I got the Philips open side headphones he recommended in his blog post and they have worked well for me. The only downside is they are gigantic and people also comment on my head size to headphone size ratio.
Try the Antlion Audio Modmic Wireless. It's a wireless boom mic that magnetically attaches to your regular (wireless/Bluetooth) headphones. (There's a small magnet that you permanently adhere onto the side of your headphones, the modmic connects to that)
From some YouTube comparison videos I found before purchasing, the quality of the modmic/wireless is vastly superior to the builtin mic on most headsets - even the more expensive business/conference and gaming headsets. It's not quite as good as a standalone desk mic, but it's not too far off.
Plus if you already have a nice set of headphones that you like - I have a set of Bose noise cancelling ones - you can keep using those; you don't need to sacrifice incoming audio quality by moving to a headset.
The only downside is the battery life is ~12 hours. As an IC who doesn't have tons of meetings, I only need to charge it every 2-4 weeks. But if you're a manager that may be more annoying.
Tip: Use a hair dryer to heat up the adhesive on the magnet before you stick it onto your headphones. Otherwise it might fall off later.
Even before reading this, I also preferred wired connections for many reasons, including the ones listed here as well as that a wired connection can be connected to a specific port (although it is still a problem with USB; I think that USB has many problems too even though it is wired).
The one I really don't understand is wireless keyboards and mice for desktops. Sure, let's add a battery, some unreliability, and clutter up the radio spectrum for two objects that never move relative to one another.
Wireless mice are fine. The ones that aren't stupidly designed like Apple's have the connector on the front, so when plugged in it's just like a wired mouse.
I find it's nice not to have that wire on my desktop, it would keep bumping on other stuff I like to have close.
It is possible to avoid wires for the graphic pointer, without requiring batteries or wireless connections, by replacing the mouse with a stylus and a graphic tablet (configured in the "relative" mode).
This substitution has the additional benefits that a stylus is much more comfortable, faster and more precise than a mouse.
I felt the same way about wireless mice for a LONG time, but technology has improved significantly.
With 2.4Ghz instead of blutooth, the reliability and latency problems are gone. Wireless mice, at the high end, have no more latency than a wired mouse. No issues with reliability in my years of owning them.
The battery also lasts a week or two, with some clever software tuning so it runs at a lower polling rate when not playing games. It charges in an hour or two.
Once you've experienced a proper wireless mouse, going back is impossible. They're so freeing. You can move in any direction and amount with NO resistance. Never fight the cable again. It's the way mice were meant to be.
Wireless keyboards are a bit more dubious. In theory they can have way better battery life due to the size, but in practice most still use crappy bluetooth so they have shit polling rates. I wish I could have it though, because it's more clutter on my desk and constantly gets in the way. I move my board around a lot to put down notepads, eat, etc.
EDIT: To be clear, my battery life is a result of using an ultralight mouse with a small internal battery, for game reasons. If you want one with AAA/AA, you'll likely get months out of it no problem.
That's not remotely long enough for it not to be a pain to manage. Being battery-powered is my primary objection to wireless mice and keyboards.
That said, I do have a use case where the presence of cords are a larger problem than the hassle of being battery-powered and use a wireless mouse and keyboard there. But for everything else, nothing beats a cord.
In practice, I find that it's really a non issue. With a traditional wired mouse, you keep it plugged in all the time. In this case, you only keep it plugged in an hour or two every week or two.
It can still be used while charging. So when charging it's not any different than a wired mouse.
The mouse I use can charge wirelessly from a special mouse-pad. I’ve never had to think about batteries as a result. Pricey though. Combined the mouse / charging pad were close to $300 CAD
Using a mousepad at all is a nonstarter for me, and I avoid wireless charging generally because of the power waste that comes with it (I know, I'm weird).
Cords on my mouse and keyboard (aside from the one use case I mentioned) give me exactly no trouble anyway, so wireless stuff solves no problem I generally have.
That’s fair. For a keyboard I agree: mine has Bluetooth I’ve never used before. For a mouse though the lack of a cable is nice for playing FPSes and my work setup does double duty as my gaming setup.
