Corded headphones are making an unexpected return

And if I triple-check the mute setting to be sure I'm muted, I can even make it to the bathroom (or to the kitchen for a glass of tea) during a long zoom meeting without losing the call.

They are flat out amazing! Beware of knockoffs, rejects and counterfeits however. I blew about $50, until I found a seller with the real deal, new old stock.

5 pair cost me about $25 each all in, including tossing the garbage ones. These things were $100 originally. I scored and am super happy about it.

I have tried a few bluetooth sets. Some are pretty good. If I had to, I could use them, but would be missing my wired ones constantly.

The issues for me and wireless ones are:

-Losing one.

-Then losing the same one again! That would anger me considerably. A family member did it. I fear doing it myself.

-Mic quality might be good, but I have tested the audio others get, and it is kind of lousy, like 5Khz or maybe 8Khz. AM quality. This is all software related, so air understand.

Sometimes it is better. Depends on... and frankly I did not bother past that because my wired ones are always awesome, and remain that way even when in a car window down. Others can hardly tell.

I get compliments on my call audio quality all the time on the wired pair, and they work great on my laptop and phone. Ok, moving on...

-Another charge to manage. Some people have a phone, watch, laptop and or tablet, earbuds... I got fat batteries for my phone and laptop. Can sometimes go a couple days. Can always go a whole, long day on the go. I hate charging management.

-Audio quality incoming to my ears ranges from good to crap. Nothing has been exemplary like the Samsung earbuds are. Seriously, they are great. They are better than my ears. Perfect.

-Pairing. Mostly works. May require voodoo when it does not work. To be fair, most worked great on my Samsung Note phone. I expected worse. Win 10 laptop seems a bit worse.

Audio just is not great. Hard shell design on many models do not acoustically couple to my ears well. Many I have tried do not have the tuning to get rid of resonances, response peaks and the like.

-Requires dongle / Adapter to work with all my gear. This is yet another thing to carry around, and need.

-Cost. (Though frankly, I will pay for good stuff.)

Pros:

-No wires! I really like that, and it is compelling. I totally get why people want it.

-Ambient sounds get through. I generally use one ear on my earbuds for that use case, but using two with how the ambient sounds can work is nice.

Summary:

We are closer! But, when one uses the crap out of earbuds professionally as well as personally, there is no contest. Wired sets, good ones to be clear, just work and they rule!

More people can make good use out of wireless ones than ever before, and that is good.

But, the people who count on performance, need it bulletproof and high quality at all times will struggle.

That's probably because a lot of equipment is double-insulated now so polarization doesn't matter, and manufacturers are better at getting the polarization right. It's usually when someone (incorrectly) replaces a cord themselves that you run into issues, which doesn't seem to happen much nowadays, the lamp with the bad cord goes in the trash. Though I've certainly run into home outlets that are wired backwards.

Probably the most likely place you'd run into problems with incorrect polarization is when changing a light bulb. If the polarization is wrong, the outer threaded part of the socket will be live, and you've got a good chance of contacting it while changing a light bulb. (which itself is becoming a rarely with long lasting LED bulbs, or LED lamps without changeable bulbs). Though this is probalby more the fault of the Edison lightbulb socket than of the polarized plug.