Wait, What? Wired!?

Yes, I know it’s 2022 and wireless earbuds tend to have a decent battery life, but I still like to carry a spare wired set in case my wireless earbuds run out of juice.

As someone who often relies on public transport, having a spare wired set of earbuds saved me on a number of occasions.

Over the past few years, I tested many wireless earbuds and audio devices, but the one area that I haven’t concentrated on is wired earbuds. I mean, you can pick up some pretty good deals with wireless earbuds.

Take the SoundPeats Free2Classic as an example, you can usually buy them for under £25 and they sound really good and are extremely comfortable to wear. 

I initially received these earbuds with my Samsung Galaxy Note 10, back in the day when smartphone manufacturers included accessories and chargers inside of the box and I kept these as my standby earbuds ever since.

Back in the day, Samsung, like many brands, used to include wired earbuds with their phones. In this case, it was the standard at the time AKG USB-C earbuds.

AKG is a pretty decent manufacturer of audio products which is actually part of an even bigger audio brand called Harman. As of 2017, Harman was bought by Samsung which is one of the reasons Samsung decided to include AKG earbuds with their phones.

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But Why These and Not Others?

In my opinion, there are two pairs of wired earbuds that truly deserve recognition today. These are the Apple EarPods and the Samsung, AKG earbuds. Both of these were at one point included with phones and they are still going strong today.

The truth of the matter is that I still own a pair of Apple EarPods and they still sound great. But for me, the problem is that the Samsung equivalent simply feels a lot more comfortable inside of my ears and it tends to block more noise out due to its design. But sound quality-wise, both still sound incredible. 

Let’s not forget that these aren’t the only wired earbuds that are and were manufactured back in the day. There are many decent sets still being manufactured to this day, but I’m not covering them in this article mainly because I haven’t tried them and secondly because of the price of these. They were effectively being given away free of charge with phones.

They’re also not that expensive to buy, with the lightning version of the EarPods being sold at £19.00 and the Samsung AKG USB-C earbuds at £24.00 (At the time of writing this article). These two models offer both value and great sound quality.

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Summary

Both the Apple and Samsung earbuds will remain my favourite wired earbuds for sound quality and affordability. But whilst the Apple EarPods still are legendary, it’s the Samsung AKG USB-C earbuds that remain my favourite allrounders due to their comfort and ability to block out more noise.

I actually ordered a set of these Samsung earbuds with a 3.5mm jack too so that I can use it with laptops and devices that don’t have USB-C. But strangely enough, they’re not labelled as AKG, but Samsung. However, they still sound good.

What are your favourite wired earbuds? Let us know in the comments down below!