I used to really enjoy my Razer wireless mouse with charging dock and ability to revert to cable.
That was until I stepped away from my computer (on my desk at home) to have dinner and came back an hour later to it being dead (mouse buttons worked, just didn’t pick up movement).
I contacted support and they couldn’t offer any kind of support, I asked if they could do a firmware reset and they said not possible.
This was about 9 years ago now and last piece of Razer hardware I ever bought.
Only high poll rate wireless gaming mice have battery life that low. Most wireless mice I've used can last months on a single or dual AA batteries. The Kensington trackball I'm using right now will last nearly a year on a single pair of AA batteries, I have some rechargeable NiCads in it currently that have been going for a few months and still have a good charge left. My wife gets about a year of usage on her Microsoft Bluetooth mouse.
My Logitech MX Anywhere 2 mouse would last me a few months on a single charge before swapping to this trackball. A recharge took like an hour or so, normally I'd get the low battery notification like in the morning, plug it in when I went to go to lunch, and it would be fully charged by the time I got back and be good for a few months. Or I'd get it near the end of the day, plug it in overnight, and it would be good for a few months. Really not a hassle in the slightest.
> Once you've experienced a proper wireless mouse, going back is impossible. They're so freeing. You can move in any direction and amount with NO resistance. Never fight the cable again. It's the way mice were meant to be.
I have used a wireless mouse (I have one right now cause it's what work bought me). It is no better than a wired mouse.
My $20 wireless keyboard/mouse combo has run for years off of one set of batteries, and is instantly recognized by any OS the moment you plug in the dongle.
Agree about the dongle thing, but years on a single set of batteries? That has to be an exaggeration, that or you somehow found the glorious golden mouse crafted by the gods themselves. I've never seen any device last for years on a single set of batteries, not even the lowest power of devices.
The K400 keyboard+trackpad I have routinely lasts at least couple of years despite only rated for 18 months, but it didn't get as much usage as a regular kb+m as it was mostly used as a couch keyboard or as a quick debugging combo for working on machines on a workbench.
Afraid it's true. The mouse says it's a Logitech M185 and runs on a single AA. The keyboard is a K270 and uses 2 AAAs (I think, I taped the battery door shut since it kept falling off). I got them along with my work laptop when I started my current job five years ago, and I've only had to change them once each.
I think I may have also replaced mouse or keyboard or both a while back, with identical models, so call that two battery changes in five years, if you want to be conservative. Maybe it helps that they're disposable instead of rechargeable.
The vast majority of wireless mice and keyboards can work without using a GUI. And with your usage of "reconnect", with my Bluetooth mice I never had to use the GUI to reconnect it, they just reconnected automatically when I turned the mouse back on. I did have to pair it originally on the computer using the computer's Bluetooth settings, but that's only for Bluetooth devices and only for the initial setup. Mice and keyboards with dongles never required any kind of GUI and most of them even worked fine in low level environments like BIOSes on older machines and what not.
Been using a wireless mouse, Logitech m325, for years, including gaming and it's connected through a USB transfer switch and still works great! I agree on keyboards, I use wired.
> The battery also lasts a week or two, with some clever software tuning so it runs at a lower polling rate when not playing games. It charges in an hour or two.
That is surprising. I could have sworn we were way above that threshold now. I remember using some wireless Logitech mice that I never powered off manually and they lasted over 6-7 months of all day usage on one or two AA-batteries.
> The battery also lasts a week or two, with some clever software tuning so it runs at a lower polling rate when not playing games. It charges in an hour or two.
Granted that I'm not the most avid gamer, the mouse I use on my gaming PC setup is a Logitech G604 Lightspeed which gets the better part of a year on a single Eneloop Pro AA battery, which I can swap out for a charged battery in seconds when it finally runs out of juice.
Just today my Thinkpad Trackpoint Keyboard II arrived and you might be interested to know, it uses 2.4Ghz OR bluetooth. The feel is great, and for me it's awesome because I don't have to accommodate a second keyboard layout. I'm either using a Thinkpad laptop or this Thinkpad keyboard, both with Trackpoint and the same layout / feel.
