blr_p
Northstar
They have good quality for calls. Its a pity you can't get them any more.
desiibond
Juggernaut
As I said, just because you dislike a product does not mean that it is bad. People change 60k rupee phone every other year. No body cares if an IEM lasts 10 years. Those who buy TWS are not buying that to hand it over to their grand kids. They buy for the comfort and ease it offers right then and right there. One can go with Apple care plus plan for Airpods pro and get full 2 year warranty that also covers accidental damage. For airpods pro, they charge 2500/- for this full cover. From what I have seen, Apple products last long, really long. When these airpods can last minimum of three years, it is a perfect product for 'normal' users who can afford them.
Again, this is purely your PoV.
Saying this again. People buying these product do not care about all this jargon. They dont even know what lies inside an airpods pro or XM4s. Also, you are seriously misguided again here. You cannot compare the reliability of wired vs wireless. Wired is for long term use but with usual discomfort of wires. Wireless is for comfort and ease of use, with shorter life span of products. Every one who buys these are aware. A land line lasts a decade minimum but a mobile lasts 5 years max (if one is lucky). This does not mean that one has to go back to landline just because it lasts longer. These new models offer nice balance of reliabilityk, audio quality and ease of use. This is what matters and this why they sell a lot.
Who cares if TWS supports gaming! Candy crush is still the most popular game on Android and iOS. People still game on phone in casual manner and they use TWS for casual use. I am not at all interested in discussing these irrelevant comparisons. As for hi-res, Airpods Pro already support hi-res audio and they also offer Spatial audio. Same is the case with Sony XM4. I am saying this again. Just because you hate one product category does not mean that they are bad. You just cannot accept the fact that they are good. Coming to interferences and signal drops, I never had any such issue when I used bluetooth Enco M31s. I used to go for 1 hour plus ride and not even once I had any such issues. Hi-res audio, low latency audio etc are pure overkill for those using TWS for listening to music streams on Spotify or making calls on phone. No body cares about Hi-res audio, except audiophiles and audiophiles do not care about TWS.
I am not splurging on TWS every two years and I do not call people mindless for buying premium TWS. If you have read my reply, you would have known that I am into wired audio (while on the run and while at home). What I am saying is that you name calling these really good TWS models as junk or crap is wrong. It is border-line anti-fanboyism.
hahaha. you are funny. Unadlulterated. Some things are easy to say on forums and social media.
There is one thing that you miss here. Majority of normal people cannot differentiate between sound signature of decent wired headset and wireless headset. For them, the only thing that matters is comfort. Not audio quality, not hi-res, not impedance, not sensitivity. Comfort. This is all that matters to majority of buyers.
You are a rare species now.I never let go of the landline like some did to replace with mobile. Mobile at best is field radio quality. Much better call quality with landline.
There are times when mobile to mobile can be uintelligible because both have weak signal. Call up the mobile with a landline and the quality improves.
There is another reason to use landline. Mobile connections get snappped anytime there is unrest in the country. Landline still works
Spot on. I have a near 4 year old Jabra headset that I use for calls. it costs about 30k and the quality is absolutely amazing. I never used it for music, I never tried to play games using this. I used it only for calls and boy, the voice quality that I get and the clarity that others get when i speak is brilliant. The icing on the cake is that I can just move around while on call. I am not tied to the laptop while on call. If I want to stretch, I do that. If I want to run to kitchen to get water or make coffee, I can do that without carrying the laptop along.
Comfort and ease of use trumps hi-res and low latency audio and things that are overkill when it comes to normal use of such headsets.
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dexterz
Guide
Very well said. Different products different use case and target audiences. Its wrong to group everything under 1 umbrella.
blr_p
Northstar
I consider this youtuber Ken Michael to be the gold standard when it comes to testing mic quality with these bluetooth earphones
Jabra's Elite 2 goes for Rs.4k but how does it fare in terms of mic quality with just two mics ?
Not so great
Despite being IPX5 one of Jabra's earlier models seems to have developed a fault after a few months where one speaker gets too hot to wear according to this review
Has to be replaced. How to do that with Jabra ?
Jabra's Elite 2 goes for Rs.4k but how does it fare in terms of mic quality with just two mics ?
Not so great
Despite being IPX5 one of Jabra's earlier models seems to have developed a fault after a few months where one speaker gets too hot to wear according to this review
Has to be replaced. How to do that with Jabra ?
