I don't miss headphone jacks AT ALL.
I mean, I thought I would. I really did. I was VERY salty about their loss. But then I tried the OG Airpods, and then the Pros with ANC, and they were honestly better than any "casual" buds I'd used before that depended on wires.
Still, I harrumphed, wireless can't possibly compete with Real Proper Headphones, or so I thought.
Then I tried the AirPods Max a friend had. I was honestly stunned. I bought a pair, and then compared them directly to a similarly priced set of Sennheisers that I have that require a headphone amp to really shine.
The fancy wired rig probably does sound a LITTLE bit better than the Maxes do, but the logistical cost of the cabling is such that I call it a win for wireless, absolutely. In fact, we recently moved house, and as part of the pre-move purge I gave away the Sennheisers and the little amp. I just wasn't using them.
There's definitely contexts where a wire probably still makes sense. I'm given to believe that latency can be a problem for musical recording, for example, and so those folks still use wired phones. But for me? Yeah, it's wireless all the way now.
(When I say the move is recent, I mean REALLY recent -- like, we're still working around boxes. It sure would be nice to figure out which of the remaining boxes has those Airpods in it.)
> I don't miss headphone jacks AT ALL ... But then I tried the OG Airpods, and then the Pros with ANC ... Then I tried the AirPods Max ... I bought a pair
Now, what you miss is around $1000, for hardware that will likely fail faster than any wired alternative.
That's the part that pissed off so many people. Apple obsoleted good quality headphones to sell their high margin products. Airpods are decent, but it is a cash grab.
My phone (Galaxy XCover 7) has a headphone jack by the way, and I use it. Not very often, but I sometimes plug my gaming headset to it, or sometimes an AUX jack. And by the way, it also has a removable battery and it is IP68, for those who think that it makes waterproofing impossible.
Aux to USB c converters are cheap and work well btw. I just leave mine permanently attached to my headphones. Not that big of a deal.
My Airpods Maxes are 4 years old and i use them for 8-10 hours a day twice a week.
No issue with battery so far.
Pretty good going, in my experience.
But the killer is the ANC. Bollocks to public transport without it.
I bought Maxes very early, and they've held up MARVELOUSLY well even with some heavy travel periods. Apple kit tends to be quite durable, so I'm not upset about the investment at all.
Same story here. I was very much in the "take my headphone jack over my dead body" camp. But then I got used to wireless earbuds/air pods and now I never ever want to go back to cabled earphones, ever. Just the thought of the cable getting snagged on something and pulling out one or both earphones makes me rage.