I agree we should still have the option of either more easily but I’d still be picking the wireless ones to be honest.
We will never see eye to eye
Meanwhile in the 10 or so years before that I lost multiple pairs of wired headphones to flaky connections - the most common failure method being “have to wiggle it around to get sound through both ears and they intermittently fail if you move too much”
I kept a Pixel and an iPad Pro around for too long and their batteries ballooned. I wonder if that'll happen with the Galaxy Buds.
Maybe it is time to replace them.
Furthermore, battery anxiety. Wired Shure vs. wireless buds is a bit like a regular watch vs. Apple Watch—one is always there, whereas the other if you forget to charge it in 1–2 days is a brick on your wrist—except in case of the watch it is legitimately much, much more functional, whereas between wired IEMs and AirPods they do almost exactly the same thing.
What is this refering to? Why shouldn't I use wireless buds in bed?
That's... weird. What are you doing to them? I've had my Shure wired IEMs for 8 years now and they're still fine.
Meanwhile I have a set of 2-year-old Sony wireless earbuds where the battery lasts about 20 minutes. Useless.
The way the cable molds and wraps around your ears means they don’t get out easily if you accidentally pull it. The cable itself (the weakest link in any wired headphones) is replaceable, no special tools needed, with third-party options available.
One cable I used to have, and I think some units come with it by default as an option now, has a Bluetooth receiver-transmitter rather than the 3.5 jack. This avoids the need to draw the cable directly to your device and the risk of accidentally pulling on it. Resting the receiver on your clothing rather than skin of the back of your neck directly would drastically reduce the impact from any potential explosion, I imagine. Since the Bluetooth-enabled cable connects both in-ears, they never get lost like a pod would. Naturally, this version of the cable also has a mic (arguably better positioned relative to your mouth than one in a tiny bud, in terms of outgoing audio quality).
If you like noise isolation, their black EABKF sleeve passively isolate measurably (and in my personal experience) on par with active isolation from top-of-the-line Bluetooth buds and cans (you should make sure you clean and swap the sleeves regularly to avoid ear infection, but in-ear buds like AirPods Pro generally require the same).
(Connoisseurs will note that the thing to watch out for in case of cheaper IEMs is cable rattle. Rattle is a deal-breaker for me as I wear them outside. Shures don’t suffer from it, though it would be unfair to omit that compared to buds with active noise isolation there is indeed a floor of consistent background hum in the lows if you are moving around actively.)
Finally, they are capable of much higher quality audio (obviously) and cost less than $100. (If you pay the equivalent of AirPods Pro, you can get a version with two drivers in each, promising in theory even better sound, and a chunk of leftover change.)
I use the AirPods pretty much every day as my main device. The sound quality is poorer, but not enough to make a meaningful difference when I’m listening to music that was mixed for consumers, or podcasts recorded in a closet somewhere - which let’s face it, we mostly are.
Their saving grace is that ANC means they don’t irritate my ears after prolonged wearing as much as Shure’s sleeves do (passive isolation requires a stricter fit).