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Comment by Fnoord | Hacker News Reader

> Sony for example was unable to parlay its Walkman dominance into similar positions with new devices.

Sony WF-1000XM3 are a popular in-ear Bluetooth headphones with noise cancelling. 80 EUR cheaper than Apple Airpods Pro.

Stupid name and impossible to distinguish from their other wireless headphones. This is the Dell XXHBE 34-9q276d.snfd2 vs Macbook Pro all over again.

My guitar is an Ibanez RG2570...EZQWEUIBLAKUSJBDA-something (I can't ever remember, great guitar btw) but does that matter? It's still a brilliant piece of (hand)craftsmanship.

If people want quality (or at least guarantee of quality in what they buy) they'll tend to whatever is better. N.B. "Better" can mean ease-of-use/experience too (Apple)

Yesterday I was looking for the name of the old Sony mp3 player I had in the early 2000's. It took ages to track down with any certainty: "Sony NW-E105". Like, what does that even mean? I just remembered it's this circular thing and it was purple. I'll never remember that model number and I had to rely on my browser history to even paste it in this comment just now, even though I was just reading about it yesterday! Brutal.

Agreed on the name. Don't want my headphones to distinguish themselves (why would I? Certainly not as "toothbrushes").

If the name is the main criticism you can come up with, it's probably a really good product.

I have both. If the AirPods Pro didn't make my inner ear sore after wearing for 3+ hours, I would sell my Sony's immediately. I might sell them anyway. They are inferior in everything apart from comfort.

The other nice thing is that it appears it might be possible to change the batteries in the WF-1000XM3. (https://hifigo.com/blogs/tws/deep-dive-teardown-of-true-wire...)

.. Which you rarely see stuck in people's ears. You do see those little white airpods everywhere though. People have them stuck in their ears even when they're not playing any audio.

1) Honestly, they look ugly (like toothbrushes), just like the white iPhone looked ugly.

2) There's a lot of copy cats who look akin to Apple Airpods because Apple is a premium brand.

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