Apple’s EarPods had been my go to for video calls at work because they sound pretty decent, fit my ears well, and I never have to worry about battery life or weird Bluetooth pairing issues.

But I recently started tinkering with a fifth-generation iPod again, which naturally doesn’t support Bluetooth. I ended going down a bit of a rabbit hole because of this and thought I’d share my random thoughts about headphones.

• I like not having to deal with Bluetooth pairing and yet another battery to charge.
• One of the few things I miss about AirPods is connecting them to the Apple TV while I’m cleaning. I often have to move toys into other rooms, go to the kitchen to throw something in the garbage, or move folded clothes into bedrooms. Being able to turn something on and listen to it across the whole house with a simple pair of headphones was nice. But that’s not enough to bring me back because I can easily just play the same media on my phone and listen through wired headphones instead.
• I don’t like the idea of in-ear monitors because I don’t want to stick anything into my ears.
• I still want headphones that are compact enough to stick in my pocket and have with me for spontaneous listening.
• It seems like flat-head style earbuds are the best option for me because they are compact, but just sit outside of your ear, not in it.
• I’ve purchased a couple of flatheads — Fiio ff1 and Faaeal Iris 2.0 — but the earbud shell is larger than EarPods and they fall out too easily. I can put foams on them, which actually improves sound quality, but it doesn’t help them stay put. The ff1 also came with silicon rings and silicon rings with a hook. The hook ones help keep them in my ears, but it’s not the most comfortable thing in the world. And the silicon ring somehow makes them sound worse.
• I’m using Apple EarPods at the moment, which do stay put for me — the earbud shell is smaller — but the sound quality isn’t to my liking and the cable is awful. The cable gets tangled like crazy and never wants to go straight. It retains the shape from when it’s rolled up, which is annoying as heck.
• I’ve looked for headphones with a similar shape to Apple EarPods, but they’re all from junk brands with bad reviews.
• Are there any flat-head or similar headphones that are sized/shaped more like EarPods, but have a nicer cable and sound better? I’ve seen recommendations for the NiceHCK YDX, which appear to be smaller than the ff1 and Iris 2.0, but still have a larger shell than the EarPods.
• On the other end of the spectrum, I have the Sony WH-1000XM5 that I occasionally use with a wire, but they’re heavier than I want for longer listening sessions and, when I use them wired, there’s a lot of noise in the ear cups when I bump or rub up against the cable. There are also a lot of times when I don’t want to be so isolated and want to hear more room noise than these allow for.
• I just received the Moondrop Old Fashioned. I don’t know if on ear headphones are going to be a good fit for me, but the Old Fashioned looks super cool and I like the idea of that retro vibe. I’m still putting them through their paces, but they aren’t compact enough to carry around with me like the EarPods are. Listening at my desk is really the only place where I can see the Old Fashioned fitting into my life.
• I’m finding myself wishing that the iPhone still had a headphone jack. I didn’t get it when people complained during that transition period, but I get it now.
• I have Apple’s USB-C headphone adapter (DAC) ordered because, based on my research, it seems to be the absolute best inexpensive option on the market.
• I’m using a cheap DAC that came as a freebie with the Fiio ff1 now. It sounds fine, but it runs loud and the volume steps don’t afford a lot of options. In Prism, I’ve actually enabled the equalizer just so I can use the preamp option to reduce the volume output. But that doesn’t help when listening in other apps.
• The world of DACs seems nearly as deep as the headphone market. There are fancy ones with high powered outputs for headphones that require it, there are gimmicky DACs with retro aesthetics, there are more simple dongle DACs, and everything in between.
• I might end up ordering the Fiio Snowsky Tiny DAC. I like that it’s compact, allows you to charge while listening, and doesn’t extend the length of the headphone cable at all, which can make them a bit unwieldy when using dongle DACs.

At the moment, I’m looking at upgrading the cables and ear pads on the Moondrop Old Fashioned and am still on the look out for EarPod-style earbuds that have a better cable and good audio quality, but aren’t an in-ear monitor.

Audio gear seems like an infinite well at the moment and I’m excited to have an entire category of gadgets and accessories to explore.

Earlier this month I took my family on a road trip down to the Gettysburg area for Independence Day. We had a great time — we watched fireworks on the battlefield, spent time with family, played games, ate great food, and more.

But I wanted to highlight a decision my wife and I made that helped make the time our family spent together more meaningful during the trip. We decided to be deliberately minimal with the gadgets we brought. Among the four of us — Becky, myself, and the two kids — we had two iPhones, a digital camera, and a Raspberry Pi.

The iPhones were for taking photos, communicating, turn-by-turn navigation — all the things you’d expect the average person to use an iPhone for on a road trip. The digital camera was for our oldest son to use during the trip. It’s a myFirst Camera Insta Wi, which isn’t a particularly great camera, but has the ability to print photos on thermal paper, allowing him to immediately have a physical copy of the photos he takes.

The Raspberry Pi was running RetroPie and was exclusively used for playing television shows through Kodi in the hotel room each morning while we were getting ready and each night before bed. We made use of Kodi’s Plex add-on quite a bit, but the internet connection in the hotel room was a bit spotty, so we often found ourselves just playing video that I had stored on it locally before we left. A lot of episodes of Paw Patrol, Perfect Strangers, and 90s era Supermarket Sweep.

Again, that was it. No iPads, no laptops, no game consoles.

