I would like to buy new earbuds (for android), I’ve got 2 before a xiaomi one and the Donner dobuds one, the two broke after 6 months… Does someone has any recommandations? My budget is maximum $50 Thank you
Skullcandy has been a good experience. Cheap and durable. I’ve had two, a pair of Smokin’ Buds 2 (died from a broken cable, now discontinued), and a pair of Jib True (my current earbuds).
I bought the Jib True five years ago for about $40 and so far they’ve survived a dog, getting dropped in the toilet, and multiple drops onto a hard surface. I haven’t noticed any battery degradation. The audio quality is kinda mid (I used them in a factory at my previous job) and I can’t speak for the microphone, but they’ve served me well. My biggest issue has been some oxidation on the charging pins and contacts.
Seconded.
I’ve got a pair of Skullcandy Mods. The sound quality is decent but not stellar, battery life is good, charge time is good and they feel pretty solidly made. Pretty good deal for $40 on Amazon.
I previously had some of their ANC overears that while not spectacular, were much better than I expected given the price point.
On the other side of this coin, my Skullcandy Indy ANC earbuds have been such garbage that I have swore off all Skullcandy products forever. Even since they were new the case would show full charge and you’d open it up to find totally dead earbuds. If you left them dead for too long they would stop charging completely. At this point the only way to revive them is to strip some wires and “jump start” them with another battery. I’ve had to do this so many times I just keep the wires taped to a AA battery. I filed a warranty claim for this the first time and they denied me any sort of support, even though the Internet shows my case is not unique and actually very common.
Fuck Skullcandy.
Skullcandy customer support/warranty sucked for me as well. My left earbuds started keeping barely half the charge of the right ones within couple of months of purchasing them. I had only used both buds simultaneously, so it was weird to have more drain in one. However, the support folks just returned my product as-is saying nothing was wrong.
Beats fit pro are good but pricy. You can always buy second hand/refurbished from eBay.
Check out woot https://www.woot.com/category/headphones?ref=mwj_scr_cat_electronics
Edit: not sure why the above link doesn’t seem to work but you can go here then filter by headphones https://www.woot.com/category/electronics?ref=mwj_scr_cat_electronics
Love my samsung buds 2. Got them for 45 on ebay I believe and even have some ANC
As Samsung bundle them with every flagship phones, there is a plethora of them on ebay for cheap. Most of them are basically new, and for that price is is quite the banger.
See if you can find a friend who owns a particular model and is comfortable letting you try it on. How it fits is the most important thing IMO.
Samsung ones seem reliable, but one big downside is that the app (Galaxy Wearable), has a number of required permissions. The app does not function without them, even if you don’t need those features. I’m not sure what the workarounds are, and maybe you can make do without the app, but here is the list:
- Calendar
- Call logs
- Contacts
- Nearby Devices
- Phone
- SMS
You can read more about the privacy aspect of the popular brands here:
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/categories/headphones/
