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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2182 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 25, 2026

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What's the best bang for your buck (in terms of QOL) purchase you've ever made? The cheaper the better.

I'd say in-ear earphones with solid ANC are up there. I'm sitting outside the arrivals section of a busy international airport, and I felt mildly annoyed by the honking and general noise with earphones on and ANC engaged. Then I took them off to check and was practically deafened. Yup, they're cutting down 90% of the cacophony.

I own a pair of Galaxy Buds 3 Pros, purchased at about £130. I think they sound great, the ANC isn't quite as good as the Airpods I bought my brother on his birthday, but it's clearly a cut above my older Buds 2 Pro (Plus?). I happen to prefer the sound quality, and unless you've got an iPhone, they're about the best you can get on an Android device that isn't rooted and running Libre Pods. In fact, good ANC tends to improve sound quality overall in my experience, as it preserves bass by changing the acoustic impedance.

(The default Android kernel has a buggy, non-compliant Bluetooth stack. Until Google upstreams a patch, you need the root to get actual standards compliance and the ability to make use of all the Airpods' features.)

I haven't found in-ears that I can tolerate yet, but my QOL while in flights rose significantly when I started using noise-cancelling over-ear headphones (mine is Bose). They really filter out all the annoyance of the flight (and the airport). I just put an audiobook up, relax and my flight experience now is pretty low-stress. My only regret is I didn't start doing it earlier, using non-noise-cancelling headphones or just toughing it out. It's absolutely different experience (at least for me) when I don't have to deal with the noise.

Use case is a little different but I hate in-ears and ended up buying some Powerbeats Pro 2s for my commute and they've been great and don't really irritate my ears the way most in-ears do (by virtue of not actually being in-ear).

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