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Frankly, I've owned several in-ear products from various companies (Shure, Sony, Bose, UE), and none of them hit the sound quality of the Airpods Pro. None of them. Maybe once you get in to $400+ IEMs, but I'm not spending that much on IEMs. Similarly, the HomePod. I have used a Nest Audio (returned), Nest Hub Max (returned), Echo Studio (returned), a Sony GTK-XB7 (really like this one for parties as it gets very loud), and a UE Hyperboom (also really like this one as it has a 24 hour battery). HomePod has the best audio quality. Are there speakers that are better? Oh hell yes; I have a pair of Mackie MR5s that blow the Homepod out of the water. But also, they're five times the size. I would not put it past Apple to do something great with these. In my mind, they've established themselves as being a top-tier audio equipment manufacturer, alongside Sennheiser, Sony, Grado, Beyerdynamic, etc, and I really think the people who don't believe this just haven't been using their full scope of audio products. I do think one needs to answer whether $500+ is something one is willing to spend on a piece of audio equipment. Its a ton of money, and audio naturally has a rate of exponential decay of return (you can get 95% of the audio quality of $1000+ headphones with a $100 pair of the right ones). That's a separate question from whether they deliver value previously only seen in $800+ devices. If they can do that, then these are worth it to some people. |
Over the past 10 years or so it's the traditional hifi that's become the niche, a bit depressing.