Using a wireless mouse is a much more pleasant experience than a wired one, which is always giving a little resistance in one direction due to the wire.
As for keyboards, a lot of people move their keyboard. For example, I move mine from my standing desk when standing, to a keyboard tray when sitting, since no one can seem to manufacture a standing desk converter with proper ergonomics when sitting. The keyboard always ends up at desk level, instead of just below. Unfortunately, they don't make a wireless version of my favorite keyboard, and the wire is always getting in the way when converting.
The mouse obviously moves relative to the desktop. And the wire can be an annoyance. Not a big deal with proper cable management, but you are not always in an ideal situation, and a wireless mouse eliminates that problem.
The wire is less of a problem for keyboards and I don't use a wireless keyboard for my desktop, but there are still some use cases.
You're overstating the battery, reliability, and probably radio-clutter issues. These days, $20 gets you a wireless keyboard/mouse combo that runs flawlessly for years off a single set of batteries. All you have to do is plug in one dongle.
A mouse is constantly moving relative to the computer its being used with.
I also prefer wireless mice on a lot of things because my main work machine is a laptop. Its way more convenient to just have it connected pretty much all the time. Its bluetooth as well, so I don't even have a dongle or nub constantly plugged into the laptop its just always there.
I'd really like to get a wireless mouse for my gaming desktop, but all the wireless gaming mice are pretty pricey, have relatively short battery lives, and sometimes have other oddities. Having a lower polling interval and normal DPI is fine for basic work stuff, but when I'm playing a twitch shooter like Counterstrike its just not going to cut it.
I have a wireless keyboard because it helps reduce desk clutter, and it pairs to multiple computers. Press F1, its on my personal machine. Press F2, its on my work machine. Press F3, its on my phone. This could kind of be done with a KVM switch, but why buy additional equipment when the keyboard can do it natively?
In the end the battery lasts months on a single charge, even with the backlight on. It charges with the same cable I have already on my desk for charging any USB-C device. Charging it for a few hours every few months isn't really a hassle at all. Meanwhile its normally cord free and can easily swap between devices very quickly.
I could never go back to a wired mouse at this point. The difference in drag/weight is so noticable when I forget to charge the mouse and have to use it plugged in mid-day.
Also add keyboard and mouse. Although the wireless ones are pretty reliable, if you're shopping to a budget you will get much better equipment if you go for wired versions.
Totally agree. Moreover, every bluetooth connection is a pain in the neck with the logic, which device auto-connects to which -- every time it's different: when the loud speaker is turned on, the phone sees it in the active list, but may pick it automatically or may not! It's completely random. Sometimes it takes 2 attempts, enabling/disabling bluetooth and turning the device off && on to make them connect.
Laptop may steal-connect headphones from the mobile, if it knows them.
I guess there's been some logic written for managing these auto-connects, but it's now a complete mess.
Had to install a special audio system in ubuntu to work with Bluetooth headset with microphone -- it took years for it to appear, apparently. It does work -- although you have to go down some menus to turn mic on, and with the last update you can't switch back to hi-quality playing without mic -- it just stops working at all. But the biggest disappointment was that the old Logitech H600 headset now stops working in a minute or two after connecting!
This is modern software. Instead of a mechanism that turns, clicks and snaps, it's just a contraption that may work sometimes or may not. Johnathan Blow is absolutely right in his observations.
PS. Despite that, I should say wireless USB-dongle-mouse works fine for me.
A couple of years ago I happened to mention to a non-technical person (I think HR) that I don't use Wifi. The person replied inquisitively, "Then how do you get internet?"
One brand new wifi gotcha I just learned about, specific to 5GHz wifi: in the EU, that frequency band is used by other things, including radar for air traffic control and emergency services aircraft. The solution we decided on for that was to mandate that all 5GHz wifi devices stop broadcasting for a period of 1-10 minutes whenever a "privileged user" demands it.
I discovered this only when I moved to a place that has a higher-than-usual incidence of helicopters flying by and my wifi would randomly disconnect. I eventually solved it by finding the channel within the 5GHz frequency band that was least used by privileged users in my area, and now I only have a drop about once a month. But it used to be 3 or 4 times a day.
