With Amazon its pretty much a gamble whether or not I'm getting what I actually ordered or some cheap knock-off crap.
For the entirety of quarantine I've been ordering directly from companies and its saved a lot of headache, sure theres no 2-day shipping, but I'm no longer receiving a fake Anker charger four times in a row.
And before I tried Crate & Barrel I actually was making excuses for Amazon. "Well, shipping glass and ceramic is hard. I knew there was a chance it would break in shipping." Still valid concerns, but easier to stomach a bad experience when it shows they put forth effort and thought.
If you are using Amazon to find top premium brands / products, you’re shopping in the wrong place to begin with.
Example: https://www.amazon.com/Star-Right-Flash-Cards-Set/dp/B073GBD...
Most brands that get any traction seem to abuse that halo to also shove mediocre product to the middle/lower market. In the end we still need to do a ton of research to see which product is individually good, and looking at reviews is a way better indicator than brand marketing.
I hit this issue when trying to buy a vacuum cleaner. Perhaps it would be different if I was willing to pay a grand for the top of the line, but otherwise house name brands had at most mediocre reviews, often with documented cheaping out on important parts. We had to go through video reviews of each specific model of the price range targeted to get a decent idea of what we were buying.
(I was shopping for a replacement power brick for a ThinkPad.)
Had to return them because the microphonics while walking were really bad, and the noise cancellation didn't seem comparable to the Bose QC30's I still use, even though the Echo Buds's were supposedly "powered by Bose".
but I see what you did there...
Truth is, Amazon tries to be an everything company, and that simply does not work well, when the competitors have honed their specialty skills for way longer. I find that Google faces a similar problem with hardware.
At least with Microsoft, I can respect them going out of their way to make their products weird and unique in an Apple-esque manner. (Surface book, Surface pro, The Surface headphones, the surface buds)
On the contrary, Samsung and Apple for eg. derive their music prowess from AKG and Beats respectively. Bose and Sony have a long history in music. It simply isn't possible for even the biggest of players to break into the market if treat it like 'any other product'.
They all sell for $30-60 and are the same quality as Amazons.
It's like how Apple is the #1 phone seller even though there are 5x more Android phones in circulation under 10 different brands.
I don't know if that's true. I bought my pair on the day they were released, and they're decent quality. They're not cheaply made, and everything works. (pairing took a little bit to get right, but not a deal breaker).
What do you mean when you say they're of "lesser quality"? What dimensions do you mean?
The fact that they might overheat alone? (but it got patched today; it's amazing to me that you can patch firmware on ear buds)
Lots of comments taking the opportunity to complain about Amazon the storefront, and issues with fake reviews, counterfeiting, etc. but that doesn't really have anything to do with this story. Amazon's hardware generally has a pretty decent reputation, from Kindle and Echo that have been huge successes and basically created brand new product categories, to amazon basics cables and batteries and whatnot that are reliable at a good price.
“We recently determined that in very rare cases it is possible for Echo Buds to overheat while in the charging case."
Good job as usual, HN community.
How is it fixed with a software update? Why is it running software when charging?
I know that there's a kind of pleasure from not worrying about disposably cheap products, but there's also a kind of pleasure from having nice things with extra features where the trade is usually just taking care of them slightly better.
Personally I'll never go back to wired headphones after experiencing the freedom of wireless ones. Know of any wireless $16 throwaways?
I do take pleasure in high quality things, just not these and especially not something so easily lost.
And they are wireless. The prices for equivalent earbuds run $25-$45 now, but if you time it right they'll go on sale or a new company will discount for under $25. I got mine free as a promo but would gladly pay even $25 for them.
I would be interested to know. If you have these can you please let me know if the bluetooth disconnects from your phone when you put them in the charging case?
They could still be storing audio on the earbuds or charging station itself then transmitting when connected but that seems somewhat unlikely.
