I lost my AirPods and I just refuse to pay to buy new ones. The latest 3rd generation AirPods, which are fantastic! I checked them! — from $169. The older 2nd generation version is $120 (yes, there are sometimes deals online). These prices are not ridiculous; After all, they are luxury products, and the price is in line with other high-quality wireless headphones.
However, I just don’t want to pay $169 for headphones. I would rather pay much, much less. Let’s say… $20, maybe $25? I don’t think I need to explain myself here. I wish I had more money in my pocket. This seems quite reasonable.
And yes, I am perfectly willing to settle for quality. Apple AirPods have spatial audio with Dolby Atmos, a great feature pairing, and long battery life. I don’t expect a $20 set to achieve all of that, but I want something that is perfectly decent.
Fortunately, Amazon has an amazing range of cheap AirPod-looking wireless headphones available. They have weird brands you’ve never heard of, and the prices seem arbitrary (and there’s often a coupon on Amazon, which makes them even more confusing). I made it a point to try them out to find out which one suits my needs: cheap, but still usable.
I tried five different anonymous brand white earbuds, or as I like to call them, ShitPods.
My criteria for selecting which five of the many options were:
• It had to look like an AirPod. I skipped out on differently colored or shaped headphones that might have been fine.
• Price point below $25.
• Lots of comments and a good or high rating. (Yes, this is playable, but at least it’s a start.)
• Free shipping and returns through Amazon Prime.
But first, two big disclaimers:
1) I mostly use headphones to listen to podcasts and audiobooks. Music quality is not my main concern. If you’re an audiophile or music is your passion, you should probably spend more money on better headphones. I also use them for phone calls, so microphone quality (the person on the other end of the phone should be able to hear me just fine) is important to me.
2) All of these were available on Amazon, but when I tried them for a month, two of the original five listings were already gone. This is because Amazon’s marketplace for cheap electronics is a funhouse of hypercapitalist accelerationism, as New York magazine’s John Herrman illustrated in his recent article “The scrapping of Amazon.” There are weird fake brand names like “CXK” or “Raviad”. Reviews are often misleading or false sellers are often not the manufacturer and prices are constantly changing. It is possible that if you read this a few months after it was published, the product links will have changed again.
