I don't think AirPods are bad, but Apple's mindshare and consumers' lack of awareness towards other options certainly contributes a lot to their popularity.
A few years back when I was looking at it, compared to the Base AirPods (2 maybe?), the Huawei FreeBuds 4i had about twice the in ear battery life, ANC / transparency, perfectly okay sound quality and comparable / better splash resistance. And all that for like half the price or less. I don't know what the options look like today. Airpods do have the auto switching thingy, but most people only have iPhones here, so that shouldn't matter.
Yeah that are OK but really not worth the asking price. The reality is that it doesn't matter to most peoples who buy them.
I learned this when I was younger quite a while ago (about 20 years). I had the 1.5 gen iPod and a friend's big brother had the 2nd or 3rd gen and he complained that he had lost the earbuds. I told him that I could find him some pretty good earbuds for a decent price but then he asked me if they would have the same look. Of course I told him that they would look pretty different but it didn't matter because they would have better audio quality anyway. But he really didn't see it that way, he would rather pay the same amount of money and get the looks.
This day I learned how vain people can be (this guy is rather smart, nowadays he has a PhD...). I barely used the earbuds sold with the iPod ; I thought they were included just to have something usable but not to expensive and it wasn't in Apple's core competence to provide something better.
In the end it seems that most people would chose the worse experience just to signal they have an expensive product and I believe this is what happens with the AirPods as well.
I had some, used them for a year, found they had many annoyances and too short battery life after just one year of middling use. I bought a replacement for half price that are better in most ways and sold the airpods to a friend for 30 bucks.
He knew all the criticism I had for them as well as the short battery life ; I even told him that for 20 bucks more he would find something that could be more satisfying. He didn't care and as soon as he had them he started wearing them in public everywhere even though he had never been using earbuds previously.
The funny thing is that considering how cheap you can buy them second hand and how everybody and their mothers has them it cannot be seriously taken as a sign of wealth nor appartenance to a special community in the know.
Comments
I don't think AirPods are bad, but Apple's mindshare and consumers' lack of awareness towards other options certainly contributes a lot to their popularity.
A few years back when I was looking at it, compared to the Base AirPods (2 maybe?), the Huawei FreeBuds 4i had about twice the in ear battery life, ANC / transparency, perfectly okay sound quality and comparable / better splash resistance. And all that for like half the price or less. I don't know what the options look like today. Airpods do have the auto switching thingy, but most people only have iPhones here, so that shouldn't matter.
Yeah that are OK but really not worth the asking price. The reality is that it doesn't matter to most peoples who buy them. I learned this when I was younger quite a while ago (about 20 years). I had the 1.5 gen iPod and a friend's big brother had the 2nd or 3rd gen and he complained that he had lost the earbuds. I told him that I could find him some pretty good earbuds for a decent price but then he asked me if they would have the same look. Of course I told him that they would look pretty different but it didn't matter because they would have better audio quality anyway. But he really didn't see it that way, he would rather pay the same amount of money and get the looks. This day I learned how vain people can be (this guy is rather smart, nowadays he has a PhD...). I barely used the earbuds sold with the iPod ; I thought they were included just to have something usable but not to expensive and it wasn't in Apple's core competence to provide something better.
In the end it seems that most people would chose the worse experience just to signal they have an expensive product and I believe this is what happens with the AirPods as well.
I had some, used them for a year, found they had many annoyances and too short battery life after just one year of middling use. I bought a replacement for half price that are better in most ways and sold the airpods to a friend for 30 bucks. He knew all the criticism I had for them as well as the short battery life ; I even told him that for 20 bucks more he would find something that could be more satisfying. He didn't care and as soon as he had them he started wearing them in public everywhere even though he had never been using earbuds previously.
The funny thing is that considering how cheap you can buy them second hand and how everybody and their mothers has them it cannot be seriously taken as a sign of wealth nor appartenance to a special community in the know.
It really all boils down to vain irrationality...