> no headphone jack
> no headphone jack
Agreed, losing the headphone jack on something the size of a phone was already questionable space saving for a bigger battery. But on something the size of a laptop, it is a joke. I'm sure it has more to do with saving $1 per laptop than any user benefit.
More likely just ecosystem consistency.
Selling wired headphones to wireless-iPhone users for wired-MacBooks could (arguably, maybe) create Apple sponsored interoperability dissonance.
MacBook charging mats and wireless Thunderbolt coming in early 2018... /h
I want to say I’ve broken every headphone jack I ever had. Yanking on them, debris getting in the switch, debris triggering the optical if it had one. 3.5 was never a great design. Too many physical ways for it to break, from static from a loose connection, debris stuck inside like pebbles getting jammed, debris stuck under the switch preventing recognition. False positive or accidental triggers that take a while to track down why the speakers are muted.
Of all the parts on electronics I have owned i would put headphone jack just behind power supply for least reliable and that it was set to override digital settings when something was connected felt like a loss of control.
I am very forgetful, wireless has been a godsend by comparison and I don’t get hurt with cable snags. I’d pay extra to remove it before shipping if it were an option.
I have aeen usb-c bent but I have never seen 3.5 break in decades of use. Walkmans then discmans falling. Shooting back out of my chair and snagging it such that the whole tower spins unplugging ps/2 mouse. But the headphones are fine. What do you do to those poor things? The only time I have seen one fail it was on a custom pcb and the solder joint broke. A couple minutes with an iron and it was back.
Some terrible jacks are held on by the contacts.
And every set of headphones I’ve ever had either has an incredibly thick cable or the cable has failed due to repeated wear.
I bought a pair of AirPods and have never looked back. If you have a pair of wired studio headphones, there are a million USB-C adapters you can buy to have this functionality. Or migrate eventually to a set of USB-C native headphones. This is such a non-issue.
> I want to say I’ve broken every headphone jack I ever had
> i would put headphone jack just behind power supply for least reliable
I've never broken a headphone jack, or known many people who have, honestly. Your experience sounds pretty unique.
I suspect way more people have had issues with Bluetooth connectivity, though thankfully, that's improved over time.
How many times has a next-door neighbor accidentally plugged their headphones into your system? How many times did you try to plug your headphones into your wife’s jack? How many times did the cord fall out because you or your neighbor microwaved popcorn? Is it physically impossible to send an authentic stereo signal into your two earpieces? Every time you open your drawer, do you sift through 2 dozen earphones, speakers, phones and blood pressure cuffs that don’t belong to you? Is the NSA/CIA/FBI/ICE/USDA listening to your Spotify from the Starbucks parking lot? Everywhere you walk/drive/travel, are your earphones shouting, “Beats! Beats by Dr Dre! We are Beats! By Dr Dre!” five times per second?
For a school laptop it’s a unfortunate omission IMHO.
Cheap wired headphones are the default choice in the classroom, in my experience.
Bluetooth headphones that need charging aren’t really what you want.
It’s easy enough to get cheap USB headphone adapter, but still, I t would nice if it was built in.
Apple knows what they are doing sometimes it seems! :-)
3.5mm TRS jacks might cost 10 cents to include and then hundreds of dollars to service when they break. The issue is not the BOM cost.
> then hundreds of dollars to service when they break
Can you explain what do you mean by that? It is quite rare to see broken trrs jack on a laptop, at least I have never experienced one, nor on walkman or anything getting heavy plug/unplug use.
I thought it is an issue in reducing the cost to manufacture the case or something.
The jack actually broke on my old xps. Changing it with an aliexpress replacement took about 15 minutes and something like 3€
So yeah, they break, but they are (or used to be?) quite cheap to fix (and this was one of the super thin 13" xps)
> So yeah, they break, but they are (or used to be?) quite cheap to fix (and this was one of the super thin 13" xps)
I had a slim XPS13 and IIRC the headphone jack was on it's own little board. That makes it quick/easy/cheap to repair if you know what you're doing / have the service manual / are comfortable taking it apart.
Not all things are designed that way; sometimes the jack is right on the main board and most people that buy dell laptops are not going to DIY through ali express; they're going to use up phone support time, require a shipping label, technician time ... etc.
All physical receptacles break and increase failures by measurable amounts at mass-production scale.
You take care of your hardware, even during "heavy use," many people absolutely do not - and are downright abusive.
Many of these parts exhibit partial or intermittent failure modes where it's more expensive and difficult to determine warranty eligibility than to just fix the problem. Peanut butter in the jack, loose solder joints, whatever.
I’ve never had one break due to heavy use, but broke one on my work desktop due to forgetting I was wearing headphones and yanking on it when I got up.
Does anyone even do repairs anymore? Swap a motherboard and that's it.
So... swapping $100 component for a $0.3 break?
Doesn't this make including the jack even less justifiable?
Or don't swap it and live without the jack. But I have never seen a broken 3.5mm port but I've seen many, many broken or flaky USB-C ports.
Motherboard companies do hot air work, absolutely.
We've got laptops with modular USB-C ports that solve this effectively perfectly. An audio one would be even simpler. The only reason you don't see it everywhere is because they're being outrageously hostile to repairs, and choosing to charge you hundreds of dollars for repairs on a part that they know is easily broken.
