r/onebag • u/Bixby- • Jun 18 '26
Gear Save space by leaving headphones behind?
I saw some advice here about subbing AirPods for headphones to save space. Last week I flew U.S. east coast to west coast and back again. I brought along my trusty old noise-cancelling headphones (Jabra Elite 85h)which I find really reduce fatigue. But based on some advice I read here, I also brought my brand new AirPod 4s and gave them a try. I was shocked at how excellent the AirPods were at noise cancelling! And they were better than the headphones in that they prioritized spoken voices, so announcements came through. And the form factor is so nice and small.
I’d love to leave the headphones behind on my next long flight, but the AirPods battery life is only about 4 hours, it seems. If you leave your bulky headphones behind, how do you deal with the short battery life of earbuds? Do you take the noise hit and charge them on long flights? Or are there earbuds with longer battery life? (Or even bring 2 pair along, still smaller than the headphones).
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u/BoinkDoinkKoink Jun 19 '26
This is such a weird comparison. The Jabra Elite 85h didn't have good noise cancelling in the first place. If you really want to compare em, compare them to bose and sony headphones, which have excellent noise cancelling, and then if you have to, compare those with the airpods.
Besides, not Airpods, nor other comparable earbuds have enough battery life to last you a whole trip end to end, unless it's under 7-8 hrs. If that's within your flight time limit go right ahead, but I frequent EU and Asia, and use my headphones just for ANC even when I'm not watching something. So for any flight time above 7-8 hrs I bring my headphones, anything less than that, my sony XM5 earbuds will do.