Unless your 5 GHz spectrum is crowded by other WiFi, you really want to be on channel 36, because that way you do not have DFS at all, see the table on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels
The most annoying wireless drawback is devices that won't work while charging. My MPOW wireless headphones are great, but when I plug them in to charge they can't play sound. Why!? It would be so much more convenient if they degraded to "being wired" while charging, instead of degrading to being totally unusable.
another plus for using a bluetooth reciever. something like the fiio btr3. it still works while charging and can be used with any headphones or earbuds. it will hopefully last me longer too since i probably have more chance of replacing the battery compared to the types that are in headphones
I'm happily wireless for all my non-work activities. My work station however, is all wired. A couple of distractions per week is a couple of distractions too much.
Yup. I now have a pair of 8 euro earphones I carry around in my bag for calls. They work the instant they're plugged in, there's no "can you hear me" bollocks, no lag, sync issues, and the sound quality is miles better than anything Bluetooth could muster.
Wireless headphones are inferior to wired headphones in every way that matters.
Wireless mice — good ones — are worth the hassle. Mostly because they seem to just work for the most part.
Wireless headphones are very good for their particular use case—not being tethered to a device. If your phone or a DAP, wired can work fine. But it can be an issue if you're listening from a laptop or a desktop and you need to move.
I have a pair of wireless earbuds and a pair of wireless headphones that I use only when I want this convenience. But for meetings, I always use my wired headphones. Voice over bluetooth is always atrocious when using the microphone.
> Wireless headphones are very good for their particular use case—not being tethered to a device
But that's an end-result, not a use-case, no?
I can think of only one situation where the faff of wireless headphones could be justified (though not for me), and that's exercise. Personally, I'll take the slight annoyance of cables getting in the way, but I can understand not everyone would.
Wireless headphones are a pet-peeve of mine, ever since Apple set the world off getting rid of the high-quality 3.5mm jack. It's sadly disappearing fast, and nobody notices the abysmal sound quality demotion, because they're mostly listening to poor quality streaming services anyway :(
During the work day my wireless headphones are pretty much always on. I'm able to get up from my desk and stretch, get something from across the office, go to the kitchen and make lunch, go check the mail, do pretty much anything around the house without needing to take them off. Having the headphones not physically tethered to the device is the point. I don't have to literally disconnect from whatever media I was consuming or conversation I was having just because I stood up from my desk.
And then I also don't have a cable flopping around while I'm at my desk. I don't have a cable to get tangled up. I'm not limited to whatever length of cable I need to connect properly, the headphones work anywhere in the room. I charge the headphones overnight at my desk every few days, so charge levels are never really a concern.
I'd use wireless headphones exclusively on my gaming PC if it wasn't for the latency and HSP using a lousy codec. Newer Bluetooth standards will solve that HSP quality problem and really reduce the latency concerns. Its a massive pain having to deal with my wired headphones on my gaming PC compared to my experience on my work setup or personal laptop with my bluetooth headphones.
And as for out and about, my bone conduction wireless headphones are leagues more convenient than any wired headphones. Not quite as high of quality, but for the convenience and non-isolation properties they're excellent for just out and about ambient music. I also wear them when gaming on the couch with my laptop while watching a show with my wife while she knits. I can hear the game just fine, I can hear the show, and can carry a conversation with my wife without wires all over the place on my lap and couch.
This is the only thing I fight about when moving into a new apartment with my gf. I encourage you to decorate however you want, but please give me ethernet access
i’ve heard people heaping praise on Apple earpods for having the best microphone for calls. I wondered if this is just that they are the only wired microphone people have ever used or if there is actually any difference there?
The only explanation I can think of is they are comparing them to other ear buds. It would be easy to be the best ear bud mic when they are universally bad.
The article mentions how Wi-Fi polling hinders performance. I had this problem but didn’t want to run a wire. Various software solutions worked only sporadically. So for quite awhile my solution was a WiFi range extender. It had an Ethernet port. So I disabled the range extender features and plugged my computer into the extender, which then connected wirelessly to the router. This worked quite well and was inexpensive - maybe the wifi extender was $35.