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nRiTeCh
Northstar
Its a myth that higher the rate better is the quality and vice-versa. When it comes to audio it all depends on individual tastes. Some audiophiles even like just treble just like those auto rickshaw sound system and they flaunt those 25k headphones. Now nor you can disband them as non-audiophiles or name them as noobs, immature, cheap tastes. etc. as eod its their personal preferences.
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blr_p
Northstar
This is about mic quality test not audio quality of the earphones.
How good or not you sound when you speak depending on the environment. A good test for noise cancelling which you won't get that with cheaper models.
All depends how far the mic is from your mouth. Closer the mic better you sound even with stock wired earphones from few years ago
nRiTeCh
Northstar
I was referring to overall!This is about mic quality test not audio quality of the earphones.
How good or not you sound when you speak depending on the environment. A good test for noise cancelling which you won't get that with cheaper models.
All depends how far the mic is from your mouth. Closer the mic better you sound even with stock wired earphones from few years ago
superczar
Juggernaut
Nothing beats the audio quality of a properly adjusted boom microphone , esp in you are in a noisy environment .This is about mic quality test not audio quality of the earphones.
How good or not you sound when you speak depending on the environment. A good test for noise cancelling which you won't get that with cheaper models.
All depends how far the mic is from your mouth. Closer the mic better you sound even with stock wired earphones from few years ago
The signal on them in the Signal to noise ratio (SnR) is strong enough to beat most noisy environs.
However, there is a caveat.
Good grade TWS have to resort to computational algorithms to boost signal over noise - The simple physics of distance ensures that the SnR is naturally weaker - like you said.
Thus if there is a fair amount of BG noise, the boom headset will almost always win.
However, In a moderately /low noise place like a typical home , or office with some background chatter, there is another factor that comes into play but I will have to illustarte with an example.
I have two office provisioned BT professional headsets at home - A sennheiser MB Pro and a Jabra Evolve 75t .
They work great - but there are occasions when I have heard complaints from people on a call. The boom mics are low sensitivity by design (given how close they are to the source) - so if they move away beyond a
point, the signal fades. Readjusting the mic solves the issue - but there is no way to know unless it gets so bad that someone complains.
In contrast, the APP has no such problems. So for long calls, I often end up using that instead.
As you can imagine, the prevalence of VoIP calls has gone up through the roof for most of us in the last 2 years. so normally what i do is this :
- I use the boom headset if getting on a high priority// important call - and try make sure that the mic is placed correctly before and during the call.
- If its a medium/ low priority call , esp a long one, I pick the APP so that I dont have to bother checking/ making adjustments during the call
TL;DR - the mic quality/ Noise filter algos on at least good TWSs have got to a point where they are as good as pro boom headsets - especially if not in a very noisy place.
Have run the mic loopback tests on zoom/ teams extensively to reach this conclusion
raksrules
Northstar
Isn't U2 an option?
The most important reason for me to use Level U is the earbuds are NOT in ear canal. I see U2 has kept that earbud design. So if the one I am using breaks, I will buy the U2. I already have kept a backup Level U just incase this breaks. I tend to have backup of absolutely crucial for my work devices, which includes the earphones and my trackball mouse.
blr_p
Northstar
I remember now what made these Level U's impressive. The wind noise cancellation
The guy is riding his bike with the visor open and you can still make out what he's saying. So if you want to sit under a fan these will cancel them out well.
It's the sound quality elsewhere that is lacking. The mic is quite far away from the mouth which means you are likely to get softer if you're not careful.
Ken didn't review the U2's and the ones I saw were not that great.
He did do Galaxy's Buds Live which are quite good in a quiet area because the main mic like the airpod pro's are inside the ear. Listen how clear he sounds !! This is as good if not better than any neckband. These Buds live are also contoured to the ears and don't protrude much.
and the Buds Pro and again the wind noise cancellation is exceptional. Quite good at cancelling noisy environments as well. The pros were not so great in the cafe though must have been quite noisy.
I'm intirigued when he says some mics are trebly and others bassy which means they cut out high frequency noises better.
There's a simple reason to get the mic quality good. If ever you're recording video indoors or outdoors with any commentary then the phones internal mics will make you sound distant. The fix is to use BT with a good mic. Assuming your phone can directly record from BT.
