[manfredo]

A nice pair of bluetooth headphones makes a pretty big different. I got a HD 4.40BT, and it's very good. Battery life is impressive and charges quickly. I can skip tracks, pause, adjust volume without taking out my phone. I don't have to dig into my pocket when I want to listen to something. Audio quality is not noticeably different from my wired headphones at a similar price. It does mean that I have 4 pairs of headphones relegated to desktop and piano use, but the convenience factor was well worth it to me.

https://en-us.sennheiser.com/wireless-headphones-bluetooth-h...

[callalex]

Adding a battery to something that didn’t have one previously literally decimated the expected time until it ends up in a landfill/the ocean.

[wlesieutre]

For an actual set of headphones with a decent size battery, they can still be useful for many years even if the capacity drops to 50%. Tiny things like AirPods are crazy though. When they're brand new the battery life is barely enough, when they're a year or two old it sounds like a giant nuisance.

Apple just launched the more fitness-targeted Powerbeats Pro with a bigger battery, but the charging case to accommodate the "around ear" design is enormous compared to AirPods.

And now reviewers are excusing that saying "Yeah it's a huge case, but the battery life is probably good enough that maybe you could leave the case at home!" As if the battery life three years from now will be anywhere near 9 hours.

EDIT: Two articles posted on 9to5mac by literally the same person a couple of months apart:

https://9to5mac.com/2019/01/28/airpods-battery-life/

> But batteries are consumable, we all know so well now, and that’s proven true for the tiny batteries inside AirPods after two years of daily use. Battery life that once exceeded five hours now struggles to power AirPods through three hours of continuous usage at the same volume. Battery life results can be cut in half if you need to play audio at a louder volume.

> In practice, I used to never hear the low battery alert during usage. I rarely listened to audio with AirPods for five straight hours before charging in the carrying case without thought. More recently, I’ve heard the bloop sound much more regularly, frequently followed by AirPods dying before I’m ready to recharge.

https://9to5mac.com/2019/05/06/beats-powerbeats-pro-hands-on...

> AirPods give you up to 5 hours of power in between charges; Powerbeats Pro almost double that with up to 9 hours of power in between charges. The additional four hours might mean you only need to take the earphones out of the house for the day with the charging case left at home.

Talk about a lack of foresight.

On 9to5mac in 2021: "The batteries in my Powerbeats Pro only last four hours and I have to carry this gigantic charging case everywhere. HOW COULD I HAVE KNOWN???"

[wlesieutre]

And for a comparison point versus real headphones, Sony’s USB-C charged WH-1000XM3 is rated for 30 hours with noise cancellation on, 38 hours without. But those aren’t something I’d carry around all the time, so I’m happy to keep using wired earbuds where battery life isn’t even a question.

[elipsey]

Reduced it by %10? I think you might un-xaggerating! I agree with the sentiment however.

[Dylan16807]

I think it's valid to describe a reduction to 1/10th as a literal use of "decimate", even if it doesn't match historical usage.

[richardhod]

Did you really mean 'literally decimated'? See the Roman history that led to this word. I share the disambiguation to show other uses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation

[roywiggins]

I can skip tracks, pause, adjust volume without taking out my phone

There's absolutely no reason why wired headphones can't do that, you can buy ones with three-button inline controls. Ye olde Walkman could do it.

[caf]

The wired earbuds on my minidisc even had a little inline screen to display the current track.

[Consultant32452]

Aww man, that just took me down memory lane. Minidisc was, imo, the peak of portable music players. Huge capacity, swappable/tradeable media, excellent sound quality, the little inline screen you mentioned. A quick Amazon search shows they're still available.

[hutzlibu]

There are still simple MP3 players around, with SD card slots.

So you can have lots of music with you ... and have a smaller device and be able to jump around with it

[manfredo]

Three button inline controls usually gets you pause, volume up and volume down. This is essentially 5 buttons: pause, forward, back, volume +, volume -. Sure there are probably wired headphones that have the same control capability, but I've encountered them rarely if ever.

[NikolaeVarius]

I have literally never encountered a 3 button wired headphone that didn't have that capability. I have gone through many due to heavy usage.

[manfredo]

And I've gone through at least three 3-button headphones that have only worked with volume and pause. I suppose one could use the volume for track control with some sort of special logic, like a longer button hold. But I've never encountered that. The Bluetooth headphones I have actually has another set of capabilities which is to not only skip or go back in terms of tracks but also fast forward and rewind within a track - very useful for podcasts.

[marbletiles]

The standard iPhone headphones since the 1g support all those. Click to pause, double click for forward, triple click for back. Long press on the second or third click for rewind/fast forward.

[hammock]

It's usually long hold or double/triple tap and you get track forward/back. The iPhone buds do it for example. You probably never read the manual :)

[TeMPOraL]

5 logical buttons with 3 physical buttons was something of a standard since time immemorial - the volume+/- buttons doubled up as next/previous when you held them.

[cge]

>I got a HD 4.40BT, and it's very good.

And how long will it be very good? Bluetooth headphones seem to represent a huge change in standards of support.

To use an example from the same company, I have an HD 280 pro, which I bought well over a decade ago. I can go on Sennheiser's website, and buy replacement ear cushions or replacement head band pads. It looks like the replacement cable is no longer easily available, but it was sold for a number of years, and replacing the proprietary cable (criticized in many reviews at the time) with a standard one (or a jack) is not that hard.

For a new example, all parts that might break outside the core of my Etymotic ER4SRs have replacement parts, and all can be very easily replaced.

A search for replacement batteries for the HD 4.40BT, on the other hand, comes up with nothing except the user manual's admonition that battery replacement by anyone other than Sennheiser will void the entire warranty (something that seems likely to be illegal in many places), and noting that instructions are available (outside of warranty) only for "qualified service centers." There are instructions in the manual about replacing the ear pads, but ear pads don't seem to show up on Sennheiser's website, which is rather surprising, considering that a search for the 2000s-era 280s easily comes up with replacements; wider searches come up only with poorly-reviewed cheap third party replacements. There is a replacement cable, but then again, it's just a standard cable. Replacement batteries don't appear to be available anywhere.

So when the battery starts dying, are you expected to throw them away? Use them until you become frustrated enough to buy new ones, and throw the otherwise decent ones away? Hope that Sennheiser will replace the battery for less than the price of new headphones?

[ramses0]

I agree with you here. I am also negative on loss of the headphone jack, but switching to primarily wireless audio has had quite a bit of network-effect positive benefits.

[OrgNet]

> Battery life is impressive

How long is that with a brand new battery?

[manfredo]

Easily 4-5 days without recharging, with consistent use throughout the day. Official estimate is 25 hours of continuous use, I get around 20.

I just charge my headphone where I charge my phone, and never worry about batter life. Even if battery is reduced to 50% capacity it wouldn't affect my usage.

[larkeith]

Meanwhile, 20 hours would be irritating to me on long days, and 10 hours (probably a few hundred cycles/less than a year) would interrupt my work and concentration daily. Just goes to show how the inconvenience varies between people.

[OrgNet]

It is not impressive, but it is acceptable (considering I never need to charge mine).