for 2 days, no problem (back when I was flying for work all the time).
“Another thing to charge” is a strawman. They all use C or micro today, and headphones use so little power your laptop can easily charge them. Or even your phone.
What about their typically disposable nature?
Say I’m a fan of buds, but now I need wireless buds. No one makes ones that are made to have the battery replaced. They’re intended to be thrown away after the batteries wear out. While wired ones work forever, maybe needing a replacement cable, or to patch an existing cable… maybe.
Not to mention, audio quality. I’ll skip the buds quality themselves, bc some people claim to not be able to hear the difference… there are no bt headsets that have a mic that even approaches the quality of the old included buds from iPhones. None.
What about their typically disposable nature?
You mean the disposable nature of wired headphones with thin-as-hell 26/28 gauge wires that break if you look at them wrong?
I’ve broken more wired headsets than I’ve owned Bluetooth. I still have my ten+ year old noise-canceling bletooth headphones. I haven’t “disposed” them.
If things are disposed, it’s generally on the person, not the device.
I have multiple 2017 and older phones that still work, and get used as podcast/music players, security cameras, etc. I have a 1998 laptop I use to run Linux for testing. The batteries are toast, but so what.
Again, disposability is primarily a consumer issue, not a product one.
And I call BS on the sound quality. Given the nature of the source, and especially environments we’re in, noise is a huge factor. As for the microphone thing - the transport systems are far worse than what mics can do - “can you hear me” wouldn’t be a meme otherwise. Until that’s addressed it’s really a non-argument.
I guess I can agree that disposability is more of an individual thing, personally, I like wired headphones (Though, I don’t use them exclusively). And because of the very issue you mentioned, I normally buy headphones/earbuds that have replaceable cables. One hard-wired set got chewed by a dog, and I opened them up and replaced the cable with some soldering (Something that would be much harder on hardwired earbuds).
With regard to the phones, the laptops, etc… those have ways of using them with dead batteries, and often can have their batteries replaced.
This is the key difference with wireless earbuds (particularly earbuds much more so than wireless headphones in general). Wireless earbuds are extremely difficult to replace batteries on, if not literally impossible, and because of the very small capacity of the batteries, they tend to be charge cycled more and will chemically age faster.
My first Airpods lasted me a good 2 years of pretty heavy use, but towards the end the battery life was inconsistent. One bud was virtually useless, it died so fast, and I took the pair to apple to see what they might be able to do. They did me the favor of charging me the replacement cost of a single bud, but then replaced both buds and case (~$60). Not horrible, but definitely not ideal.
Mics, the bluetooth transport used for mics (two-way-SBC vs other enhanced codecs for one-way audio like AAC/AptX) is the horrible limiting factor. The physical capsules are definitely adequate, but it doesn’t matter if the audio can’t be sent to the phone at quality. I think you might have been referring to the cellular transport, but that really depends on how you’re making the call. VOIP Calls, VoLTE, etc are capable of very high quality audio, given a good source, which bt sbc mics are not. During covid we had people using the “best bluetooth mics” (Airpods pros) on their zoom calls and they sounded like CRAP. Plug in a cheap trusty pair of wired EarPods… crystal clear. Even the tiktok kids get that mic quality thing, thats why so many are using the mic from EarPods.
Anyway, no ill will. Kudos on the reusing of old tech… I often intend to, but I’ve had a habit of holding on to aging tech until its of virtually no use to anyone. So instead, lately, I’ve just been refurbishing things that I can and donating/giving them away.
“Another thing to charge” is a strawman.
They are not functional for the time it takes to get a useful charge into them. I’ll just pause that movie and pop my buds back into their charging case for a while, it’s so convenient. So, like I said, you have to maintain their charge, alongside the other devices that have to have their charge maintained.
A lot of it has to do with BLE running constantly in the background (things like find my buds, “easy connect” features with their own management app tend to use it). If you fly like, once a week , and have a headset for flying, you need to check on its charge, as BLE will slowly grind it down to nothing while it sits in your travel bag.
My noise-canceling, Bluetooth headphones in 2004 ran for 2 days, no problem (back when I was flying for work all the time).
What brand were they? I bought my current set of Bose corded noise cancelling headphones in 2015 precisely because battery life in Bluetooth products was still reasonably abysmal. I’m guessing that they were one of the very first sets to come out, seeing that regular consumer Bluetooth headphones only appeared on the market in 2003.
