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Comment by magicalhippo | Hacker News Reader

I miss the jack every single day.

Recently the wire of my regular ear buds gave up (as they do) and, since I had gotten some BT ones, I decided to use them. They're Jabra Elite Sport, which got good reviews from what I can recall.

They're dropping out like crazy. It's seldom to get an entire minute of music without a small dropout. The area around the bus stop at work is particularly bad, with sound drops every few seconds until I get away from that area.

I upgraded the firmware and it got a bit better, but still pretty poor. If I hold the phone in my hands and keep still it's usually ok, but as soon as it goes into my pocket, all bets are off.

I don't miss the cable tangle, but I miss being able to enjoy music.

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Crazy. I paid $25CAD for cheap Chinese-brand behind-the-ears headset (Suicen AX-698) and dropouts are very rare for me. Happens occasionally - usually when I'm on the road and a truck goes by - I assume some of those have very chatty RF devices. But still, generally very rare. When I'm at the gym working out they never cut for me.

Frustrating reality of modern purchasing - buying the "expensive" one often gives you something not substantially better than the cheap Chinese junk.

Generally the expensive ones are using the same components as the cheap ones and simply upcharging you, that’s why.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/7/20943377/chinese-hi-fi-au...

That said, I’m happy with my AirPods and Beats, which are on the expensive side. The custom Bluetooth chip is certainly more seamless than regular Bluetooth.

I'm fat and so when my belly covers my phone in my pocket, like when I'm leaning over, my Bluetooth cuts out. Shit sucks lol.

>They're Jabra Elite Sport, which got good reviews from what I can recall.

>They're dropping out like crazy. It's seldom to get an entire minute of music without a small dropout. The area around the bus stop at work is particularly bad, with sound drops every few seconds until I get away from that area.

I would suggest reaching out to Jabra, as the symptoms suggest a faulty pair. Furthermore, these buds came with an extended 3-year warranty, albeit it was for failure as a direct result of perspiration.

I use mine the with an iPhone, and also tested them with an older Android phone with Bluetooth 4.0. The firmware is on release 5.6.0 (6th November 2019). Although, my pair doesn't suffer from the same issues as yours. However, I have had some issues with the battery life e.g. Jabra Sport app and real world usage does not tally and the battery life of the buds also deteriorates by 10% or more, by just sitting in the charging case, if not used daily.

I am probably adding to the pile of fanboyist Apple blah blah but I honestly think my AirPods are the single best tech purchase I have made in the last 5 years. They took away so much hassle and work exactly like I would expect.

AirPods are one fine product for daily casual use. Obviously they aren't going to meet an audiophiles demand at $150 but AirPods Pro might even be enough in that case.

My AirPods drop out at the rate of once a month or something. When it happens it's a quick fix and they have been nothing but convenient otherwise.

Would never use wired headphones again unless I am trying to analyze a Beethoven piece.

I seriously doubt the audio quality of AirPods Pro are any good from an audiophile perspective. I have no way to test without buying them but I have heard both the new macbook pro 16 laptop speakers and the Sony WH-1000XM3 noise cancelling headphones described an incredible sounding by the same people who say Airpods Pro sound amazing. I happen to own both and.... the MBP sounds like my grammas alarm clock radio at best (I'd give it a 2.5/10) and the Sonys are maybe a 7/10. They are decent but way too boomy and the Q in the EQ controls provided in the app don't provide enough granularity to fix it. I feel like we've really devalued certain words in the past decade or so. Everyone speaks like they work for marketing now.

> I feel like we've really devalued certain words in the past decade or so.

For sure.

> Everyone speaks like they work for marketing now.

Maybe we're so inundated that we've internalized it? A semi-related thing I've noticed: when people talk about movies now, it's never "oh I liked it, it was neat" or "it was sappy." Everybody talks about the cinematography this, the character arcs that, did you see that tracking shot??

It's weird to see the "inside baseball" aspects of movies/music/storytelling/etc creep into random conversations.

Hm, I just cant get used how airpods look like while people are wearing them. Like they would stick cigarettes into their ears. Anyway, I prefer over the ear headsets, they just sound better (currently at Sennheiser Momentum, sometimes on cable, sonetimes on BT).

Have you compared with other BT headphones?

Because in general, BT headphones are great and I understand that people love them. But Airpods are not among the better ones in my experience. They drop out more than my other BT headphones, and the fact that they have no volume control is just unbelievably stupid to me.

I have my $20 wired Sony buds drop out about once every never.

My wired buds pop out if I do anything more than sit still while listening with them. Any other activity I'm bound to accidentally karate chop the cord out of my ears. Or they catch on something. It's quite a bad experience.

I didn't think BT headphones were worth anything until I tried them. They are surprisingly liberating for someone active like me.

Mine will drop out when I drop my phone.

I got the non sport ones due to the great reviews and they suck. I would recommend AirPods, even for android.

For the same price I’d recommend buying he latest $30 ones every year for the next 4-5 years. You’ll get better battery life, eventually Bluetooth 5.2 with lowest latency (sends directly instead of rebroadcasting to the other ear), and probably at least one Bluetooth revision beyond that adding true stereo support during microphone use.

If we’re talking AirPods Pro you could buy new $30 ones each year for the next 8 years, but atm nothing out there seems to compete with transparency mode while still having the fit of a silicon tip and no sealed in feeling/internal pressure noises.

For me I'm not going to spend a lot on any until the latencies are good enough for gaming, along with stereo while using the mic, and will stick to the cheaper ones until then.

Have the same-ish, and it's pretty interesting. I think the BT communication is from phone to the right earbud, then something else (likely on 2.4GHz too) from right to left earbud.

When I switch on the office lights, enter the lift, open the fridge door (light again) and similar things, the left drops out briefly (on the order of 100ms).

Yeah, when I walk through the theft detector at one of my regular grocery stores, my left earbud falls out as I pass through the magnetic field produced by the detector.

It makes some analog radio noises when they fade out and back in, so clearly something entirely different from BT.

The right earbud plays music as normal through it all.

Maybe try a different set. My AirPods haven't dropped connection a single time I've used them. They connect immediately, and to drop the cliche, just work.

Well yeah I've been thinking about it. But shelling out for some with decent sound only to find that they also suck would really be a bummer, so I'm tempted to just go back to wired.

When I lived in Moscow, there was a bit just outside of my metro station, a radius about 10 metres, where my bluetooth headphones would just stop working. Absolutely bizarre.

The problem is bluetooth is in year 26 or so of alpha testing and wires are extremely reliable. For example, HTC appears to be unable to ship a working bluetooth stack.

Thanks for the heads-up that these have a firmware update available. I bought them because reviews suggested they were the best earbuds available other than AirPods and I've had all the same problems you describe, it's awful.

The firmware update did improve things a lot, they were not really usable before, but the result is still sub-par for me at least :(

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