I need some new earbuds, and live in a place with severe winters. I want to be able to access the controls using gloves or mittens if possible.

The online reviews I’ve seen all assume that you can just touch the earbuds with bare hands, but when it’s well below freezing, that sometimes isn’t possible. If I have to take off a mitt to use my earbuds my hand might not warm up until I can get back indoors again. Earbuds that work with touchscreen-capable gloves aren’t good enough either. I’ve never seen touchscreen-capable gloves that keep your hands warm at -40C.

Any suggestions?

  • merc@sh.itjust.worksOP
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    8 days ago

    That’s an improvement on the ones I have. I need to replace them because they’re like 3+ years old and the batteries are dying (plus the case is half broken). They’re also Jabra, I think it’s the Elite Active 75 or something.

    There are 2 major annoyances with those ones though. One is that the controls on the left earbud are “directional”, like click the button forward for volume up, backward for volume down. I can never get the right direction when I have gloves on. Even worse than that is that the left earbud is slaved to the right earbud, and only the right earbud connects to the phone. That means I never know what the charge level of the left earbud is, and sometimes it loses sync and since it’s effectively “invisible” from the phone, it’s hard to reset.

    I’ve also had issues with getting the earbuds correctly lined up in the case so they charge. There have been times I’ve had them in the case for hours, put them on, and got a “low battery” warning almost immediately. Part of that is that the batteries are old and dying, but part of it is also that the charging contacts are a bit finicky.

    I’ve heard the newer models are better, but I think I want to try a non-Jabra one next. I may go back to Jabra if it turns out other models have their own annoying quirks.

    • tyrant@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      Oof i could see how trying to click up or down on a small surface would be annoying. I think jabra is moving out of the consumer earbuds market.

      • merc@sh.itjust.worksOP
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        8 days ago

        Hmm, that’s a reason to avoid them then. Who knows what will happen to their customer support if they stop selling earbuds.

        • tyrant@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          Well earbuds are just a small portion of their business. I don’t think they will lose full support