For me the answer is quite clear: they simply work. Apple like. Did I test all the others you mentioned? No. Probably because I used to have several Bluetooth headset. They hardly ever worked. For me, I had to have high trust in the HW company to ever test a Bluetooth headset again.

FWIW, I've tried to set up one pair of Airpods, and they were broken right out of the box. Wouldn't pair with anything.

So that's a 1 in 1 failure rate ;)

Did you realize you had to press the circular button on the back of the charging case. It's hard to see and they won't pair with anything unless you do.

Complete opposite experience for me, it almost felt like they paired too easily.

Switching devices is the only situation that I find annoying since I need to open up the bluetooth menu and tell it to connect.

"Anything" being? Some Android phone / Windows PC, or within the Apple ecosystem?

Microphone quality on most of the other offerings is atrocious.

That said I wish these things didn't have a microphone. People tend to shout into them.

The microphone in Airpods is pretty bad too. One of my colleagues uses them paired to his Mac (maybe that's the issue?) and it sounds like the built in microphone on cheap laptops.

>The microphone in Airpods is pretty bad too

Haven't been my experience. They sound excellent for voice stuff (paired to the Mac/iPhone)

Maybe the output of Slack / Hangouts is set to the internal microphone? Happens to me all the time.

the internal mic on a macbook is pretty good