Love letter to wired headphones

For the past month, while renovating my office space, I was reduced to a lot of café bar work. And for me, this meant meetings and music with my AirPods Pro 2.

The problem

AirPods, and especially the new ones, have an amazing noise-canceling feature, and the ability to remove an earphone to stop music/video is incredible. Especially when random people start talking to you while you're working.

But the same feature that's amazing is also terrible. The issue that occurs on a video call is that as soon as I mute myself and take out an earpiece to hear what the person in front of me is talking about, my Mac sees this as "Oh! Input and output device changed," and now all of a sudden, everyone is listening to my meeting. Ugh.

And then there are the batteries. If you've ever worked mobile, you know that charging is always an issue. If you find an outlet, you'll use it for your computer and not for the headphones. So of course, they are always empty and not connecting.

Wired headphones

Apple sells wired EarPods with a 3.5mm headphone jack for 19€ in Europe. And they are amazing. They work 100% of the time, and the microphone is better. The audio quality is OK for what they are.

The only addition that I sort of don't really like is the adapter you need to get to make them lightning-compatible. But I have a feeling this will be fixed with the introduction of the Type-C port on iPhones.

I now always have them in my backpack. I pull them out, plug them in, and that's it. If I take them out, the meeting does not get broadcasted to the whole café anymore.

Office use

In the office, I will still continue using my AirPods Max because they are great for focusing and they have decent sound quality. Battery life is much better since they are bigger, and charging them while using them is an option that I use all the time.

But outside? Running? Talking on the phone? Or taking meetings in a café bar or a local park? The wired headphones win.