The Coming Doom of Premium Earbuds
Why pay $300 for something where $30 will get you 90% of the way there?
ONCE, the differences between flagship phones and budget phones were noticeable and visible. Flagship phones had features that budget ones simply did not. They differed substantially in how they looked and felt. You could tell the difference between photos taken on a budget phone and a flagship phone instantly.
Take for instance the Motorola G1, a late 2013/early 2014 era budget smartphone. This was a really good budget phone at the time! But when comparing what it could do with a Samsung Galaxy S5, the differences in capabilities was really noticeable.
But today, the differences between a 2022 budget/midrange phone and a flagship phone is minimal. A Samsung S22 and A53 largely look identical, despite the former costing almost three times the price of the latter. They both have incredibly good cameras and crisp displays and full android functionality (that wasn’t a given back in the day). Give a random sample of people these phones without telling them which is which, and they’d probably guess that the S22 is the more expensive phone because of the faster chipset, and maybe by forensic comparison of photo quality, but the differences, compared to where we were in 2012, are very slight.
The same thing is probably going to happen to premium true wireless earbuds. Currently at the moment, premium earbuds cost a lot of money. Apple Airpods Pro retail for $399 standard. Galaxy Buds Pro 2 goes for $349, Google Pixel Buds Pro for $299. You can get a very good phone for that kind of money.
And in 2017 Apple could command these kind of prices for its true wireless earbuds because the Airpods were true wireless earbuds, and no competitors really existed that offered close to the same functionality. For years afterwards, you could feel the difference between premium and cheaper earbuds, in sound quality, connectivity, battery life, and comfort.
But it’s 2022, and you can pick up a pair of Tozo A1 minis for $30! Do they have all the features of the premium earbuds? No. There’s no fancy noise cancelling tech here, and audiophiles will notice a marginal difference in quality. But in 2022 the most noticeable differences aren’t hardware based at all, but software, as Apple, Samsung and Google compete to offer the best integrations with their respective phones and operating systems.
But if you’re just after a pair of earbuds, the A1s offer 90% of the functionality for literally 7-10% of the price as premium earbuds. And weighing in at 3.7g a pop, the Tozo A1s are extremely comfortable to wear. The Pixel Buds, another light weight, low profile offering come in at 6.2g.
I picked up my own A1s after my one of Pixel Buds A-Series cacked it. And the A-series are still the slightly better product. But they’re not 4 to 6 times the price better. And earbuds are inherently fragile compared to phones, you can lose them, drop them, wash them, break them (they’re kind of like sunglasses in many ways). Having $30 dollar earbuds that are no big deal if you lose or break it is a big plus.
Compared to the Tozo T6s which I bought a couple of years ago, the A1s are lighter, more comfortable - and half the price. Progressively cheaper and more capable budget earbuds are coming, just as progressively cheaper and more capable phones did. In 2020, wireless earbuds that had prices beginning with a 3 or 2 were unheard of, now they’re pretty common on Amazon - and this is after inflation has made everything else substantially more expensive.
Unless you’re someone who really loves noise cancelling or seamless OS integration then, I’d recommend picking a pair up, particularly if you’re a person who has of yet avoided true wireless earbuds so far. For the price of a dish at a mid-range restaurant (or 5 coffees), the age of the semi-disposable cheap earbud is upon us.