Comment by exitb
8 hours ago
I’ve used many pairs of wired headphones over the years, cheap and expensive, and never had ones with a cable that didn’t eventually fail, unless they mostly stay plugged into a single device.
The article prominently highlights mobile usage, in which case wireless headphones easily win on longevity.
I think it’s maybe close to a wash between non-replaceable batteries in wireless headphones dying and cords failing, in my experience at least. The ideal case IMO is over-ear headphones that have a replaceable cord—I have some 14 year old Bose QCs and some newer Beyerdynamics, both of which I’ve replaced the cord on.
Have batteries actually ever FAILED in wireless headphones? Sure, they degrade and charge becomes lower, but I've never had them outright fail. A headphone that lasts my 2-3 hours of commute/daily use is completely useable, even if it's original charge lasted 5 hours.
Cables do fail though, completely. They become unusable.
In my entire life time of using headphones/earbuds since school with the PSP, ALL wired options have failed after 1-2 years for purely mechanical cable reasons. Not a single wireless failed for electronic reasons. The did fail for me dropping them and stepping on them reasons, though.
My sennheiser earbuds are now down to 15 minutes of battery life. Less if it's a cold day. Sure, they're not completely dead yet, but they're effectively useless. And it's not like I can easily replace the batteries. Most wired earbuds or headphones at a similar price point have replaceable cables.
My daughter had to replace the LiPo battery in her headphones twice after they would not charge at all.
I bought a pair of Philips headphones with a replaceable cord. Instead the jack became loose.
I’ve been using Bluetooth wireless headphones exclusively when I’m portable since 2006 (Sony Ericsson HBH-DS970 represent), with only wired use at a desk and I’ve never looked back.
All my corded headphones lasted at most 2 years of mobile use. My QC35s are still going strong. Wired sucks for mobile use. And if the cord doesn’t go, the 3.5mm socket does. I replaced multiple sockets on my iPod and iPhone 3g. That replacement process sucks.
What are you doing that destroys cables and jacks like that? I use wired earbuds while riding my bike and I've never broken a jack, and the one time I broke the cable was because I made a mistake and dropped them while riding, which got them tangled up in the spokes.
The difference is I can easily fix a broken cable.
Of course you can get the Fairbuds which have replaceable batteries.
Hopefully more Bluetooth headphone companies follow suit. Maybe we can even get a standardized battery.
I've used tons of wired as well. Maybe have bad one pair fail at the wire? I'm super active with them too. Snowboarding with them and my Sony g shock in 1998. Lots of cycling and running usage. You've had every single pair of wired headphones fail for you? Every single pair?
> my Sony g shock
What is a "Sony g shock" if you don't mind? I know Casio's G-Shock and Sony's Sports series... did you mix them by chance as I suppose or is there a Sony range I'm not aware of?
Haha whoops, I totally conflated the two! The Sony Atrac3Plus had a feature called "G Protection". It was the only "anti skip" cd player that I tried that actually worked really well back then.
I also exaggerated the year a bit. After looking it up, I think this cd player came out in 2004!
Most high end headphones have a replaceable cable. What have you tried on the expensive end of the spectrum?
Not even high-end nowadays, you really have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for something with a nonreplaceable cable. Even for iems.
Same here. Wired headphones never lasted anywhere near as long for me as wireless ones. Any with inline controls were especially prone to failure.
It depends on how you treat them. Some people burn through them like nothing. I have some 20 year old earpods still.
or in my experience active use can damage the headphone jack, which is much, much worse
Cord failure is definitely a problem, but if you’re moderately capable with a soldering iron, it’s easy to repair the cord if the failure is away from the headphone side. It’s even fairly easy to replace an 8mm or 0.25” jack.
Your soldering skill (and sense of adventure) would have to be far better than mine to even consider doing that for wireless earbuds.
The few times I've tried to solder headphone wire I've been defeated because the wire isn't wire, it's some kind of copper and synthetic fiber weave, that the solder just won't adhere to.
It's an unbelievably thin stranded wire, but the wires are coated so they can be in contact with each other without shorting. It's all twisted around a thin thread of cotton or nylon to add strength, then then encased in it's sheath.
The trick is to gently scrape the stranded wire with a blade for the solder to stick and to make a good connection.
I've repaired a few headphone wires; theyre usually thin copper wires covered with enamel insulation. Burn off the insulation with a blob of solder, or sand it off, and the solder will stick.
You’re right, the kind of cable often used is not easy to solder. This makes it hard to solder a broken cable together again, or to replace a broken / bent plug. So best replace the entire cable and its plug — it’s still an inexpensive part.
You’ll need to solder it to the contacts inside the can, but that’s quite straightforward.
In case the internal cable that goes from one can to the other breaks, you can replace it with any bit of audio cable so you can use one that’s easy to solder.
Absolutely, As I said, it comes down to personal usage, needs, preferences. I personally never lost a cable (I did need to replace the earpads, but that happened on both Bluetooth and wired:). I do tend to use connected wireless earbuds when I go jogging etc.
I’ve repaired many pairs of wired headphones over the years, as electronic repairs go they’re very simple. The same can’t be said for the wireless ones.
Plus, the more high end ones come with repleceable cables.
For me it was worse, the headphone port on my phones always eventually failed. Maybe these rich people replace phones too quickly to experience that.
I use wired at home, where I'm not cycling the connection very much.
One of the key features (for me) of my Sennheiser HD 600 was the replaceable cables. Plugs at both ends of the cable.
I LOVED my Grado headphones but destroyed three pairs of them and was soldering my own ends on the cables over and over.
I have not had an issue with any wires wearing out anywhere since my walkman headphones in the 90s.
There are lots of wired headphones out there with replaceable cables
Honestly though you can get the best of both worlds.
I impulse bought some over-the-ear headphones at the airport when I realized I had forgotten mine that do bluetooth, but can also use an audio cable when the battery dies.
When using wired the audio quality is much better.
Let’s critically think about this for just a second. Your concern doesn’t appear to be with the audio, isn’t it with the connector? That’s a whole different argument than what we’re talking about
Isn’t it the wire that failed, not the audio part of it? So why not do what I did? You put some JB weld across that bend in the wire, which is cheap and could probably be engineered to last a lot longer… now I have headphones that last a really long time. You could also get a better connector and simply put that on there, right?