DON'T buy AirPods… yet

- AirPods Pro are, in my opinion, the gold standard for any wireless headphones. But that doesn't mean you should buy them. Let's broaden our horizons today and take a look at seven alternatives from the industry's top brands to find the best option for those of you who just can't join the zombie army of apples but also want something slightly better than AirPods knockoffs. from $20. . Today's video was brought to you by SmartDeploy. Are you supporting remote workers? SmartDeploy can help deploy windows, applications, patches and driver updates to remote PCs via the cloud. Get your exclusive free software valued at over $800 at smartdeploy.com/linus. (electric music) All of our options here share some common characteristics.

So before we pit them against each other in a battle for pain. Let's talk about their similarities. Each of these buttons has some kind of way to play and pause music, skip and rewind tracks, activate some kind of AI assistant, and some of them can even adjust the volume. They also all support at least Bluetooth 5.0, so you shouldn't worry about bandwidth or range when considering one over the other. Finally, they all last at least four hours on a charge and feature some form of fast charging where a few minutes attached to the case gives you about an hour of listening time.

Surprisingly, the model with the worst battery life of the bunch was actually the AirPods Pro with four and a half hours of music listening time with ANC enabled, which, wait, aren't they the gold standard? Our first challenge then is, um, the truly wireless version of the Pixel Buds. Not that first generation thing with the cable. Yes, Google's second attempt has excellent sound isolation and a full sound mix, and its in-ear feel is almost as good as the AirPods Pro. The only thing that sours the feel is the rubber holder. Sometimes you can feel it tickling the bud of your ear.

It seems like someone is trying to get your attention in a frankly inappropriate way, unless it's my wife. The controls on your device are amazing, incorporating taps and swipes to control volume, but they can also be customized through the Pixel Buds app or directly in the Bluetooth settings on Pixel devices and there are also some Google goodies like, there's well, you know, you know. , support and instant translation. Definitely not as good as in a SyFy movie, but hey, at $179, they're cheaper than the non-pro, second-generation AirPods with the wireless charging case. As for the case, it's still a mini pocket, but it's thicker, longer, and wider than the AirPods Pro case.

And friends, the cases only get worse from here, so tied up. Samsung launched the Galaxy Buds Lives earlier this year and received a lot of praise for its unique bean shape and that's mostly what they have going for them. I mean, okay, look, it's not like they're horrible. The sound quality is fine. It's just that the main problem is how the sound quality fluctuates depending on how you place them in your ears. So they sound more tinny when they're placed loosely, you know, a little flat, and then quieter when you push them further into the ear canal.

But clearly that's not what you're supposed to do because they quickly become uncomfortable. The beans don't use an internal channel design, so they don't achieve the same noise isolation as our other options, but, and this is strange, Samsung chose to incorporate active noise cancellation, which helps level the field of noise. game, except there are no physical stamps. So obviously a lot of external sounds still come in. It's time for our pocket test of the case. And I don't know, it's okay. A little thicker than I'd like, that's what he said. Fortunately, the Galaxy Wear app is where grains make up for lost ground.

There are plenty of great options here, including customizable controls, some equalizer presets, and the Find My Headphones feature. But $169. Nice. An extra $10 for the Pixel Buds seems like a good deal if the metallic bean seen here isn't your thing. Hey, look, if you're stuck with a girl, go find the giant. Or, you know, what you could do is stick with Samsung and just get their older, cheaper, and, in my opinion, universally better option; the Galaxy Buds Plus. They have an in-ear design and the highest single-charge battery life of our entire line with 11 hours of music playback.

Wow. The mix has a good amount of bass and mids and can also be modified in the app. And while they don't feel as good in the ears as the AirPods Pro, and there's no active noise cancellation for $149, or even less depending on where you find them, they range from a solid value to, that's a good deal. . But challenging the Buds Plus with the same MSRP is, of course, Samsung's eternal Korean rival, LG. Tone Free headphones from LG, which they built in collaboration with the British hi-fi company Meridian. Now, normally I wouldn't mention that kind of cross-brand marketing, but in this case, the combined effort really shows because I was impressed with these in my short circuit unboxing.

