I have an older pair of Plantronics headphones (from 2018) and honestly there’s nothing wrong with them. They still sound good. I replaced the earpads maybe 6 months ago because the originals wore out and split open. But now they’re as good as new.
The only reason I think of upgrading to something more current is because they charge with the old school micro USB (the kind that has 2 pins on one side) and everything else I own charges with USB C. It’s annoying that I have to keep an old school micro USB cable because that’s the only way to charge the headphones but it feels like a waste to get rid of them and upgrade to something with a USB C charging port.
What should I do? Quit whining and get rid of the Plantronics for something current? Or should I just ride with the Plantronics until the wheels fall off?
I have a pair of Plantronics 8200UCs that I very recently bought pads for. The first set lasted me since October 2021, so I should be good for a while again. They sound pretty good for music, support multipoint (multiple devices pairing) and aptX HD, have a dongle for teams certification, they support sidetone, their voice feedback is fantastic (muted prompts, etc), and have good physical controls (power switch, dedicated mute button, play/pause, ff/rw, volume, answer/hang up, etc). I wish they had a slightly better microphone and better ANC, but they largely get the job done.
I went down the headphone rabbit hole this holiday season and other than better ANC and transparency mode, which the 8200s lack completely, it turns out that I really wasn’t missing out on much.
So: keep them, unless there’s a very specific reason to ditch them.