It’s hard now. I just need a pair of wired earbuds (not IEM’s! I don’t want to carry those around with me for washing dishes :p)
I bought a pair of what I thought were urBeats 3 on eBay which turned out to be counterfeit. Upon further research, those are quite rare to find brand new anyway, so that’s a bust.
I’m easily impressed. I’ll freely admit that. I just need something that’ll get the job done, but not sound like crap while their at it
These dumb things from Monoprice: https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=13801
They’re super cheap so I’m never worried about anything happening to them. Build quality is good: I don’t know how long I’ve had min,e, but definitely since before the pandemic. The flat cable is nearly impossible to knot. The sound quality is certainly not audiophile level, but it’s not the terrible tinny mess you’d expect at that price point. It has a microphone built-in that I have never used. The metal bits can get cold so I usually hold them in my hands for a few seconds before putting them in.
If in-ear isn’t a requirement, the Koss KSC75 is great. I was looking for something to wear while laying on my side, and I’m not a big fan of shoving things in my ears. For $20 the sound quality is waaaay better than I was expecting. These things are super comfortable.