What are good (great) earplugs?

The Water Cooler
1

Hi all,
I want to buy a new set of bluetooth earplugs and wonder which ones I should buy. What is important for me is:

  • pleasant fitting, i.o.w. no pain after a while
  • great sound quality, low to high notes
  • long battery life, 6 hours or more would be great.

Which ones do you use and do they match the 3 items I mention above?
Thanks.

2

I guess the options vary by region…

3

Thank you for your answer, but why do you think that? Nowadays you can buy everything everywhere because of something called, oh what was the name, oh yeah, the internet.
But I do live in The Netherlands, should that be important.

4

Well, true, but if you do that you’re sometimes relying on “grey market” imports, and your warranty will be dubious, so @linuxguy-cyber makes a good point.

I have a pair of low-end Samsungs which I wouldn’t recommend to you (sound quality isn’t that special) but which suit me great because of their long battery life. They’re not officially available where I live but I got a pair from eBay which someone presumably brought back from the UAE, where they are sold. Work great for me, but I’m not sure Samsung will help me if they fail!

5

Do you have a preferred “style” of fit?

e.g. I strongly prefer buds with those “wingtips” that press against the inside of your ears. Anything else is liable to fall out of my ears, but other people seem to be physiologically luckier and don’t need the wingtips :slightly_smiling_face:

6

Many big brand products have the same box and name, but the hardware inside differs.
For example a TPLink wifi adaptor in AU has totally different hardware in Asia.

Earbuds and electronic hardware is different between Poland and Germany and Uk.

Some brands, like Sennheiser may be the same - some not - totally random.

On that note, I love Sennheiser ‘normal’ headphones… Maybe their earbuds are okay?

Check some reviews :wink:

7

Hi, I now have 2 sets.
One has a soft tube around the loudspeaker exit, in fact I can chose one of three sizes for that, and they fit perfectly well. But the sound is not great, it’s not bad but it can be better. Battery life is around 6 hours and I like that.
The name is ENV-1666.

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The other one, although having better sound quality, doesn’t fit that well and has only 2-2,5 hours of battery life. Something my wife bought without me knowing about it.
The loudspeaker exit is hard plastic and that starts to hurt after a while

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These ones are Grundig 16657, BTS-026.

So, the way they fit and the battery life of the first ones and the sound quality of the second.

Thanks Math, I will certainly do that.

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8

I have these, the Jabra Elite 8 Actives and I’m mostly but not entirely satisfied with them.

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The good:

  • they’ve proven to be sweat-proof for around 2 years now, I use them probably twice a week while running
  • they have active noise cancelling which is really nice for the office, it even mostly drowned out construction happening across the street a few months back
  • sound quality is definitely fine

The ok:

  • they fit me reasonably well though I do find myself adjusting them from time to time when they feel loose
  • they’re comfortable “enough,” not that I would want to wear them for hours and hours

The annoying:

  • they sometimes won’t stay disconnected in the case, which is especially annoying if someone calls you and you can’t figure out that you’re connected to the buds. It also drains the battery, so you might wind up with one bud dead even after leaving it in the case for hours
  • getting fedora to pick them as the default microphone seems to be a lost cause, it never remembers this

And finally: make of this what you will but Jabra is no longer making earbuds at all, so these will be both the first and last of theirs that I get. I just checked and you can still get this model in a few places but that won’t last forever

1 Like