I had a brief conversation with the chat. It offered some options, and I refined my requirements in response. Specifically, after checking what it recommended initially, I told the chat I want wires, I don’t need any noise cancellation, and I absolutely don’t want integration with any cloud services.

I ended up buying Sennheiser IE 40 PRO. Already received and tested. Not sure whether it’s actually the best one, but IMO pretty good model.

It's back to good old word of mouth for me.

headphones 2023 OR 2024 review "sound" "noise" "wired" OR "wireless" "battery" -amazon -affiliate -commissions

Aaaand the top result is a page clearly written by GPT. So no, I can't suggest any good alternative. It's all trash.

In other words I've reverted to a source I trust. Google's little more than a better DNS here. Swapping out the year, that search term's done me proud for 9 years and 4 pairs of headphones.

However, the Reddit search is atrocious, so you'll either have to try your luck googling, or spend some time in the subreddit.

Goes for search results, AI, product recommendations, etc.

It's a bit of work to weed out real testimonies but if you can collect a bunch of reviews and use your own judgement as a final filter. I think that's better than just clicking any of the "Top 10 <product>" sites that google shows on the first page.

You just have to review enough threads on the subject to build up a picture and refine your search.

I did just this for noise cancelling headphones before Christmas and reddit was invaluable.

So for headphones it might be something like crinacle.com (via Youtube) and rtings.com (which google will present when searching for headphone review sites), reviewers that provide a proper mix of subjective discussions and objective measurements. Though rtings is monetized.