This is why AirPods are popular. While this drives audiophiles and geeks who obsess over performance of their technology (not knocking them, I’m one of them for many devices) up the wall, the reality is most people are not audiophiles and can barely tell the difference. What they want are reasonably comfortable headphones that just work, and Bluetooth is so famously bad at this that AirPods stand out.

> the reality is most people are not audiophiles and can barely tell the difference.

That hasn't been my experience at all. The differences, even to a lay person, or not subtle.

Now, I can believe that many don't care, I can't believe that they can't tell.

The work every time...and my hearing is shot so the last 5% worth of fidelity is lost on me.

And my wife experienced their noise cancelling once on a flight and bought a set the next day.

And we can share the audio between two airpod things when watching a movie, but not with non-Apple products.

I've gone through a few different high-end bluetooth buds from Jabra to Sony.

I keep coming back to my Airpods, something that was gifted to me a year ago, when the other ones break. Most recently, one of my Jabra Elite buds plays audio at 50% volume from one ear 50% of the time.

Not a fan of the tap interface nor the shape of the things nor the need to use a rubber condom (that doesn't fit in the case so I have to remove/add every time), but my Airpods are the ones that I can count on, so I have to give them that.

Just a note: I had faltering volume on my Jabra Elite earbuds and I found an unauthorized repair [0] that brought it back to life. It requires some delicate cleaning of build up in the vent hole.

[1] <https://crt.the-mori.com/2020-09-25-solve-jabra-elite-active...>

Thanks, I will try that. I wouldn't be surprised if my ear gunk liquefied into them and then crystallized deep inside the inner sanctums.

This. I am honestly bewildered when I see the tech press comparing true wireless earbuds to AirPods and not mentioning the enormous ergonomic differences.

Bluetooth experiences will be largely software-dependent. Comparing Airpods on a Macbook to a Windows laptop and some Sony earbuds? It's no contest, Airpods will win every time. If we're, say, testing the Airpods on Windows and the Sony buds on Linux (where they have LDAC support), the tables will be completely turned. All of these headphones are context-sensitive, and will behave differently on different hardware. You're not exactly writing a novel thesis here.

Airpods are still just Bluetooth with an extra chip for NFC pairing. All of the "magic" your Airpods provide are software-based, not part of the actual hardware you're buying. I think Tech Press is totally justified to ignore software that isn't part of the headphones itself.

> All of the "magic" your AirPods provide are software-based

This is actually not true. AirPods contain custom silicon from Apple for the controller that speaks bluetooth, whereas most true wireless headphones use a Qualcomm chip, and therefore suffer the exact same ergonomic issues almost regardless of price. The most obvious way this is shown is that you can be on a call with the right airpod in, then seamlessly add the left to the call and put the right back in the case all without dropping the call, developing sync issues, or making the switch obvious to the other party. It's especially useful if your airpods are low on power. Airpods also better than average (in my experience) at switching devices when clicking the connect button from a device they are not currently connected to. This is most obviously good with apple devices (where there is auto pairing based on apple id), but in my experience it works better than the average even on non-apple devices. I am comparing the experience to Sony WF-100XM3 as well as cheaper devices like soundcore liberty neo.

Of course you are correct that there are additional software derived things that make airpods nice on apple products. When they work well, they can be pretty great, but I still find those hit or miss. For me, the way the controller can switch easily between the right and left as well as easy pairing are what makes airpods great.

The only feature the wideband chip provides is the device switching and pairing, which is largely redundant with multipoint Bluetooth spec and NFC, respectively. I'll appreciate what Apple did ergonomically, but I found the "smartness" of Airpods to be less reliable than using my XM4s connected to both the devices I was using. I understand the layman's struggle here, but I honestly think most people's bad experiences with Bluetooth were in the < v3 era, where things like multipoint hadn't been introduced and reliability/pairing were... shaky.

Nowadays, I think any phone running Android 10+ or Linux device using Pipewire has the best wireless audio experience I can think of. You can have high-bitrate audio codecs with excellent latency and a connection that's as good as the antennae you have plugged in. AAC and the funnel of buying U1 chip devices doesn't really put up enough of a fight, especially for a company that's long prided itself on delivering quality audio experiences.

Isn't all that it just works software "driver quality"? If we were talking about a graphics card that couldn't detect monitor resolution and keep connected, we wouldn't give the card a pass just because it is a driver issue.

I mean, there are plenty of perfectly functional graphics cards that are given a pass because their drivers don't work with Wayland or refuse to implement resizable BAR. These are pretty solidly driver issues (ones that have persisted over decades, at that), and nobody really ever brings it up because it's not necessarily Nvidia's responsibility to address it.

The larger factor (in my eyes) is implementation. Bluetooth quality is all over the place: mobile Bluetooth stacks used to be abysmal until ~5 years ago, and desktop OSes still don't have it ironed out yet. It makes perfect sense that reviewers would focus on the hardware, as opposed to enumerating how each device works on each operating system, and so on.