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?
I can recommend trying shitty ones. I bought a couple of pairs of Temu and the clicky buttons are cheaper than capacitive touch, so I have two pairs that are easily pressed with gloved or in my case my shoulder when cooking or cleaning. They make a loudish click in my ear when I press the button, but it is not that bad.
A second and possibly worse option is to get wrap around earbuds, the kind that go behind the head. They tend to have buttons on the ear or just behind but still tend to be physical buttons most of the time.
Even mediocre Beets earbuds have physical “click panels”. I’ve used mine in the Upper Peninsula at -18F with gloves, hood, and ear covers.
By “click panels” do you mean basically clicky buttons? Or is it the kind of buttons where you can click on the left part and click on the right part?
The ones I have right now (Jabra) have a clicky button on the right, which is fine. But, the one on the left has a “click on the left side to do X, and click on the right side to do Y” setup. That one just doesn’t work with mittens on for me. I can find the ear button and click it through multiple layers, but I can’t manage to click on the right part of it. That means if I’m trying to say raise the volume, it’s a 50/50 chance whether I’ll raise it or lower it.
The jabra set I have (I think elite 10?) Has one clicky button on each and can be adjusted to change what clicks do. One click pause, two clicks forward 1 min, hold right volume up, hold left volume down. Not sure it would work for you but can’t think of better. You might be able to do voice controls. I think some new models have head tracking that maybe could do functions? I’ve never looked into it.
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.
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.
Hmm, that’s a reason to avoid them then. Who knows what will happen to their customer support if they stop selling earbuds.
Well earbuds are just a small portion of their business. I don’t think they will lose full support
The ends of both earbuds are a singular panel that clicks. Click once to fo “A”, double click for “B”, etc.
I set mine up so a single click will start/stop media. It will also answer or close phone calls.
Nice, that’s probably usable with gloves or mittens.
Thanks, those are definitely options worth considering.
If nothing else, if I get a cheap pair then find a good set, I’ll have a backup in case I lose the better ones.
Circumvent the whole issue with speaking to the assistant. Siri may be a moron but it works quite well in this application on AirPods. The AirPods Pro 2 are some of the best you can buy. They’re excellent.
I have to shovel snow plenty in the winter here an I just tell it to play, pause, volume up, etc. Doesn’t miss a beat and I’m not taking my mittens off.
Nah, not going to do that. I really hate the voice assistant and never use it. Glad it works for you, but it’s not for me.
You can get little Bluetooth media remotes, maybe that would help?
There’s a bunch of types but as an example https://a.aliexpress.com/_mMaANmb
Wow, thanks for the link. I haven’t seen one that cheap before. I was looking at a more expensive name-brand one but it’s like 10x more expensive. The one you suggested is cheap enough that I can take a shot and see if it’s something that might work.
Hey, I believe Sony has some open earbuds that you touch your face instead of the bud to do stuff. Maybe take a look?
Um… like you boop your own nose to skip forward?
I found an article about them. Apparently they sense vibrations, so you need to tap near them.
I don’t think I’ll go with those, I don’t want open ear designs, I want something that can block traffic sounds. I also worry that something that is vibration sensitive would be confused by the movement of a hat or scarf in winter. And since they’re Sony, they’re way too expensive to buy just to see if they maybe work.
Thanks though, if nothing else, it’s interesting to know about new technologies they’re using.
Glad I could help
I have several pairs of anker earbuds, one wireless and one semi wireless (connected to each other, not the device). They either have a little control panel/remote with buttons connected, or you can tap the top or bottom of the bud with a bit of pressure to change certain things (next song/volume, ect)
Is the control panel wired to the buds? One solution I’ve considered is getting a small remote that I could keep inside my glove, but if it’s wired I don’t think that would work.
If you know what model they are I’d be interested in learning more.
It was attached, and they ate a few years old, and I don’t see them anywhere on their website. They are similar to these ones but not exactly what you are looking for. Good luck searching
