One of my Airpods gave up, or the case did, I don’t know. If I pressed hard it would charge, sometimes and I muddled by but it wasn’t great. When they worked they were amazing to be sure but also expensive to replace.
In addition I was looking at getting a DAP (a iPod basically) but Apple don’t make them anymore. I miss my iPod and wanted something similar because, I tell myself, I would look at my phone less. I like the idea of devices for single purposes. So for a time I fell down that Youtube rabbit hole. But it’s expensive down there and they care a whole lot more than me about audio quality. Long story short I bought a second hand Sony NW-A55, no discontinued.

I got it for a few reasons.

• Decent battery life. > 20 hours
• It doesn’t stream.

That’s all really. It doesn’t run Android that Sony’s newer DAPs do but propriety software. Which is fine with me, I just want it to do one thing. And it does that.

The downside is the propriety cable that the newer players don’t but I can deal with that. It does do bluetooth but I got some cheap Chi-Fi IEMS(YT link) which I’m also happy with. Though, I have to remember to stop it playing when I take the earpieces out of my ears. As well, I sometimes try and adjust the volume on my iPhone.