AirPods

I have an unusual use case for ear bud(s). I am a voracious consumer of podcasts. I hate wires hanging on me so I lean to Bluetooth devices.

You know I'm cheap frugal so I go for inexpensive ear buds. The relatively poor sound quality doesn't bother me with my podcasts.

My walking regimen is about 30 minutes per day so battery life isn't critical.

I have been using ear buds like this and this.

My wife bought me the original Bragi Dash. I struggled with them. Seems like I wasn't the only one. My deal breaker problem was that the Bluetooth connection wouldn't work unless I held the phone near my chest. If I put it in my pocket or in my belt holster it kept dropping out.

The new version is supposed to fix all this. But they don't get a second chance with me.

Then I stumbled across this GRDE Mini Wireless Earbud. The mono is fine for listening to my podcasts. And I liked the price. I don't like the proprietary charging cable.

My daughter bought me Apple's AirPods. As expected they work great with an iPhone once I figured out how to get them out of the case. But they work just as well with my Essential PH-1.

Conclusion: The GRDE Mini Wireless Earbud's proprietary charging cable is a bummer. The controls on it is a physical switch, not a capacitive switch like the AirPods. The capacitive switch means that you have to double tap to take an action. So double tapping on the right AirPod is play/pause and double tapping on the left AirPod is skip. On the GRDE single click is play/pause and double click is skip.

I use them both.