Why is anything modular a good solution over a USB-C DAC-containing dongle cable?
Modular ports are a physical disconnect between "thing that routinely experiences stresses and has a relatively short expected lifespan under heavy use" and "extremely expensive and long-lived motherboard", usually a separate circuit board connected by a ribbon cable. They serve a completely different purpose from a dongle that converts a common port to a less common one.
Framework laptops have another decent strategy, where you've got on-motherboard ports that have relatively few usage cycles, and are protected from most forces because the easily-replaceable custom-dongle-squares are held in place quite securely. They take the damage, protecting the motherboard. And as long as the motherboard ports are still good, you can even forego the modular thing and just plug in directly if needed.
That’s the cost of doing it too cheaply: I’ve never had an Apple device fail but multiple cheap PCs were obviously designed by some MBA who overrode the mechanical engineers to save $0.10.
Since when is damage covered by warranty?
When you are unable to prove the issue wasn't a workmanship defect, also companies often eat these costs out of goodwill.
Furthermore, the warranty determination isn't free, either: in addition to the repair itself, some (likely multiple) employee's time was spent determining whether or not an issue existed at all, whether or not the issue was covered, whether it could be fixed, and facilitating the whole transaction.
Repairs also don't result in 100% yield. Depending on your company policy you might be eating the whole unit because of a mishap or just plain stubborn components/physical realities.
Repair fees don't cover all of the organizational moving parts required to actually carry out repairs.
no jack doesn't mean wireless only. Not having TRRS 3.5mm is a bit annoying but there are lots of usb-a or usb-c headset that have an embedded DAC + you can always use the DAC/USB soundcard of your choice. Also many laptops only had TRS which really killed the appeal of having analog wired equipment if you were forced to use the embedded laptop microphone.
With only two USB-C ports that means you get just headphones and power if you're not using a hub or USB dock.
I have to say, I prefer dongles lately. There are many inexpensive hifi dongles that sound great with in-ears. They’re also USB class-compliant audio devices and work everywhere. Obviously a preference, but as other commenters have mentioned, 3.5 jacks do break, and I’ve personally broken plenty.
I like a good old headphone jack, but then the USB DACs these days are also super small and portable that I just keep connected to my wired sets. I have couple nice IEMs, and because my phone doesn't have jack, I've to carry around USB DAC anyway.
My (Razer Blackshark) gaming headset does that - the actual headset has a 3.5mm jack on it but the "guts" is a USB DAC with some THX stuff supposedly built in (questionable utility but most of the games I play don't support it anyway) - I figure they reuse the same headset components down the market and just don't ship the DAC, it works flawlessly under Windows/Linux so no real issues with it and I can use it with any other set of wired headphones (of similar impedance) which is nice since headsets wear out eventually but the DAC is solid state so should last much longer.
The dolby/thx stuff for headphone s is done at the software level. It's just preset filters provided by synapse. There is no hardware dolby unless you get into the PCI audio card stuff, or audiophile dedicated sound board setups. Different USB DAC might impact noise levels. If you don't have noticeable audio artifacts then there's not really any reason to use another one.
Doesn't it use the CPU more because of the inefficiency of USB?
Theoretically maybe (assuming it's not doing hardware offloading but I don't think that is all that common) but feeding a DAC with audio over USB isn't even a rounding error on one core and I have 16 of them (16C/32T) - iirc the actual DAC just takes PCM over USB 2.0 (Linux did tell me when I was curious), that's nothing to a modern desktop computer never mind a powerful gaming/development one.
Nothing for the desktop in the last couple of decades is going to struggle with that.
I mainly use Apple one on MacBook, and haven't noticed any CPU or issues with that. I've another one which has more power, can't say I use it that much so no idea about CPU, but I think because of higher power draw may affect battery slightly (prob bigger issue on phones).
>> what does this cost for dell to include?
1) a few cents of components
2) the opportunity cost of selling you a high margin dongle
3) minus the risk of a lost sale if you buy a competitor
There are USB headsets, that usually provides a few extra handy features, like volume/mute and call answer/hangup buttons.
Does it have to be wired via headphones jack?
It does if it’s a pair of big studio monitors like what I wear for calls.
These would have a 3.5 port themselves, ready for a usb-c-3.5 cable of questionable DAC quality.
Surely a usb c headset would work
When the laptop is literally the thickness of a headphone jack? Because a USB-C port is less than 2mm, but a 3.5mm headphone jack port is more like 6mm. That becomes a problem when the actual shell it need to go in is 7.5mm.
Did it need to be that thin? Heck no. But it is, and yeah there is absolutely no room for one because of that decision.
repair costs, more substantial than bom.
> I insist on a wired headset
usb audio generally works great, and because it's powered, you often get better audio quality (with microphone arrays for anc)
and even neat features like system volume integration with buttons and ANC
i have a yealink uh48 but you can get almost-as-good functionality for a lot less (or pay more for even better!)
I think they probably just aren't used much any more. Plus if you really need one you can get a tiny dongle for virtually no money that will probably better sound quality anyway.
Many headphones can do audio over usb-c if you want a wired connection. If you want to use a fully analog set of cans, you can also just get a usb-c to 3.5mm adapter for a few bucks.
No need for wireless and battery, just not the plug you were expecting.
If it’s anything like the lightning to 3.5mm adapters I’ll be buying one of those once a month for the rest of my life.