[musiclife]

After loosing my airpods for the second time, I decided its time to try something a bit less expensive, and I believe the competition did catch up.

I am absolutely not brand dependant, I only go for the best value at the time. For example, when the Macbook air first came out, nothing was nowhere close to it so that was my daily driver. Currently im on a Ryzen 7 pro Thinkpad T14s + Ubuntu.

Most importantly, I am looking for NON-iem TWS earbuds. Everything now seems to be IEM (with a rubber tip), thus isolating the rest of the world and trying to various degree some active ANC.

For my intended purpose, listening to music/podcast while walking/biking outside in the streets, this is absolutely not needed. I want to be able to hear my outdoor environnement, to avoid being flattened by a car for example. Why use extra battery life for ANC/passthrough when you can just have an earbud?

When I'm sitting at work or in a café, then yes I use expensive HiFi IEMs, wired, with a Chord Mojo.

Basically the Airpods 2 where perfect for my use case, anybody is aware of something similar?

 

[Rackhour]

To my knowledge, slim pickings.

Huawei made (or makes?) semi-open TWS.

There is a FiiO semi-open detachable wired pair called the FF5. You could get that and the UTWS3/5.

 

[HipHopScribe]

Sony Linkbuds (original version, not the Linkbuds S)