It was of course astoundingly and infuriatingly janky to do this - connect a wire to a completely superfluous radio just to dodge an idiotic software problem. But it worked, so I should just regard it as a clever hack.
Eventually though I got a MoCA adapter and ran a cheap Cat 6 cable to it, which has even higher speeds and is less janky, though I do have to snake the wire around the room. But after tacking it to the baseboard it’s barely visible. I own my house so I could run Ethernet through the walls but this MoCA gets me 95% of the way there so I doubt I’ll ever bother.
when i was younger we made good use of those headphone splitters to share music on the bus home from school or wherever. how long has bluetooth been a thing now and it still doesnt have that feature? i use bluetooth headphones here and there but i would never consider it to be a replacement to analog
> I used zip ties to keep all the cables in a single bundle, and coiled excess length in a loop behind my monitor.
I much prefer using double sided velcro strap that can be easily removed and reused. It comes in a roll so you can cut it as long as you want. I mostly dislike using zip ties unless it's close to permanent or a quick fix.
> To route the power strip’s cable cleanly, I attached a cable raceway to the back of one leg.
Consider using wire duct (sometimes called Panduit, a brand of wire duct) to manage cables by mounting a length to the underside of your desk. The fingers allow you to break out wire and cables anywhere along the length then tuck the slack inside and snap the cover on. You don't even need to tie up the slack though it helps. Used all the time in industrial machinery control cabinets.
68 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 142 ms ] threadWhen I speak on Zoom calls, people often comment on Zoom calls how good the audio quality is.
The only thing I miss is the ability to walk around taking calls.
It uses a base station, but runs a proprietary wireless protocol which can do very high quality bidirectional voice.
Comes with two batteries, one can charge in the base station while you’re using the other. I swap it each morning and lasts the day fine.
I also chose it based on its aesthetic choice of not looking garish like just about every other gaming brand headset.
They can also be used over Bluetooth too, but will be lower voice quality in such cases.
From some YouTube comparison videos I found before purchasing, the quality of the modmic/wireless is vastly superior to the builtin mic on most headsets - even the more expensive business/conference and gaming headsets. It's not quite as good as a standalone desk mic, but it's not too far off.
Plus if you already have a nice set of headphones that you like - I have a set of Bose noise cancelling ones - you can keep using those; you don't need to sacrifice incoming audio quality by moving to a headset.
The only downside is the battery life is ~12 hours. As an IC who doesn't have tons of meetings, I only need to charge it every 2-4 weeks. But if you're a manager that may be more annoying.
Tip: Use a hair dryer to heat up the adhesive on the magnet before you stick it onto your headphones. Otherwise it might fall off later.
I find it's nice not to have that wire on my desktop, it would keep bumping on other stuff I like to have close.
This substitution has the additional benefits that a stylus is much more comfortable, faster and more precise than a mouse.
Wifi on the other hand...
With 2.4Ghz instead of blutooth, the reliability and latency problems are gone. Wireless mice, at the high end, have no more latency than a wired mouse. No issues with reliability in my years of owning them.
The battery also lasts a week or two, with some clever software tuning so it runs at a lower polling rate when not playing games. It charges in an hour or two.
Once you've experienced a proper wireless mouse, going back is impossible. They're so freeing. You can move in any direction and amount with NO resistance. Never fight the cable again. It's the way mice were meant to be.
Wireless keyboards are a bit more dubious. In theory they can have way better battery life due to the size, but in practice most still use crappy bluetooth so they have shit polling rates. I wish I could have it though, because it's more clutter on my desk and constantly gets in the way. I move my board around a lot to put down notepads, eat, etc.
EDIT: To be clear, my battery life is a result of using an ultralight mouse with a small internal battery, for game reasons. If you want one with AAA/AA, you'll likely get months out of it no problem.
That's not remotely long enough for it not to be a pain to manage. Being battery-powered is my primary objection to wireless mice and keyboards.
That said, I do have a use case where the presence of cords are a larger problem than the hassle of being battery-powered and use a wireless mouse and keyboard there. But for everything else, nothing beats a cord.
It can still be used while charging. So when charging it's not any different than a wired mouse.
