Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My first bluetooth headphones were the Powerbeats Pro. (They were a Christmas present, I wouldn't have gotten anything that expensive.) Since they were my first ones I didn't have anything to compare them to. Powerbeats Pro (Roughly 1 year) The beats were really cool at first, but ended up really finicky, were difficult to keep connected, I had to disconnect and reboot them far too often, would never sit in the case right so they were never properly charged, and the worst part was that I needed an app to use them. Because of the price, my stomach dropped every time they fell even a short distance. But I didn't know any better than to love them! Eventually they stopped taking a charge; eventually they stopped turning on at all; eventually the case completely died. Buying new ones was waaay cheaper than servicing them. They're in a box somewhere. Occiam (1.5+ years) After an absurd amount of research, I settled on these as a replacement. Note, I wore these all day, everyday. By which I mean 8am to 4 ish, then I'd charge them about half an hour, and then 4:30 until 10-11 or whenever I went to bed. They did get some water on them (not regularly, but at least once a week), and (maybe gross to hear, but) I do make a lot of earwax - my point is, I really wore these out. The price made the whole process less stressful. That was worth it. The sound was surprisingly good, definitely better than the beats (by the time that they had died). I really expected the $300 headphones to have better sound quality after 1 year than $35 headphones out the package. I was very pleased right of the bat. I used them for short phone calls, but nothing that extensive, so I have no opinion about the mic. The connection was iffy at times. They were reliable in that they weren't very hard to connect, but after a little while if I touched... like, possibly any item whatsoever, they would go out. Sometimes they would go out when I wasn't doing anything, but they would come back on about a second later. This didn't bother me because I'd had such a hard time connecting the Beats; I was grateful that they worked at all. The fit wasn't all that special. I got over the ear because my ear canals are small, I guess, and all kinds of ear buds always pop out - including these. (Even using with the smallest tips.) When they would come out, I would just push them back in. Since the buttons weren't so easy to press, this wasn't a problem. With the Beats, I would accidentally push buttons all the time. People complained about these buttons being too hard to press, and they're not wrong, but I just used another finger to support the earbuds or just pressed the dang thing in my ear harder - it didn't bother me. The interface I liked. You could use just one at a time, which I never did, but more importantly both earbuds had all controls so I could control them despite my hands being kind of full. The battery life was decent, but nothing I was too impressed by. Maybe 8 hours of play time - at first! Which brings me to why I stopped using them. At some point (maybe 6-8 months in) they would only hold a charge for 3-4 hours. Usually if there was a charging issue, I'd just clean the case and whatnot and it would be fine, but nope. No matter what I did they wouldn't hold much of a charge. This was a problem because I needed to block out my coworkers for at least 8 hours a day to keep my sanity. So I retired them as backups and bought new ones. My newest ones were bluetooth but connected by a wire, which has pros and cons. Recently the wire connection got messed up, and I turned back to these hoping that after 6 months of not even needing my back ups, these would mercifully allow me to bridge the gap to purchasing my next pair. Charged the case, popped them in, they work just fine. I haven't used them long enough to re-test the battery life. And despite the overall pleasant review - I won't be repurchasing them. Edit: (Week or so later) I tried two other headphones and I am going to get these again instead.