Review: The Cheapest USB-C Headphones I Could Find
gadget headphones review usb-c · 4 comments · 550 words · read ~336 times.
Ever since phone manufacturers killed off the headphone jack, there has been an epidemic of people blasting sounds from their shitty speakers in public. Music, TikTok, phone calls - it seems some people want the whole world to share their sonic experience.
Forget that noise! I have a passive-aggressive death-wish and want to hand out free headphones to people annoying me on public transport.
Time for our-lord-and-saviour USB-C0! With Apple finally succumbing to the inevitable1 it should be possible to have a modern pair of headphones which works on every device. Progress!
I bought the cheapest USB-C headphones I could find from AliExpress. Total cost was about £2 after tax - I also bought some other bobbins to get free shipping.
Here they are:
No, these aren't the weird USB-C headphones which somehow require Bluetooth - they're plain USB-C.
They worked in every Android phone I tried. From the Pixel 8 Pro to whatever cheap devices I had laying around.
Now, I know what you're thinking, the Sainted iPhone would never allow itself to be sullied by such a cheap and nasty 3rd party device. Right?
Steve Jobs must be rolling in his grave! Sound played perfectly though them - thanks Apple Corps!
(And thank you Pabs for lending me your iPhone.)
Sound quality
Good enough for listening to shitty music on a bus. Look, for two quid you aren't getting audiophile aural perfection. Bass was thumpy, stereo separation was fine, no background hiss. They didn't completely block out any outside sound and were a little bit leaky. But still a hell of a lot better than playing tunes out loud from your phone.
There's even a little control box with clicky buttons for changing the volume and play/pause. And, yes, they even worked on the iPhone. I could raise and lower the volume. Spotify worked with the play/pause button. It even hung up the phone when I pressed the button.
Wait... phone?
Microphone
Oh! And there's also a microphone in the control box. Here's the voice quality:
🎤 Terence Eden
Basically fine for a phone call.
Linux Compatibility
I plugged them in to a Linux laptop and they were instantly detected as: 001f:0b21 Generic AB13X USB Audio
Playback worked. Microphone worked. Volume and play buttons worked. Nice2!
Verdict
For £2? Perfect. I'd love it if these came in little branded envelopes with a suitably snarky message on them. Sell them as "Shush your noise" brand, charge a fiver, watch them fly off the shelves to enraged commuters.
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While you can get Bluetooth earbuds at a similar price, I've no desire to teach the great unwashed how to pair them. ↩︎
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I know you were expecting a cheap joke about recompiling kernels - but modern Linux and USB-C work perfectly. ↩︎
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@blog I love the phrase “I have a passive-aggressive death-wish” and it's sadly very true.
I see they do have Lightning socketed ones too, and am genuinely tempted to buy quite a few.
@blog I still have a phone with a headphone jack, but its getting harder, particularly if Lineage OS compatibility is desired.
But this opens up some options!
I've kept my decent quality Sennheiser and monster sports earphones going by repeatedly cutting them off above the controller -- only 2 wires to deal with each side -- and soldering onto the bottom part of cheapo earphones such as you bought (well, not that cheap).
Looks like I have the option of switching them to usb-c too!
Thanks.
@Edent I’m reading this sat at a train platform, there’s a guy opposite disrupting the peace by playing shitty music on his phone. I wonder if he’d appreciate being handed some cheap headphones?
I've often dreamed of handing headphones to people playing their shitty phone-based noises out loud, but never taken it beyond a dream. Terence Eden could be living the dream with his two quid shitty earphones.
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