Cords on my mouse and keyboard (aside from the one use case I mentioned) give me exactly no trouble anyway, so wireless stuff solves no problem I generally have.
That was until I stepped away from my computer (on my desk at home) to have dinner and came back an hour later to it being dead (mouse buttons worked, just didn’t pick up movement).
I contacted support and they couldn’t offer any kind of support, I asked if they could do a firmware reset and they said not possible.
This was about 9 years ago now and last piece of Razer hardware I ever bought.
My Logitech MX Anywhere 2 mouse would last me a few months on a single charge before swapping to this trackball. A recharge took like an hour or so, normally I'd get the low battery notification like in the morning, plug it in when I went to go to lunch, and it would be fully charged by the time I got back and be good for a few months. Or I'd get it near the end of the day, plug it in overnight, and it would be good for a few months. Really not a hassle in the slightest.
I have used a wireless mouse (I have one right now cause it's what work bought me). It is no better than a wired mouse.
It is still used weekly or so!
https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/m705-wireless-m...
This M550 mouse is rated for two years using the Bolt wireless adapter.
https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/m550-signature-...
The K400 keyboard+trackpad I have routinely lasts at least couple of years despite only rated for 18 months, but it didn't get as much usage as a regular kb+m as it was mostly used as a couch keyboard or as a quick debugging combo for working on machines on a workbench.
https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/keyboards/k400-plus-...
I think I may have also replaced mouse or keyboard or both a while back, with identical models, so call that two battery changes in five years, if you want to be conservative. Maybe it helps that they're disposable instead of rechargeable.
If you travel a lot you might have to replace the USB dongle once a year, in my experience($5).
That is surprising. I could have sworn we were way above that threshold now. I remember using some wireless Logitech mice that I never powered off manually and they lasted over 6-7 months of all day usage on one or two AA-batteries.
If you don't do any gaming and are fine with 125/s, you'll get a lot longer life.
My last mouse that used one AAA lasts ~3 months on a battery.
Granted that I'm not the most avid gamer, the mouse I use on my gaming PC setup is a Logitech G604 Lightspeed which gets the better part of a year on a single Eneloop Pro AA battery, which I can swap out for a charged battery in seconds when it finally runs out of juice.
As for keyboards, a lot of people move their keyboard. For example, I move mine from my standing desk when standing, to a keyboard tray when sitting, since no one can seem to manufacture a standing desk converter with proper ergonomics when sitting. The keyboard always ends up at desk level, instead of just below. Unfortunately, they don't make a wireless version of my favorite keyboard, and the wire is always getting in the way when converting.
The wire is less of a problem for keyboards and I don't use a wireless keyboard for my desktop, but there are still some use cases.
I also prefer wireless mice on a lot of things because my main work machine is a laptop. Its way more convenient to just have it connected pretty much all the time. Its bluetooth as well, so I don't even have a dongle or nub constantly plugged into the laptop its just always there.
I'd really like to get a wireless mouse for my gaming desktop, but all the wireless gaming mice are pretty pricey, have relatively short battery lives, and sometimes have other oddities. Having a lower polling interval and normal DPI is fine for basic work stuff, but when I'm playing a twitch shooter like Counterstrike its just not going to cut it.
I have a wireless keyboard because it helps reduce desk clutter, and it pairs to multiple computers. Press F1, its on my personal machine. Press F2, its on my work machine. Press F3, its on my phone. This could kind of be done with a KVM switch, but why buy additional equipment when the keyboard can do it natively?
In the end the battery lasts months on a single charge, even with the backlight on. It charges with the same cable I have already on my desk for charging any USB-C device. Charging it for a few hours every few months isn't really a hassle at all. Meanwhile its normally cord free and can easily swap between devices very quickly.
Laptop may steal-connect headphones from the mobile, if it knows them.
I guess there's been some logic written for managing these auto-connects, but it's now a complete mess.
Had to install a special audio system in ubuntu to work with Bluetooth headset with microphone -- it took years for it to appear, apparently. It does work -- although you have to go down some menus to turn mic on, and with the last update you can't switch back to hi-quality playing without mic -- it just stops working at all. But the biggest disappointment was that the old Logitech H600 headset now stops working in a minute or two after connecting!