A lot of other families would find themselves with an iPad, Nintendo Switch, or some other device in the car for each of their kids. My wife and I have always resisted that temptation, though. We know that it would make car rides easier in the short term, but avoiding that crutch will pay off tremendously in the long run.

The kids will have a better understanding of life outside of those devices and will have more opportunities to appreciate the countryside and develop their own ability to cure boredom without the use of electronics.

That doesn’t mean we went on a road trip empty handed, though. We brought books for each of our kids during the ride and a handful of small toys for the little one to hold on to.

But our secret weapon was the Magna-Doodle.

We brought two on the trip — one for each of our sons — and they were the perfect solution to boredom.

You can use a Magna-Doodle to create a temporary sign, draw a picture, write some text, practice math problems, learn the alphabet, play tic-tac-toe, play Pictionary, play Jackbox-style games, and more.

It’s literally a blank slate that can be whatever you want it to be. You could use a notebook alongside a pen, pencil, crayon, or marker, but with a Magna-Doodle, the pen is attached to the writing surface and you don’t have to worry about it being used on surfaces that it shouldn’t be — it only writes on the Magna-Doodle.

Of all the toys we own, the Magna-Doodle is one we always come back to and it never gets old — it scales with the age of the child like nothing else.

If you have children and don’t already own one, you should probably get them a Magna-Doodle.

We bought one of these for our son, Josh, this Christmas and he’s having an absolute blast with it. It’s a kid-friendly digital camera with a built-in printer that uses thermal paper. The quality of the photos is nothing to write home about and all of the images that you print using it are black and white — it’s just thermal paper, after all.

But it’s a cool little gadget that’s just fun. The ability to instantly print any photo you take is quite novel and you can pick up thermal paper for dirt cheap.

If you have a child that shows an interest in photography, I highly recommend it.

➝ Source: amazon.com

I wanted a dedicated calculator that I could carry around in the grocery store that will help me keep on budget while shopping. I ended up purchasing a TI-108 from a seller on Amazon. I have quite a bit of nostalgia for this thing, it’s what I used back in elementary school.

Unfortunately, the one I ordered didn’t come with the slip cover. So I’ll either have to pay way too much to get a pack of 10 (that seems to be the primary way they’re sold) or I’ll have to do some digging to find a seller that’s willing to part with them one at a time.

➝ Source: education.ti.com

Matt Birchler, comparing how most of us shop for trivial items like a hammer to how people make purchasing decisions for computers, smartphones, and tablets:

Odds are you will probably drive down to your local hardware store and buy the first hammer you see that is a good price. You might even go to a big box store like Target and get whatever hammer they are selling in their 3 aisles of home improvement supplies.

You’re certainly not going to shop around from store to store for the best hammer deal. You’re not going to watch YouTube videos demoing an array of hammers, and you’re not going to read reviews for the top 5 hammers this season. You’re certainly not going to check to see if Craftsman is going to release a new hammer in the next few months that will be better than what’s on the shelves now.

I could barely keep myself from laughing while reading this piece. Not because his point isn’t valid, but because I’m totally the kind of person that would spend a bunch of time researching hammers before buying one. I’d check Wirecutter, search YouTube for recommendations, and read user reviews on Amazon.

My father was a lot like that, too. That’s probably where I get it from. He prided himself on being an informed consumer — specifically looking for products that were reliable and had a long lifespan. He would rather buy something at twice the cost if it would last him three times as long as its competitors.

That isn’t to say that I never buy things on a lark, without doing my research first. It happens. Just this past week, my wife and I found ourselves at Lowe’s looking for a box to house our garden hose. I spent exactly zero time researching beforehand and ended up buying the best looking one out of the half-a-dozen options in the store.

I try to avoid making purchases like this, though. I know that my life will be more pleasant if the items I’m surrounded with represent the best in their category. The less friction that these objects introduce into my life, the more time I can spend on what matters most.

That doesn’t mean I have to buy the most expensive products available. But with most items, there’s a tipping point at which the increased cost no longer brings substantial improvements. That’s the sweet spot that I try to aim for. Not the cheapest or most expensive models, but the one somewhere in the middle that strikes the right balance.

But I know that I’m not the norm. Most people aren’t willing to go through the hassle of researching products before they buy them. They’re just going to take a trip to a local retail store and buy whatever looks best to them out of the handful of options available.

And as Matt points out, this is how most people buy tech products:

This is not how any of us would shop for a computer, tablet, or smartphone, but it is how a lot of the world does it. So the next time you think someone is crazy for not recognizing how much better “X is than Y” remember that you probably couldn’t tell a home improvement expert a damn thing about why you bought your hammer, it was just the first one you saw at a decent price. And you know what? Even though it’s not the best hammer, it totally works for what you need, and that’s all you need.

People who don’t buy the best computer/phone, or even the best device for the price, are not unusual and they’re certainly not acting irrationally. They just have different priorities than we do, and sometimes that’s easy to forget. So by all means, help the non-techies in your life make the best decisions possible, but don’t be offended if they choose something different than you’d expect.

I know that people shop this way, but I have a hard time remembering that when I see someone with a product that I would never even consider purchasing. It just runs counter to the way my brain thinks about shopping. But it would be wise for myself and anyone else that thinks similarly to take Matt’s advice. No one should be thought of as foolish for buying an inferior product and those of us that take the time, should share the knowledge we gain to gently nudge those around us toward the best purchasing decisions possible.