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desiibond
Juggernaut
I second this. My office headset has amazing noise cancellation and proper mic. Wind noise is fully suppressed. Some of my colleagues had to buy new headset as their current headset died after few years. I can hear when they turn on fan. It is so noisy that we ask them to stay on mute when they are not speaking.I remember now what made these Level U's impressive. The wind noise cancellation
The guy is riding his bike with the visor open and you can still make out what he's saying. So if you want to sit under a fan these will cancel them out well.
It's the sound quality elsewhere that is lacking. The mic is quite far away from the mouth which means you are likely to get softer if you're not careful.
Ken didn't review the U2's and the ones I saw were not that great.
He did do Galaxy's Buds Live which are quite good in a quiet area because the main mic like the airpod pro's are inside the ear. Listen how clear he sounds !! This is as good if not better than any neckband. These Buds live are also contoured to the ears and don't protrude much.
and the Buds Pro and again the wind noise cancellation is exceptional. Quite good at cancelling noisy environments as well. The pros were not so great in the cafe though must have been quite noisy.
I'm intirigued when he says some mics are trebly and others bassy which means they cut out high frequency noises better.
There's a simple reason to get the mic quality good. If ever you're recording video indoors or outdoors with any commentary then the phones internal mics will make you sound distant. The fix is to use BT with a good mic. Assuming your phone can directly record from BT.
A good mix with good noise cancellation makes massive difference.
atg666
Contributor
Not all TWS are garbage. Sony, JBL, Samsung make some good ones. Not all models from one manufacturer are good.
I have the Galaxy Buds Live, and they work great. The ANC is weird, but effective, and they are uncomfortable as heck in the ears. The bean shape physically hurts my ears. Do they fall out? NO. Can I wear them for hours together? NO. Can I use them to answer calls? YES. Music quality? Great, not outstanding.
Also, as per ifixit, these are most probably the only TWS with a replaceable battery. Aint gonna try it, just means brownie points.
I personally find the idea of having two electronics devices beaming radio waves at each other from either side of my brain to be a bit absurd. I was dead set against TWS, and only got them because I got a sweet sweet deal (almost free) from a friend who is a Samsung dealer. For everything else, some wired earbuds still work wonders.
I have the Galaxy Buds Live, and they work great. The ANC is weird, but effective, and they are uncomfortable as heck in the ears. The bean shape physically hurts my ears. Do they fall out? NO. Can I wear them for hours together? NO. Can I use them to answer calls? YES. Music quality? Great, not outstanding.
Also, as per ifixit, these are most probably the only TWS with a replaceable battery. Aint gonna try it, just means brownie points.
I personally find the idea of having two electronics devices beaming radio waves at each other from either side of my brain to be a bit absurd. I was dead set against TWS, and only got them because I got a sweet sweet deal (almost free) from a friend who is a Samsung dealer. For everything else, some wired earbuds still work wonders.
You can extract rare earth metals from a smartphone, repair it, reuse it or even change its battery. Can you do any of that with a TWS? No.
A TWS is fully held by glue. Once the lithium batteries in them goes kaput, you throw them away. I'm pretty amazed how Apple with their "environmental sustainability" mantra has successfully brainwashed people like you.
It's not an opinion. It's a fact, whether you accept it or not.
Companies are marking up these TWS at exorbitant rates, so that even when they sell later at a lower price, they can still profit from them. After all, they're all made from cheap plastic.
Why do you think that Samsung is selling the Buds Live at 5K INR while it was launched at 15K INR? Or the Sony WF1000XM3 at 8-9K INR while it was launched close to 20K INR?
I don't see such "heavy" discounts with a Sennheiser HD560S or the Audio Technica R70X?
Economies of scale concept can be applied in both ways.
The way you're saying "wireless is for comfort & ease of use", as if you started using audio products yesterday. How wireless is "easy to use" when you have go through hoops to connect your TWS to your different systems compared to just plugging in a jack? As for comfort, look up the most comfortable headphones/IEMs on the planet, and you'll see 80% of them to be wired. What a farce.
Stop spreading misinformation. Airpods Pro don't support hi-res audio. How is it going to support hi-res audio when it's using a dinosaur tech like BT? Only the Airpods Max supports hi-res and that too via wired. So much for "wireless is ease of use". Also, LDAC on the XM4s isn't hi-res. It can't even sustain its peak transmission rate of 990 kbps at all times due to interferences.
Also the fad that "Nobody cares for hi-res" - then why Apple decided to put the same in their most popular music app knowing that their "wireless Airpods" users can't use it? Yes, that's right, because even Apple wants their customers to get a taste of what hi-res entails and maybe Apple is working on a new codec other than AAC.