This is modern software. Instead of a mechanism that turns, clicks and snaps, it's just a contraption that may work sometimes or may not. Johnathan Blow is absolutely right in his observations.
PS. Despite that, I should say wireless USB-dongle-mouse works fine for me.
If you want something new ( and no backward compatibility burdens), there are none
A couple of years ago I happened to mention to a non-technical person (I think HR) that I don't use Wifi. The person replied inquisitively, "Then how do you get internet?"
Some people don't realize there's another option.
I discovered this only when I moved to a place that has a higher-than-usual incidence of helicopters flying by and my wifi would randomly disconnect. I eventually solved it by finding the channel within the 5GHz frequency band that was least used by privileged users in my area, and now I only have a drop about once a month. But it used to be 3 or 4 times a day.
Wireless headphones are inferior to wired headphones in every way that matters.
Wireless mice — good ones — are worth the hassle. Mostly because they seem to just work for the most part.
I have a pair of wireless earbuds and a pair of wireless headphones that I use only when I want this convenience. But for meetings, I always use my wired headphones. Voice over bluetooth is always atrocious when using the microphone.
But that's an end-result, not a use-case, no?
I can think of only one situation where the faff of wireless headphones could be justified (though not for me), and that's exercise. Personally, I'll take the slight annoyance of cables getting in the way, but I can understand not everyone would.
Wireless headphones are a pet-peeve of mine, ever since Apple set the world off getting rid of the high-quality 3.5mm jack. It's sadly disappearing fast, and nobody notices the abysmal sound quality demotion, because they're mostly listening to poor quality streaming services anyway :(
During the work day my wireless headphones are pretty much always on. I'm able to get up from my desk and stretch, get something from across the office, go to the kitchen and make lunch, go check the mail, do pretty much anything around the house without needing to take them off. Having the headphones not physically tethered to the device is the point. I don't have to literally disconnect from whatever media I was consuming or conversation I was having just because I stood up from my desk.
And then I also don't have a cable flopping around while I'm at my desk. I don't have a cable to get tangled up. I'm not limited to whatever length of cable I need to connect properly, the headphones work anywhere in the room. I charge the headphones overnight at my desk every few days, so charge levels are never really a concern.
I'd use wireless headphones exclusively on my gaming PC if it wasn't for the latency and HSP using a lousy codec. Newer Bluetooth standards will solve that HSP quality problem and really reduce the latency concerns. Its a massive pain having to deal with my wired headphones on my gaming PC compared to my experience on my work setup or personal laptop with my bluetooth headphones.
And as for out and about, my bone conduction wireless headphones are leagues more convenient than any wired headphones. Not quite as high of quality, but for the convenience and non-isolation properties they're excellent for just out and about ambient music. I also wear them when gaming on the couch with my laptop while watching a show with my wife while she knits. I can hear the game just fine, I can hear the show, and can carry a conversation with my wife without wires all over the place on my lap and couch.
It was of course astoundingly and infuriatingly janky to do this - connect a wire to a completely superfluous radio just to dodge an idiotic software problem. But it worked, so I should just regard it as a clever hack.
Eventually though I got a MoCA adapter and ran a cheap Cat 6 cable to it, which has even higher speeds and is less janky, though I do have to snake the wire around the room. But after tacking it to the baseboard it’s barely visible. I own my house so I could run Ethernet through the walls but this MoCA gets me 95% of the way there so I doubt I’ll ever bother.
https://support.apple.com/guide/airpods/share-audio-on-iphon...
I much prefer using double sided velcro strap that can be easily removed and reused. It comes in a roll so you can cut it as long as you want. I mostly dislike using zip ties unless it's close to permanent or a quick fix.
> To route the power strip’s cable cleanly, I attached a cable raceway to the back of one leg.
Consider using wire duct (sometimes called Panduit, a brand of wire duct) to manage cables by mounting a length to the underside of your desk. The fingers allow you to break out wire and cables anywhere along the length then tuck the slack inside and snap the cover on. You don't even need to tie up the slack though it helps. Used all the time in industrial machinery control cabinets.