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Comment by artogahr | Hacker News Reader

They look cool and I would love to be able to buy one but the sustainability tax seems too high to be a successful product to me.

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It's not a "sustainability tax", it's "acknowledging people are not slaves nor are resources infinite"

"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent”

It may not make sense to repair for many consumers. In a few years we might have better codecs or similar and you'll want to upgrade your crusty headphones anyway.

>>In a few years we might have better codecs

This sounds like something could be done with a firmware update.

Or the speakers themselves, eventually

Nope, for latency and battery reasons this would be done by a specific chip, e.g. https://www.icstation.com/audio-module-bluetooth-compatible-... / https://www.tinyosshop.com/ts8670

The same's true on the smartphone transmitter side.

That 2nd link you shared, has 3 links under "Documentation" to firmware downloads.

> "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent”

I notice every time the cost of a properly sustainable product comes up, the conversation always turns to what a short-sighted bastard everyone else is, and I can only assume the people who make that argument are already making moral choices themselves, which is honestly just heartwarming to see.

Wireless headphones are essentially streetwear. Making their product too cheap would be an unforgivable mistake in that market.

I use mine for remote work, they are so expensive I actually avoid wearing them outside as much as possible.

I agree, and this is why I believe that issues like this can only be fixed with regulation. Markets not only can't solve them, they actually reward exploitation. It's way more efficient from a product standpoint, and the only thing that's needed to quell the public response is just to remove the abuse far enough from them, so that no real feedback loop can form.

WH-1000XM5 => $400

Bose QC45 => $279

Fairbuds XL => 249€ ($272 if I convert right now)

It's cheaper than two of the most popular headphones, how is there a "too high sustainability tax" ?!?

I can really recommend the WH-1000XM5 btw. They are quite light and work surprisingly well even with iDevices. I tried to call my dad while I mowed the lawn (electric mower, but pretty loud one) and he understood me well. Audio pass through sounds like the real thing, I’d just like to be able to turn it louder.

That's a change then because the WH-1000XM3 microphone is really crap.

rtings.com describe the recording quality as pretty bad still on the XM5[0], but with markedly better mic noise suppression than the XM3[1].

(These are the most objective measurements I'm aware of.)

[0]: https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/sony/wh-1000xm5-wi...

[1]: https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/sony/wh-1000xm3-wi...

The XM5 have 8 microphones, that’s one of the major improvements over previous versions.

NC headphones typically have multiple microphones, the more there are, the better the NC can be. This is because the first part of NC is detecting ambient noise, the second being generating soundwaves to cancel out what's picked up by the mics.

With more mics it's possible to get more accurate NC, especially for directional sounds.

However more mics won't necessarily mean better call quality, they may not even be used at all for voice.

For example my Jabra NC pair has really good microphone quality for calls, this is done by having a dedicated boom microphone, in this case nothing to do with the multiple NC microphones.

But what's the sound quality like? If they're in the price range of $300-400 premium headphones, but perform like $100 headphones, that's still a "tax".

The price on noise canceling headphones is usually an indication of how good they do NC.

The vast amount of Bluetooth NC headphones sound like their 100$ wired counterpart.

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