My Jabra Elite 8 Actives were perfect – until I lost one. Like most people, I got used to the freedom that using the best workout earbuds provided, with no more tangling wires draped under my shirt anchoring me to my phone. Also, on runs, I often test the best bone conduction headphones to run with, as you get to soundtrack your runs and stay aware of your surroundings.
On this occasion, I was using the Jabra Elite 8 Active Gen 2, as I was between bone-conduction headphones to test. Normally very secure, the Elite 8 Active Gen 2s are the Rolls Royce of workout headphones: super-premium, well-engineered, and very comfortable. Halfway through my run, I stopped at the local health club to grab a coffee, took my earbuds out, and one of them slipped through my fingers onto the floor.
Before I could see where it bounced, a group of kids rolled through the foyer fresh from a swim class, and that was the last time I saw that earbud. After 20 minutes of searching the floor and corners for the bud, I left my details with the receptionist and dejectedly began the six-mile run home with one earbud.
I used those earbuds for work and play, so I was practically left without a tool for meetings as well as workouts. Furious with myself, I ordered a couple of cheap pairs of wired headphones; some Sony over-ear headphones reserved for working on my laptop, and a cheap pair of Panasonic RP-TCM225DEK USB-C wired headphones I could use as backup workout buds until I picked up another pair of premium ones.
Although I was still bemoaning the loss of my buds, I was also excited to go back to wired, in a small way. As a former owner of a Sony Walkman and then an iPod Nano, before moving entirely to phones and Spotify, it was a delicious bit of nostalgia. I hadn’t used wired headphones regularly in years.
The Panasonic headphones I bought were exactly what you’d expect of cheap wired headphones from a name-brand electronics company: they came with a trio of earbud sizes, they’ve got a volume rocker and microphone on the right cord, and the sound is deceptively high-quality for an £11.99 (around $15.50 / AU$25) pair of earphones, with no Bluetooth broadcasting to flatten the sound.
The plastic case does stick out of the ear a bit, which makes lying on your side a consideration, and now and again I got a touch of white noise when I paused whatever track I was playing.
I have used these non-stop for the past three weeks for all kinds of exercise, along with meditation and sleep. Here are three things I loved about the experience, along with two I really didn’t.
What I loved
1. No charging anxiety
It sounds obvious, but having one less thing to charge made a big difference in my pre-workout routine, especially long runs. No more dreading the woman who lives inside my Bluetooth headphones telling me “battery low” halfway through a 10-miler.
I keep my wired buds with the rest of my running kit, and I know they’re always ready to go. One less thing on my mind.
2. More sustainability
A very similar point to the last one, in a way: I counted how many devices I owned with rechargeable lithium batteries, and was thoroughly shocked – phone, smartwatch, smart ring, Nintendo Switch, laptop, tablet, Kindle. Apart from my laptop, every one of these devices is a sealed unit, and when the battery eventually dies, it’s thrown away or recycled.
Rechargeable, true wireless buds in particular are huge contributors to e-waste due to using three batteries: one in each earbud and one in the case. Wired headphones have fewer parts to start with, making them theoretically a more eco-friendly option, providing they’re taken care of.
3. Affordability
My wired headphones cost £11.99 (around $15.50 / AU$25) from Amazon. While there are affordable true wireless headphones out there with very serviceable sound quality (such as the JLab Go Air Sport), it’s hard to argue with this sort of value. As they include fewer parts, wired headphones can be picked up very cheaply while still retaining an element of reliability.
What I didn’t love
4. The wire
Argh. It only took accidentally yanking the headphones out of my ears one time to remember why we all switched to wireless in the first place. The live wire also means the buds are only light rain- and sweat-proof, not truly water-resistant. One saving grace, though, is that I dropped my phone once, and it was only spared a fatal concrete kiss by the plugged-in wire.
Less universality
While the headphone jack still has its place on most laptops and entertainment centers, headphone jacks in phones and tablets are now an endangered species. This means I had to get the Panasonic RP-TCM225DEK headphones with a USB-C end, and if I wanted to wear them in bed, they competed with the charging port for access.
USB-C is increasingly becoming the industry standard now that Apple has moved over, but the headphone jack is synonymous with better music quality.