The design is very similar to the AirPods Pro and, indeed, they also feel very good in the ear. Now there's no active noise cancellation and mixing can be a little confusing, but luckily the accompanying LG app not only has EQ presets but also a custom eight-point EQ tool with the ability to save two custom profiles which should be absolutely standard. In fact, Android should have this built in. How come that doesn't exist right now? The nice thing about the Tone Free Buds is that the wireless charging case also disinfects the earbud tips with UV light when the case is plugged in.

Now, these came out during the pandemic, but immediately. So I'm not sure if they were already planning this feature or if they just plugged it in there right before releasing it. Either way, it's definitely a plus in these tough times and the case fits nicely in my special pocket. So far, all of these buds have been a pretty fancy feast and cost over $100 each. Maybe what you're looking for is an iconic bud killer. Well, that's not what the OnePlus Buds are. But they only cost $79. OnePlus, their approach here was apparently to take the Pixel Buds case and then fill it with an AirPods clone that, frankly, is much larger than a regular AirPods and doesn't sound as good.

Noise isolation is about what you'd expect from a non-in-ear design and also borrows the OGR Pods' other weakness of not fitting well in everyone's ears. On top of that, they have an app with some customization, but for now it's only available on OnePlus phones. What the hell were they thinking? But on the other hand they only cost $79, which isn't really that cheap. So, okay, let's try moving the price up to the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 2s at $299. These brought some major improvements over the first-generation model, including active noise cancellation and improved battery life. Unfortunately, the case still doesn't support wireless charging and not even the smaller earbuds did.

When I unboxed them, what I had to say about the sound quality was: Yes. They are decent out of the box, but are held back by the in-app equalizer customization that frankly wasn't used. Apparently Sennheiser listened because there's now a true slider-style UI that really unleashes the quality of the Sennheiser hardware, making it a great-sounding but expensive option for Apple to avoid audio files. Of course, if avoiding Apple based on some kind of weird reverse fanboyism isn't your thing. Hey, Apple is still an option and maybe still the gold standard. The AirPods Pro have excellent noise isolation while managing to feel super light in the ear and even if their design sensibility sometimes really bothers me, see tests A and B at other times, Apple does it very well .

Many in-ear headphones have thick tips that make you feel like you have to shove them into your ear canal, but the professional ones are so light that they just hang there naturally and there's almost nothing you can do to remove them if you don't want to. Beyond that, they have a great neutral sound that won't blow you away with its awesomeness, but it also won't grab your attention because there isn't, shall we say, a big hole where the mids are supposed to be. be. Also, especially in noisy conditions, the active noise cancellation, which can be toggled by long pressing the STEM, helps that sound profile a lot.

As for the controls in iOS. Customization is great and on Android, well, you can be fine with the wizard activation app. And last but not least. In fact, it's one of the most important features for me: the case is a great size. It's not as small as the regular non-pro AirPods, but it's still small enough to effortlessly slide in and out of my little baby's pocket. Now you are safe, just dream sweet dreams with lttstore.com. If the Pro price is an issue, you can of course stay in Apple Land with the regular AirPods and I guess they're fine.

But at 199 or 159 without the wireless charging function in the case. Almost all of our alternatives - except you, OnePlus, not you - give us better value for money. The most enthusiastic of you will probably have noticed that we forgot to record part of each product segment with its built-in microphone. So check out the link in the video description, where we'll have little microphone samples so you can judge which version of your voice you want to broadcast to your friends and family. You may not watch it because you simply don't care about the quality of the audio on the other end of the line.

But hey, at least it's there if you're one of those thoughtful people. - well, wait a second, the video is almost over and you didn't mention it (static attracts the speaker) - You're right. There are many other good options available. Like the Soundcore, Liberty Air 2 and Sony's WF-1000 professionals (laughs). So which ones should you get? Well, if you've reached the end of the video and you still don't know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I haven't told you about our sponsor yet. Privacy is a free service that allows you to generate Virtual Credit Cards for online purchases and subscriptions.

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