Well, people said the same when moving from 60 Hz to 144 Hz monitors. Now we have 480 Hz monitors incoming.
"People don't know what they want until you show it to them." - Steven Paul Jobs
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blr_p
Northstar
Which office headset are you using ?
The only ones i find that go for a fair price are ones by Plantronics like Voyager 4320 or 4220
Others like Jabra are charging 5-10k more for Evolve 65 that is not worth more than 15-17k !!
While I agree with the idea of tws being ideal for the landfill, the economics idea of "mark up" is wrong here.
When planning a new product, big companies spend millions of dollars (billions for really large scale stiff like iPhone).
1. A lot goes into creating/buying/contracting factories.
2. Designing (external, internal, circuit, bom, etc, and from ergonomic, aesthetic, regulatory etc angles).
3. Licensing from patent holders/consortiums for codecs, protocols like Bluetooth, USB, FireWire, WiFi etc as applicable, whichever ones are paid. If they are not themselves members of consortium for that technology, things are more difficult.
4. Regulatory approvals like FCC etc., possibly in various countries.
5. Manage the supply chain, store placement, online store agreements, distributors etc.
6. And more
So the first device sold, can be priced at hundreds of millions of dollars without being accused of "marking up". Of course, they don't sell for that much, but maybe thousand dollars. Many device launches fail, so the first few hundred thousand devices need to justify all the initial investment.
Sometimes there is a loss for a particular device. Microsoft lost 4 billion dollars in their Xbox division, before rejigging their division system to hide the loss from investors. Though later they must have made genuine profits.
Secondly, I invest in American tech companies, though indirectly. I don't buy the products of the most egregious landfillers, but the shares give me some not so bad profit. Marking up, and earning your investors money is not a crime.
blr_p
Northstar
Yeah the comfort of these buds live is an open question and passive isolation with this design will be non-existent.
The only way to get passive isolation and a good seal is with in ear style and in my experience foam tips.
Repairability is a good thing but the cons here i think outweigh the pros. Pity because the ANC is quite good with this set.
Hearing aids have been doing it for decades.
I can believe it after hearing Ken's voice quality with the better TWS. Sounds pretty good. Never would have believed it otherwise.
They solved two problems by including a mic that goes inside the ear
- Internal mic by design is closer than before
- Internal mic is Isolated from external sound to an extent and can serve as a reference to filter out other sounds
- Internal mic is fixed at a static distance unlike a boom mic or dangling mic on a neck band which can vary as you shift around
This counters my primary argument of mic being too far with TWS. Because the few odd samples i heard were from sub 5k or around which had no internal mic.
TWS with an internal mic will do better than no internal mic or just external mics. I don't think its worth going for TWS unless it has an internal mic.
If that is still too expensive then better to go for something else but not a TWS without an internal mic.
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The production costs that you're quoting can be directed towards any product - be it wired or wireless. Of course a wireless TWS will need to spend more on the licensing fees, which are only one time payments.
But, then again, a lot of those costs are off-settled by using similar components interchangeably within each other. For instance, Apple uses the same H1 chip in their Airpods lineup. Thus, if they have already paid for Bluetooth certification when making the H1, they don't have to spend again.
And then you have economies of scale, where production efficiency increases over time.
Furthermore, some years back, it was reported that a pair of Airpods only cost around $59-69 to make, when it was selling for $159: https://fortune.com/2019/08/06/apple-airpods-business/
That's a 270% markup on an Apple product. No wonder companies like Samsung, who use lesser quality components, have been able to sell their flagship TWSes for such low prices.
So, my point is: a wired IEM also goes through all of such production procedures (especially the high-end ones). But, I don't see them getting discounted so much. You can expect a 5-20% deviation from the MSRP, but not as wild as these TWS companies are selling, where the price deviation is more than 40-60+%. As a result, early buyers/adopters are facing the losses.
Also, more money is always good for investors. If I'm investing in a company, I'd always want my ROI to remain high. That's normal and there will never be an end to capitalism.
But, the problem is that - customers are getting shafted left & right. We have seen that with headphone jack removal, charger removal and all that shenanigans. This constant lust for money is getting annoying at this point and all is being done without taking into consideration the impact on environmental sustainability or the customer's pocket.
I mean, we all talk about "right to repair", but these TWSes are the greatest enemies to right to repair. At least wireless headphones can still be repaired.
