> I'm not sure what ANC is or why it's worth hundreds of dollar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_noise_control

> I don't know what the h1 chip has to do with the fast switching—surely this is a bluetooth protocol detail, yea?

A detail apparently no-one else bothers to deal with. The amount of hardware out there that does bluetooth the worst way possible is horrendous, and I will gladly pay extra to not have those in my life.

It seems the $30 headphones by the brand I use (soundcore) do offer noise canceling in the years since I last looked. Is it as good? Probably not. But I'm not going to spend $200 for slightly better earbuds.

Bad noise canceling is worthless. Good noise canciling is like magic. The airpods offer pretty good noise canceling.

I can pair my AirPods Pro (or my $60 Beats Flex) to one device on my Apple account and they automatically are paired and switch between all of my devices - my phone, my iPad, my watch, my Mac and my AppleTV.

Why can't I do this with other bluetooth devices? It's a load of crap that they won't allow other brands to tap into this for fair competition. I refuse to give them money for software that should be free.

But, a sucker is born every minute, and it seems most of them find their way into control of our anti trust laws.

Because it requires firmware on the device that is on top of the BT spec. The better question is why can’t Google create an ecosystem for Android that is just as seamless?

What exactly should be “free”? The hardware? It is very much worth the extra $40 for the Beat Flex to have seamless integration between all five of my devices. Let alone the much better ANC of the AirPods Pro (or the AirPods with ANC).

The ones you have are bulkier on top of that, the AirPods Pro have heart rate monitoring when I exercise.

It shouldn't matter what brand you buy. Bluetooth should be a dumb pipe or it's worse than worthless, it's a shackle. A wire was better in almost every way.

Tell that to the Bluetooth committee. Even for regular headphones, the quality of BT chips vary as far as the speed to connect and reliability and whether they can pair with multiple devices and how many.