I have a couple pairs of other "quite cheap" BT earbuds from Amazon and they're all quite good ergonomically. They paired easily, stay paired, charge automatically, etc.

I don't use them as a microphone very often (as I have an arm-mounted Blue Yeti), but when I've had to use them, they also worked without me getting complaints from the other side.

Maybe Airpods are wildly better somehow, but I can't see how much better they could be versus the totally acceptable experience I've had with the cheap ones.