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Can’t speak for everyone but here are the reasons I prefer an actual jack:
3.5mm headphones are extremely universal and can be used for any audio device. USB-C and Bluetooth headphones cannot
Bluetooth is extremely inconsistent when paired with multiple devices and often gets disconnected because of competing devices
I can’t charge my phone and listen to USB c headphones at the same time
Manufacturers claim the removal of the jack was to improve the water resistance. I have never dropped my phone in water and would be willing to risk it.
I already have too many wireless things to charge
I have a small stockpile of broken wireless headphones. Meanwhile my 10 year old wired headphones are collecting dust
I have never lost something more often than that tiny ass USB to 3.5mm dongle adapter
I distrust large corporations with incentive to get consumers to buy more stuff from them
Don’t forget Bluetooth has absolutely shit audio quality while using the microphone with how it handles call audio (although I’m praying BLE audio fixes this). Also true wireless earbuds can’t compare at all to wired earbuds microphones in the slightest.
Your point is generally well taken, but your first point about 3.5 mm jacks being universal isn’t really true any more. It’s nearly impossible to find a device these days with a 3.5 mm audio Jack. It sucks but it’s true.
Other than the 3.5mm still being universal basically everywhere except for phones, it’s also universal in a purist physical sense.
Any old piece of scrap copper wire connected to a 3.5mm jack, wrapped vaguely into a coil, and placed next to something magnetic, should form a working speaker compatible with the 3.5mm jack. It won’t sound hi-fi, but it will work, because unlike Bluetooth or USB-C where you have to read hundreds of pages of standards and do a bunch of engineering just to figure out how to understand the signal, the signal in the 3.5mm jack basically is the sound.
This has direct practical implications as well: The transparent simplicity vs opaque complexity is why wired headphones can be so cheap and yet so reliable, or as hi-fi as your DAC and the speaker cone will allow, whereas Bluetooth devices are comparatively expensive, a mess to connect, fragile, bandwidth-limited, and environmentally and ethically dubious.
Bluetooth, and even USB-C, is basically black magic— Which wouldn’t be so bad, except that it’s also glitchy black magic. And this remains true regardless of device availability, because it’s determined by the physics of the technology itself is implemented.
Well TBH, I have been exclusively using Bluetooth headsets for like 7 years now and I’ve had a good experience with that.
I would recommend either big clamshells (I use a rather expensive but awesome Bose 700) or necklace designs like my LG tone 800 hbs headsets (I got like 4 of those over the years). I bought a pair of extremely expensive Sony WM-1000XM 4 that suck donkey balls for a long list of reasons, but not Bluetooth.
Barring some connection issues sometimee, Bluetooth is really quite nice and allows me to walk around freely. I haven’t missed the jack plugs ever, really.
Genuinely, good for you. I don’t want to switch to something more expensive, that probably wheighs more on the environment (batteries tend to do that), that I’ll lose more easily, that can catch connecticity issues, that force me to turn on bluetooth… And that’s okay we just have different priorities. What bugs me is only yours ever seem to be catered to nowadays, even though mine don’t seem particularly rare and you can ignore jack plugs easier than I can listen to music while plugged on my external battery
TBH good sounding IEM/Headphones actually worth keeping for years today are almost all modular. IEM/Headphones worthy of playing from a jack will not sound great from a trash built-in one and will need extra AMP/DAC anyway.
Funnily enough, the best AMP/DACs you can get today all use bluetooth. They are even good after the battery dies since they are also wired DAC/AMPs. There are some where a battery change is also likely. IEMs have TWS converters as well.
It is all pretty convenient without a builtin jack, unless you are really running dry on cash and/or dont even care about the most important part which is audio quality.