As per title.
I can't stand having to:
1) double tap loads of times, if I'm very lucky it'll work, mostly it doesn't.
2) when double tapping it makes my eardrum feel like someone had banged the side of my ear. Repeatly doing this increases my tinnitus for the day.
3) volume control via Siri is too painful: double tap several times (see point 1!), audio pauses, ask it to lower volume, it gets it wrong. Repeat until right...60 seconds later, if I'm lucky.
All these are deal breakers for me, I've already had enough of the things after significant testing over last couple of days, to come to the conclusion that they'd drive me mad.
Bye bye Airpods, hello £160 again. Annoying, but that's the way it is.
PS. Yes, sound/fit were fine, tap is what I'm on about in this thread please. So don't come on THIS particular thread talking about anything but the tap issue. Thanks.
Double taps work for me 99% of the time. All that's needed is a very gentle tap. Frankly, I find your observations sound a bit hysterical and vastly exaggerated. You are supposed to tap with your fingers, not a hammer. And there is essentially no way that a tap on the airpods will increase your tinnitus for the day. That not the way tinnitus works.
Your comment about tinnitus is incorrect. From my own personal exprerience, some factors make mine worse or increase the awareness of its presence. Repeatedly tapping your ear does actually increase awareness and the ringing does feel worse.
Absolutely. Tinnitus is not one kind, but several different kinds, and can affect different people in many differing ways. For me, repeatedly banging any piece of plastic hanging on the outside of my ear can help irritate my eardrums. Though it's hard to tell, as tinnitus is as much about your brain processing ambient noise, as much as it's about actual damage to inner ear hair thus missing frequency response.
One gets used to it –living in a big loud city one has to (and living in so-called peace and quiet is likely worse as you perceive the inner white noise even more in such quiet surroundings)– but at least trying to not aggravate ones hearing more than necessary is preferable.
[doublepost=1483016538][/doublepost]I actually just bought a pair of wireless Bose QC35's yesterday on Apple Regent Street, and I'm testing them over the next few days to see if I can justify the large-ish £290 price tag. From my initial testing they are amazing at both sound isolation (they have 5-6 hours of battery for noise cancelling, but even with it off they are still good, being around-ear), and the sound quality at this price is a astounding. Also, physical button controls on the headset make volume, ff/rw, and answering calls very easy.
It's a catch 22 of course.
While the QC35's are not absolutely massive for what they are, they're still rather bulky and not exactly pocketable for commuting without carrying a bag to keep them in when not in use (may be doable if one has to carry other stuff anyway, but conversely it's not really convenient when one doesn't have to). Also, one doesn't have the problem of dropping and potentially losing them too (was shopping the other day and a couple of times the AirPods got knocked-off somehow or other). However you get amazing sound blockage for pure clean listening, with great sound quality so yo can enjoy what you're listening to in really great quality. Though perhaps at the expense of not hearing that train announcement telling you the train has been cancelled and please find an alternate route, that happens all the time in London, lol!
Whereas earbuds like the AirPods are small, convenient to store in a small coat pocket, and good battery life. The downsides are obviously, controllability being fiddly at best, sound isolation is low in loud places like trains/planes/automobiles (but at least you get to hear that announcement, hey!), and personally I prefer
not having things hanging off or actually deep inside my ears/ear canals.
A halfway between the two would be nice, if only Apple would license the W1 chip to other manufacturers, but I suspect only Apple/Beats (Beats I hate, yuck!) are going to get the great sync-ability in the near future.
Can't really justify keeping both (£450 for both Bose and AirPods is just a little extravagant for me!), so will have to think about it further – I may keep none, if my real world usage makes them both too annoying to use in differing ways. I still enjoy my good old industry standard 20 year old Sennheiser HD25's, as they're tough as old boots, while lacking the features of newer stuff. And to be honest, the wired EarPods are still cheap and cheerful for buds usage when wanted, making replacement easily affordable if ever lost or damaged.
I don't know about you guys, but the price of earphones/headphones in general over the last few years still astonishes me. While EarPods are just £29, the wireless version AirPods are over 5 times the price at £160, and sure they have a few more conveniences, but it's still a lot for what they are offering the user IMO. And yes, I know there are many other wireless buds in the marketplace at same or more, but to me that just means they're
all very high in price for what they are.
Hate the phrase 'first world problems', but I suppose this would count as one, haha! Mmm, choices choices...