151–160 of 239 posts
I stopped reading at “Vegan Leather”. Can we call it what it is? Plastic.
Looking at phone reviews, how reviewers insist on metal/glass material as having a "premium feel", and plastic parts getting described at best as "plastic but not cheap", I'd understand wanting to change the terminology.
The stone shouldn't be thrown at the maker on this one.
I like the little wired earbuds from Walmart that cost $5-10. If they wear out then you just replace them. The part that usually breaks for me on headphones is the connection from the cable to the actual speakers. So testing the wires one way or another fixes it temporarily which leads me to always contemplate trying to repair them but I don't know exactly where the connection problem is.
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Not everyone wants to go jogging or working out with wired headphones. They always rub on your skin or on your clothes (especially in winter with may thick layers) with the rubbing sound transferring in your ears as you move around, or worse, snag on something and keep tugging down on my head giving me a bad neck posture (when the cable is routed under my shirt/jaket). The freedom of TWS earbuds can spoil you for lif…
I'm not sure TWS buds with the shape of an AirTag would work, but I do think they could make them with something like an easily removable cap on the stem that holds the cell in place.
You missed the point. The target wasn't to shape the earbuds like the AirTags but to allow the user to unscrew the lithium cell like it's possible on the AirTags.
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The AV niche is deep and has plenty of its own communities. HN has a technical audience spanning many niches, yet not all of us are familiar or interested in the finer points of AV hardware.
Yet expecting the HN audience to be curious and to criticize a review for laking scientific precision when it was posted here is very much in line. We should strive to be more curious and to demand more science.
Maybe your objection isn't with such a review appearing in the Guardian but rather with it appearing on HackerNews. That's fair, however, to me, what is interesting about this post is that the Guardian (again, a widely-read, general interest newspaper) is reviewing the Fairbuds (a new product pushed by a fairly niche company focused on repairability and sustainability). And the review is largely positive. That is, the post is interesting as a reflection of social acceptance of this product and not as an exploration of the science behind the product.
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Fairphones would have been too confusing :p
Faircans, perhaps. I also expected them to be in-ear when I clicked.
I stopped reading at “Vegan Leather”. Can we call it what it is? Plastic.
Because that's not what people care about in this context. People are looking at this picture and they see something that looks like leather. You say "Vegan Leather" and the message they get is "No animals were killed for this product." "I want the look and feel of leather, but not the specific ethical concerns."
Then this isn't leather. Let's just call things by their names.
The "sustainable" and "environment friendly" choice for headphones are wired headphones that are built like a brick. A good pair will last basically forever. Of course that isn't the market these headphones are in, but that's also the problem. New bluetooth standard? New advances in noise-cancellation? You won't get them. Even if these headphones are great (which I doubt) they're still destined for the garbage heap.…
Planned obsolescence can be a good thing. Cans from the fifties and sixties still work. Nobody wants to use them; they are heavy, uncomfortable, have poor performance, need an amp to drive, and use huge old school connectors. They are from a time when music was enjoyed seated in one place. Products that fail prematurely or wear out while the owner still wants them are poorly designed. The pinnacle of design is a prod…
No frequency response testing? Mic response testing? Head pressure measurement? Kinda hard to take this seriously as a review when they don't even show anything about performance of the product.
I have an 9 year old pair of Bose QC35s and my primary interest is if the noise cancelling dulls the noise on a plane; the exact amount is frankly unimportant. I also care to see if I can replace external parts if they get damaged (flipped my bicycle when a homeless person stepped in front of me; this did a number on my QC35s that I had in my bag. Thankfully all the damage was surface-level and I'm not vain.).
I'll only buy fixable electronics going forward.
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Planned obsolescence can be a good thing. Cans from the fifties and sixties still work. Nobody wants to use them; they are heavy, uncomfortable, have poor performance, need an amp to drive, and use huge old school connectors. They are from a time when music was enjoyed seated in one place. Products that fail prematurely or wear out while the owner still wants them are poorly designed. The pinnacle of design is a prod…
By "huge old school connectors" I assume you mean the 1/4 inch TRS connector? Which is still totally normal on non-cheap headphones?
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By "huge old school connectors" I assume you mean the 1/4 inch TRS connector? Which is still totally normal on non-cheap headphones?
More like 5 pin DIN connectors (MIDI) but different. If you take a lot at old electronics you will see things for the first time.