u/JL9berg18

I came on here a while ago looking for help in getting earbuds. I also spent too much time on YT listening to comparisons. Ended up getting a pair I'm happy with, so this is me giving back. I'll do it in outline format bc to me it's quicker and more efficient.

What I was looking for (if you're looking for something different, this may not apply to you)

• Primary considerations
  • In-ear (so, no ear cuffs and definitely no extending mic)
  • Good noise cancelling MICROPHONE (so that business calls would be the best quality if I'm doing other things around the house like washing dishes and/or outside in the wind).
  • I don't want to spend through the nose (I want to keep it <$250).
• Secondary Considerations
  • Good for active use (they stay in my ear while active, and have decent waterproofing). I have oddly small earholes, so most earbuds slip out while either being active, bending over, or chewing. It's a me thing for sure.
  • Some baseline amount of quality.
• What I didn't really care about
  • Noise Cancelling (I appreciate that sometimes - esp on planes and in the gym - it can come in handy, but in general it makes me feel a little bit uneasy, kind of in a closed-in way.)
  • Speakerhead level *listening* quality. Imo (1) all the good buds are pretty close and (2) I listen mainly to spotify for my music, which uses a compressed format so a lot of the finer points won't be accessible even with the most expensive / best set of earbuds.
  • Not that I don't care about battery life, but I'm pretty sure at this price point the battery life of these + the charger case should be fine for me.

Here's my super quick and dirty impressions of the "good" earbuds (Airpods, Galaxy Buds Pro. All these are in the $150-250 range

• *Airpods Pro 3*: The Pro 2 have been my daily driver, but all the complaints I got when using these in meetings prompted my journey to upgrade. I borrowed the Pro 3 from my sister, because they're generally seen as the gold standard for all around function (unless you go super ultra high performance). I have a blended tech family (personal phone Android, work phone + laptop Apple), so I figured these would be the best. This may seem obvious, but they don't work nearly as well with anything android. Popping over between devices though was surprisingly good, even between Apple and Android. Call quality was good, speaker was good, Noise Cancelling is very good. But the mic noise cancelling was not any better than any of the other "good" earbuds. For the price (and other reasons below), I don't recommend. With that said, the other apple-centric features are really nice so I won't blame ya if you keep them around to use specifically and only with your iphone.
• *Galaxy Buds Pro 3*: I could copy and paste the airpods review here, except the android-specific set of features are about 80% as developed as the apple ones. While I could tell a tiny bit of difference in overall quality of speaker and mic use, any difference was negligible. The Buds Pro 3 did have better noise cancelling on the mic, but I guess I sounded less like myself. With no surrounding noise, the voice quality was basically the same between the Galaxy and Airpods. Fit and fallout were both slightly better with the airpods, probably because most of the actual earbud is hanging out more with the galaxy bud vs the airpod. I returned them to Costco.
• *Beats Fit Pro*: I heard that they were the most marketing heavy (you pay for the name) out of all the ones I tried on and tbh they were more or less compatible in quality with the sub $50 pairs that I bought. I did LOVE though that they had the little wing thing on the earbud tip. They were the best for being active without having to get anything extra). That made the fit the best out of all of em. But everything else was just meh. I felt like they were a half step behind both the airpods and galaxy buds. I returned them quickly.
• *Status Pro X*: These were a shockingly serious step up in sound quality, and people told me the mic was substantially better than the airpods / buds. I also really liked the way they look, which is like a level Z concern but still. I really wanted these to work but I couldn't reliably use them at the gym, and even if I was eating on a work call, they'd sometime come out because of my chewing. I bought and returned from the mfr, but did so sadly.
• *Huawei Freebuds Pro 5*: The Pro 4 was the internet favorite, but people said they were illegal and weren't sold in the US. I looked on amazon to make sure and found the Pro 5s, so I picked up a pair. HOLY CRAP. People can hear me way better than any others but the Status (Status and Huawei are about the same in mic sound quality + mic noise cancel) and the sound is even better than the Status Pro X. Even better, they fit really well.* They're IP54 which I'd like to improve, and if they had that in-cartilage wing thing, they'd be perfect. But they're SO MUCH BETTER then any of the other earbuds I tried and am very happy I stuck it out and kept trying to get a pair that fit all my criteria. 100% not returning these.
• I remember a lot of people talking about other models from JBL, Sennheiser, etc., but iirc nobody really talked about the noise cancelling aspect of the *MICROPHONE* - the talk was more about the sound quality of the speakers. So I didn't try those.

Also, good to know moving forward:

I ended up getting a few different sets of $20-50 sets online (soundcore by Anker LIte, and TOZO NC9), and it was honestly hard for me to tell the difference quality wise between those and airpods + galaxy buds + beats. Clearly the cases felt cheaper and a couple of the setups seemed less familiar, and some had little or no noise cancel, but overall I felt like they worked 90% as well as the good stuff. If you're just looking for a good pair of headphones and on a budget, I wouldn't hesitate at all to skip the bigtech pairs and go with the rando amazon brands (at least these two here).

*re the ear fit: I haven't ever had a pair of earbuds be able to stay in my ears all the time when I run around hard and go upside down in the gym without those little in-the-cartilage silicone tips or wings or whatever like those on the Beats Fit Pro and the Bose QuietControl. Chewing also causes most of the earbuds to come out. Out of all the ones I tried without the wings, the Freebuds fit a little better than the airpods in the top tier, and then everything else. But even with the airpods, I still ended up getting these silicon wingtip things that slip over the airpods (like this but not this), and my airpod set works for the huawei set so I'm happy.

Hope this helps somebody!