Comment by rektide | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rektide | Hacker News Reader

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Wireless headphones. Because sometimes I really have to go and it's literally no problem to walk to the bathroom. Or to go make tea. Or to do whatever. Freedom to not be chained up is amazing. Try it.

I too don't feel like I've had to mess with audio settings. I have some SteelSeries Actis Pro's I bought a long time ago. They have bluetooth, but there's also a nice usb-based head-unit I use with higher quality, lower latency, and no pairing concerns. It shows present battery level quite clearly (which is highly enduring). The head unit also has a battery charger built in, and the headphones come with a secondary battery. I don't feel like I have to think about charging batteries either; if I have a slammed day of non-stop talking, it's easy to see at the end of the day I have half a battery left & I swap it (which takes <10s). People selling you Fear Uncertainty and Doubt about batteries seem misguided & silly to me. The freedom is amazing. Letting yourself get bothered & concerned enough to trap yourself into a narrow situation is dumb: be skeptical, at least.

Good to have both for different reasons.

A good wired headset can be superior to wireless mic audio when presenting or interacting.

If merely consuming, and hanging around wireless is good too.

I have some mid-grade Rode Wireless Go and nice >$100 Samsung lavaier mics I can use when needed, which is faultless, reliable, amazing prosumer gear no one could conceivably gripe about, but honestly the Actis Pro headset I have is probably a better choice for both cases.

The Actis has better microphone positioning by far, which counts for so much.

I'm interested to test the range versus the Rode, but given that I can be 3 floors away & the Actis still fine, I'd be surprised if the Rode really had shockingly better range/reliability/interference-resistance.

I continue to think there's a paranoia & level-of-concern that does not match what modern hardware can do.

> I continue to think there's a paranoia & level-of-concern that does not match what modern hardware can do.

I think this is related to the fact that most wireless headphones people have experience with are Bluetooth.

BT headphones have lag, and, when used in duplex mode, have terrible quality. And this lag adds to the one introduced by the conferencing software.

I've got myself a Jabra headset that communicates over DECT. This thing is spectacular. No discernible lag (as tested with games) and the mic quality is better than what I hear from people rocking Bose and Sony BT headphones. The range is great, too. Much better than what I get from my BT headphones.

Agreed! I also use DECT based headset (Poly i.e. ex-Plantronics - recently acquired by HP) and it is amazingly good. Range up to f*ckintillion meters (anywhere within the house or garden basically), up to 8 hours use on a single charge (I regularly forget to charge it overnight and I can still use it the next day), no delays, no weird disconnects in the middle of a call, great mic quality and it works both with my PC and home landline.

Wireless bluetooth headset mics can vary wildly (rtings.com has nice breakdowns).

I have tested a few and find the noise cancelling on the mic for the other party is awful if that's something you are looking for on far too many.

Both is the answer. I'm using wireless if I anticipate whether I'll need mobility sooner or later, and wired as backup and other cases.

It’s possible to combine both.

I have a Philips SHP-9000 headphone with a vmoda boom pro mic, which plugs into the 3.5mm jack on the headphones. On the other end, I sometimes attach a cheap Chinese Bluetooth receiver, which can be plugged into any 3.5mm jack, so any wired headphones can be made wireless as needed.

I got a Sony that is both wired and wireless, really nice!

I use wireless headphones because cords get in my way, but the “step away to make tea” seems like an unlikely use case to me. It isn’t as if you don’t have to see the screen anyway… more than half the time someone is sharing a window and saying things like, “what do we do about THIS?” while waving their pointer over something.

I often do not need to see their screen because I am a vestigial appendage to the meeting

This is where you grab the entire laptop and lie down in bed, only to wake up alone in the meeting an hour later.

You underestimate how much time is commonly spent in meetings literally waiting for a moment you are interested in.

In addition to the other replies, I've noticed that during meetings, my insatiable desire for coffee or tea rises about 10000%

I just need to be sipping something.

Your meetings must be much better than the average. It's been quite a while since I had meetings regularly, but I'd guess that on average I needed to see (or think about) maybe 20% of the meeting.

Wireless headphones with the option of plugging them in when the battery dies. Best of both worlds. I use an industrial pair with passive noise canceling since I work on a treadmill.

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