Advocate of the devil, but I've never replaced my earbuds / headphones because of the battery life. Usually one of them gets lost, or actually crushed and breaks.
I've had 2 sets of AirPods die because of the batteries aging and losing their ability to hold a charge. Though to be fair, their microphones failed much earlier then their batteries, and noise cancelling gets some really annoying failure modes when the microphone has issues. I should have replaced them sooner. I also should find a brand that doesn't have consistent manufacturing quality issues...
microphones have failed for me in the past as well, though to be fair, apple gave me a free repair for one issue on their end.
I have not yet had this issue because the ANC has improved enough with each generation that I wanted to move up before the batteries became unusable in my old pair. But I could see this changing in the future, as ANC levels out. Also, it's easier to avoid losing AirPods these days thanks to Find My, which can also now find in-case AirPods.