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Yes, but they sound like 10 dollar earbuds. (VZ Monks are 5 bucks and are of similar sound quality.)

I can't connect a proper headphone to them, and frankly, batteries go bad. When your battery dies on those, you'll be paying another 1XX dollars. And they'll still sound like a 10 dollar earbud.

Oh, I can also get beats! So then I can get something that sounds like a 30 dollar headphone (like the Monoprice retros) for a 10x premium. If I get a 200 dollar headphone (like... say... the Sennheiser/Massdrop 6xx or the Beyerdynamic DT 770/880/990) then I expect it to last for years.

Or, if we're talking IEMs, perhaps the $100 1More triple drivers...

So, my primary complaint is that convenience isn't worth 200 dollars for something that is guaranteed to fail due to the battery.

I fully admit I'm not an audiophile. I think most people are not. I do understand that for audiophiles wireless headphones may not be the best solution, but that really isn't Apple's fault. Compromises must be made.

The official out-of-warranty Apple battery service on Airpods is $70, and anecdotally nobody seems to be complaining that the batteries life degrades anymore than you'd expect.

I've been using mine daily ever since Day 1. No exaggeration there. And I can report that my pair still has its brilliant battery life.

Frankly, I rate the AirPods far on top of the list of my favorite tech products. My Apple Watch a distant second, and I love my watch.

And yet... imagine my abashment when I sit down for my 5 hour flight across the country and suddenly realize the airplane TV's don't support bluetooth.

I don't know which airline you were flying or which country you are flying across, but in the US all the major carriers that I am aware of that have (or had have, they are being phased out) seat-back video now have the ability to stream to an app on your device. (Though most times I travel I take a pair of Sony WH-1000 MX2s with me. Great noise cancelling, bluetooth or cable attachment to standard ports, overall excellent, lousy touch controls)

I don't know what airlines you fly, but that is not true of the Southwest, Continental, Delta, or American Airlines flights I took in the past year.

Of the last 5 flights I took on Delta out of Hartsfield, zero had that capability. The same goes for Southwest, Britsh Airways, Alitalia, Aerlingus and United.

Oh and the Alitalia flight I was on just last Friday still had those dual mono jack atrocities while the flight attendants only had those crappy stereo ear buds. I think one guy on the whole flight had an adapter while the rest of us got one channel of audio from a stereo signal for 8 hours. The meal was decent though.

All of the recent Delta planes with WiFi support streaming to a phone with their app, but some of the older planes still don’t. Southwest offers entertainment exclusively through a phone though, they don’t have anywhere to plug headphones into on any of their planes.

You should see the permissions the United app requests of you on Android. (Hint: Nearly all of them)

Fortunately I spent a lot more time on land than I do on airplanes, but for a frequent flyer that is spending the majority of their time airborne that could be a problem.

But even if they did work I'd still recommend a nice pair of bose quietcomfort headphones or some other noise cancelling headphones for those airline trips.

So now you're up to two $300+ sets of low-to-medium quality headphones?

Works for me.

You can try Airfly (haven't used it, don't work for them)

https://www.twelvesouth.com/product/airfly

My major complaint about airpods is that I routinely use headphones for longer than 4 hours in a single session. Still, I like them so much that I own two pair and swap when the battery is low.

When running low on power I just charge them one at a time. It only takes about 15 minutes to charge each one, so I just go "mono" for 30 minutes and then I'm fully charged and don't miss any time.

BINGO.

I'm basically always listening to something. Podcasts, news, etc.

Not even music.

Airpods literally don't fit my consumption needs.

I love bluetooth headphones, but I doubt you can convince a real music lover to go wireless. Unless you spend a huge amount of money, you won't get nearly close to the sound quality of real audiophile headphones.

Actually, just the fact the airpods are in-ear limit the quality of the experience they can render.

Also, I always have both wire and wireless on my table, because there is no way the wireless headphone battery is gonna enough.

This isn't true anymore. Wireless tech is advancing quickly. The latest Apple and Samsung phones now support Bluetooth 5, which supports data transmission at 2Mb/s. This is far more than enough bandwidth to transmit 'audiophile' quality audio, which is at ~320kbps.

2Mb/s in theory. I always divide by 10 the max the spec gives you to get a real estimate of the IRL output. Same for wifi, 4G or landline contracts. Reality is never that good.

Add in the mix anything that gets in the way of the signal, the oh-so-annoying latency, then the lower quality of the sound provided with in-ear head phone and voilà.

Latency is also a problem. I often write music while wearing headphones, and I need to hear the sound immediately, especially when playing very fast pieces.

From what I can find online, the AirPods have a latency of around 250ms. When playing 16th notes at 180 BPM (common for my music), I'd be playing the 4th note by the time I heard the first note.

The latency can be dealt with when watching movies by slightly delaying the visuals to sync up with the audio. That approach doesn't work when I need to hear a sound as a result of doing something.

Which wrapper do you use? I went down that rabbit hole a while ago and couldn't find anything appropriate. It was starting to seem like the best option was to actually get the foam earbud things for better grippiness - advantage being the case will even close over them - but they were still too loose.

I think finding a wrapper that fits your ear is very dependent on the person, but in my dongle days I used "Yurbuds Inspire 200" headphones, which are somewhat normal looking headphones with a silicone wrapper you put on them that fit my ear perfectly. When I got airpods, I just took the wrapper off the Yurbuds and it fit perfectly on the airpods and then locks nicely into my ear.