[Kirby64]

Either your standards are much higher than mine or you haven’t been exposed to current gen Bluetooth gear. Decent picks sound perfectly fine even in the sub $100 category. Anker, Nothing, or even Sony have some decent stuff in that price range.

[999900000999]

Fine.

I don't feel like having to charge two devices.

On long international flights a traditional headphone jack beats Bluetooth every time.

Bluetooth headphones last as long as their batteries do. Wired headphones, particularly ones with replaceable cords, last forever.

I'm not sure why your being argumentive here, it's a known fact that Bluetooth has to compress everything down and sacrifices quality to do so.

[Kirby64]

> On long international flights a traditional headphone jack beats Bluetooth every time.

Current gen over ear ANC headphones have battery life in excess of any international flight. Most in excess of a round trip, even. True wireless ones don’t, but that’s not typically what you use on a plane. If you’re using the in flight infotainment, you’re corded anyways… so it’s a bit of a moot point. I can’t possibly imagine flying without ANC headphones at this point though, which requires a battery. The cable is also such a pain on a long flight. Any time you get up or move around, it’s inevitable you have to relocate or move the cable around to prevent it from getting snagged. If I could have Bluetooth on every infotainment system I’d love that.

> I'm not sure why your being argumentive here, it's a known fact that Bluetooth has to compress everything down and sacrifices quality to do so.

My point is that although that’s technically true, it’s practically not true. The quality is sufficient that you’ll hardly notice for most environments. If you’re in some listening room, sure fine. Use your fancy wired headphones.

In public, with environmental noise, etc or especially on planes? The picture is a lot muddier.

[999900000999]

ANC gives me headaches.

You know the neat thing about phones with an audio jack, you can use Bluetooth or wired headphones.

Apple figured out they could print money by selling AirPods and now every phone brand has some crappy Bluetooth headphones they want to sell.

Thus most phones don’t have jacks anymore. I don’t see any advantage to the end consumer.

[Kirby64]

> ANC gives me headaches.

Sorry that occurs with you. I know some people are much more sensitive to it than others. Also, lower quality or older ANC products have a much stronger “head pressure” effect which is definitely undesirable. Modern high end stuff from Apple, Sony, or Bose basically have all eliminated that effect in my experience.

I’m not sure what your vendetta here is against phones without jacks. There’s so, so, so many decent USB to 3.5mm jacks that are nearly free these days. Same with ones that also offer pass through charging.

The fact is today Bluetooth headphones are 99% of the market for phone users, and for the rest of folks the dongle is a perfectly suitable solution. In fact, dongles are a way to offer superior performance to most phone 3.5mm jacks. If you really care about the audio performance of your headphones, most phones offered mediocre or even outright bad audio quality out of their headphone jacks.

[999900000999]

>I’m not sure what your vendetta here is against phones without jacks.

There's literally no benefit to the end user.

Dongles are a great way to put stress on a single point of failure. If your USB c port stops working your phone can't be charged anymore and is useless.

I have more Bluetooth earbuds then I can count. At 30$ a pair they almost always go bad within 6 months. My wired headphones work for years.

It's not like my opinion matters that much. Literally the only flagship phone with a jack is a 1300$ Sony Xperia.

[Kirby64]

> There's literally no benefit to the end user.

The benefit to the end user is lower cost, fewer parts that can break, more area for other components, and potentially improved form factors from not having to have a 3.5mm cutout. Maybe all of those don’t immediately translate to tangible benefits from consumers, but there’s quite a few phone form factors that have existed that would not be possible with 3.5mm jacks.

> If your USB c port stops working your phone can't be charged anymore and is useless.

Pretty much all phones have wireless charging in some form now. That’s your backup, or potentially primary if you’re in the wireless charging ecosystem. Also, most phones have a method of repairing/replacing the USB-C port. Not convenient of course, but this is no different than damaging a phone from yanking the charging cable or whatever.

> I have more Bluetooth earbuds then I can count. At 30$ a pair they almost always go bad within 6 months. My wired headphones work for years.

Then… don’t buy cheap products? I’ve never had a battery go bad in over ear Bluetooth headphones, and even if they did I’m pretty confident a replacement set of batteries would be widely available. I’ve replaced parts on extremely old Bose headphones without an issue.