I have JBL wireless earbuds that I use for working out in the gyms at hotels. They are fine for that--the ambient noise of whatever dreadmill I'm using masks just about anything I wouldn't like. I don't like how they have to be active to sustain the connection--if I turn off the music for more than five minutes, I have to start all over.
For comfort, though, I hate them. Hate, hate, hate. They are touch-sensitive, and invariably I switch them in some way when trying to get them situation on my ear properly. And to get good bass, I feel like they have to be screwed in about three inches deep. Any deeper and they might find my actual brain. I feel the same about Etymotic ear plugs that I bought for musical performance. So, I reserve the JBLs for hotel gyms, where I can distract myself on a treadmill listening to loud rock and probably ruin my hearing even more. They are not noise-cancelling, but they were a whale of a lot cheaper than Apple thingies, and they are also waterproof, which is a requirement for that use case. But my dislike of in-ear buds isn't just because of these JBL's--the provided wired buds that came with my Apple iphone are also intolerable. Those only sound good when the bud is inserted in the least comfortable way.
At home, my old listening arrangement placed my chair inaccessibly far from my system, and I bought a pair of Sennheiser RD-185 wireless headphones. The base unit has a digital input, which I feed from my Benchmark ADC, which in turn gets its audio from the record bus of my preamp. Since I frequently listen to analog sources, this arrangement puts an excellent signal into the base unit. The sound from these is...okay. They are a bit boomier and looser-sounding in the bass, but they are good enough. These units use a digital communication, but they do not use Bluetooth. The base unit provides a recharging hanger. (I've rearranged my listening space, and now can use wired headphones while sitting in my chair, driven by a JDS labs Atom amp fed from the record bus of my preamp.)
For sitting on planes, I had used super-cheap Sony "noise-cancelling" headphones that weren't that bad for $40, but they were not efficient and the noise cancelling was marginal at best for airplane use. They used a AA cell that had to be replaced about every 47 seconds, and they were, of course, corded. On a recent trip, I had forgotten to put them in my brief case (a byproduct of being out of practice with Covid-caused travel reductions), and at the Houston airport found a deal on a pair of Bose Quiet-Comfort 35's. Yes, I wandered back and forth in the terminal while digging up Amir's review before buying. They were gray instead of black and apparently that wasn't a popular color, but I don't care and it meant the store price (in an airport, no less) was a bit less than the best online discounts I could find. These have been transformative, with excellent noise cancelling and a good sound via Bluetooth from my iphone. I can even listen to quiet classical on the airplane using them. I haven't tested the microphone as of yet, though, so as a two-way device the jury is out for me.
Wireless earbuds with an excellent microphone input would be nice for the online teaching that I do, but they'd have to integrate with my employer's computer, over which I have zero control and no way to add software or drivers, so I continue to use the provided headache-causing Jabra wired USB headset that should be considered employee abuse.
Rick "batteries still good in all the above" Denney
