I have good wired earbuds and over ear headphones, but I still almost always go back to bluetooth. If I'm vacuuming, mowing the lawn, etc. I use my Airpods Pro. If I'm practicing drums or working with loud tools, I use my bluetooth 3M Worktunes.

Being able to get my phone out of my pocket and not have to worry about the cable is worth all the tradeoffs. At my desk, I have studio monitors, which I prefer over any headphones. For video calls, I use just the right Airpod to prevent echos, and so I can still hear myself.

I bought a bunch of wired cables as switching devices and making sure Teams is able to work with the device never worked smoothly with Bluetooth. I only miss wireless when i get snagged or the wires are entangled but both are easy to prevent and all the benefits of wired far outweigh the wireless setbacks

Apple Earbuds cost $19 while AirPods Pro 3 cost $250. If one of the pods flies out of your ear on the Fremont Bridge, it's a pretty bad day. I should get over it.

You can also load your hearing test results (from either an audiologist or a hearing test app like https://mimi.io/products/mimi-hearing-test-app) into Apple Health and then use them with your Earbuds.

I went back all the way to tape. It’s surprising how well it still works 30 years after it became obsolete.

Obviously with wired headphones, because tape players don’t do bluetooth.

I never gave up on my wired headphones. I'm so bad I have to use a stretchy cord (ahla old phone cord) to tie my phone to my body just so I don't drop it. There is no way I can go wireless headphones just so I can lose half my sound. When my Pixel finally abandoned the headphone jack I was forced to get USBC headphones and I just don't like them as much, probably because of the ear shape more than the port but I feel like USBC port plug doesn't stay as secure as the old headphone jack.

I wonder what percentage of the people driving this trend have either only had AirPods (they make me dizzy, and I think the sound quality is terrible), Beats (even worse) or no-name $20 bluetooth headsets.

I have a nice high-end set of Sennheisers that cost ~ $150, and they're much better than my old wired set (both in-ear, both noise isolating, similar prices).

The bluetooth ones win because they eliminate cable noise. I can actually jog with them. In quiet rooms, they're very comparable, except the bluetooth set has a built in EQ, which works around the fact that iOS / Android still inexplicably do not let you adjust treble and bass.

The bluetooth headset market has been stuck in this weird spot where fashion mostly dictates. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that fashion now dictates wired headsets.

It is not an either-or. Many bluetooth headphones (not earbuds) also have an audio jack to be used wired. I use my bluetooth headphones (sony wh-1000xm3) through bluetooth when I am on the go, and wired when I am at home, especially if I want low latency. If anything, I would rather be able to replace a simple jack cable if it breaks, as it would consistently happen back when I was using wired earphones.

I find using all these cables when I am on the go inconvenient, and I cannot imagine going back there. Especially with earbuds, I have probably changed over 10 or sth over the years due to cables failing (but I hate earbuds now anyway regardless). On the other hand, eg when gaming I definitely notice latency issues, especially if I compare them with wired, so I prefer to use them wired.

I love both my Beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO and my Apple AirPods. They complement each other perfectly.

This is a more Reddit comment section than I’ve seen on r/headphones in ages. It’s almost nostalgic!

I use my wired Sundara (which have dropped in price greatly since I got them years ago!) at my desk with DAC/AMP all the time, of course, and have a very nice set of Etymotic IEMs with a USB-C dongle permanently attached (once I stopped using it for my PC*). For use with my phone I haven’t actually reached for those Etys over my AirPods Pro 2 in years as the latter are significantly more convenient. They also work fine with Windows 11 (which supports AAC over Bluetooth, as can Linux IIRC) if I want to use them there for whatever reason. Maybe I’m blessed in that I don’t require my phone to be a critical listening device?

* If you have hissing/interference/etc when plugging headphones into your PC, the Apple USB-C dongle is very good and only 9 USD.

Here's a standard-structure, VC-funded, exit-oriented startup to consider: make video calls reliable. As in, you provide a guarantee and pay the customer if the call didn't work.

Wired headphones could be one part of the solution. They're just far more reliable (if they don't break, which they will). But if the reliability of video calls can be improved so that it's literally as reliable as talking to someone next to you in a quiet room, I bet lots of people would pay for it. There is so much latent frustration about unreliable calls, even with the best setup, even in NASA, in DoD, corporations, zoom and other platforms fail to perform reliably in so many cases.