I never need my keyboard more than 1m away from my monitor anyway, so the upside is limited.
And I had a succession of mysterious, intermittent, difficult to diagnose problems. OK, so I think I'm getting lag and dropped keystrokes. Is it RF interference on a crowded 2.4GHz band? Is plugging the dongle into the back of my PC's metal case just too challenging? Are the batteries low? Is everything fine, and I was just miskeying my password? Oh, for some reason the problem's gone away... for a few hours.
Switching back to my wired keyboard made the problems disappear.
Same here. My magic keyboard sometimes disconnects from my Mac for mysterious reasons, despite the battery being almost full. And then the idea of needing to periodically charge a stationary object which is never used without another device which gets electricity through a wire is ridiculous.
I’ve had a similar experience of weird intermittent jankyness with what seem like missed keystrokes but are just connection issues.
In addition, I also feel a big benefit of wireless keyboards got diminished with usb-c & thunderbolt. I now plug one cable for power/display/keyboard and whatever other peripherals are connected and it’s hassle free.
In 2019 I switched to a wireless headset. This year I switched back to wired. The sound quality is better, the latency is better, the weight is better, and I never need to wonder whether or not the battery is discharged.
Not having to deal with a cord is huge. I've gotten tangled in them so many times and have almost pulled laptops off tables when getting up and walking away. (ADHD means I forever forget there's a cord attached to my head.)
Granted, I'm using Apple AirPods with Apple devices... which makes the wireless experience far better than average.
Yeah, I just use AirPods these days. I don't like using a big set of headphones and I found that, on a Mac, just using a good mic and speakers usually works fine but every now and then there's echo so it's easier for everyone concerned to use the AirPods.
Even airpods with apple devices get no better than 100ms latency, with some (Apple device to Apple device!) combinations easily going over 200ms. It's nigh unusable for anything other than listening to music or recorded video.
Can’t say I agree. Headset wires are the. worst. wires. Always getting tangled, etc.
As a hard of hearing person, I need the absolute best, fastest audio I can get. After way more research than it should have taken, I ended up with the SteelSeries Arctis Pro Wireless and have been quite happy with it.
Not cheap, but for something in my critical path for literally every minute of my work, totally worth it.
I use arctis headset at work as well, had my Sony noise cancelling headphones for a while but the mic was horrible so I had work buy me the arctis which I have a set at home and knew they worked great
Having the DAC in the headset or in another box attached to the headset by a short cable shouldn’t influence the sound quality so much thanks to the recent high quality Bluetooth audio codecs.
I don't know if it's still the case, but a few years ago if your bluetooth headset had a microphone, it switched from 'A2DP' to 'HSP' which has trash audio quality.
And it would happen almost invisibly - there was no indication in the OS of what was going on.
I love the idea of wireless, but in practice I always find myself reverting back to wired after a while (for keyboard and mouse, headphones is a different story).
The pain of seeing wires is not as bad as the pain of having the battery run out every once in a while, just when you need it, and having to plug it to charge.
Maybe once batteries last for months instead of weeks I'll change my mind.
Not sure about keyboards, but Logitech mx3 mouse is great and only needs to be charged like once a month after using it nearly all day every day. Also super ergonomic and works on any surface
I have the mx 3s along with the mechanic keyboard, one set each for work and one for home... Extremely stable connection with the bolt receiver, also works with well if I take the laptop home or with my phone if I connect it to my monitor (Dex)
I already have USB-C charging cables due to the phone on either desk, so I just connect it to whichever runs low every few weeks (or months) and keep on using them.
It also works just while plugged in so there is no downtime. I feel like I charge it couple times a year by any random usb-c that is on my table at the moment while I keep using it.
Even if it didn't, it takes maybe 1-2 minutes to charge for the rest of the day so there is no disruption.
The only wireless keyboard I have is the one for controlling the media computer from the couch. For everything else, portability is not a benefit, and wireless connection are just another failure mode.
Well, I'm blind and when working from home, wireless keyboards allow for leaving the laptop aside and taking whatever position on the sofa I find the most comfortable at the moment. Not applicable for everyone, ofc.
On the other hand, accessibility sound has very bad latency with all wireless headsets that I've tried so far.
Batteries require special effort to recycle, also a chore to replace them every now and then. It just generates waste for no reason.
I know my contribution is negligible, but I still feel better not buying things that work on batteries, when possible. Quite frustratingly, this turns out to be quite hard / very limited in choice of design options. Here are some things that appeared quite hard to find w/o batteries:
* Alarm clock.
* Cooking thermometer.
* Cooking scales.
Eventually, I did find those, but I had to hunt them down, weeding through countless alternatives with batteries.
Things like angle grinder and impact driver also gave me some headache. Oh, and there's also pulseox and sphygmomanometer. You can sort of see how a version that works on batteries would be useful... but for a lot of people there's no need for the battery-powered version. But those become increasingly hard to find.
For disposable batteries (AA, AAA, etc) I use rechargeable non-Lithium batteries and they’ve lasted over a full decade. Found some that I had lost years ago; recharged them back to full and they worked fine. Can’t say whether they lost any capacity yet, but it’s nice to know I can reduce so much waste without limiting my purchasing as much.
Are you talking about a device that is powered by the wall outlet but has a backup battery that is only used to preserve the time setting in case of a power outage?
Nah. I wanted a mechanical one. The one you have to wind by hand.
But, yeah, you reminded me of another thing I forgot to mention: the "hybrids". Devices that can be plugged into the wall and also use battery. A lot of these work by using the battery all the time and charging it while plugged. Which obviously significantly reduces battery life.
My work laptop is like that (some Dell Experion model). After two years I had to throw the battery away (and now only use it when plugged into the wall). A bunch of cell phones are like that too. Bet there's more of that.
Most of these justifications/complaints against wireless don't resonate with me. My wireless keyboard runs on 2 standard batteries (AA or AAA, I can't remember which and am AFK). I must replace them about every year, it's a very short process, and I use rechargeables. I replaced my keyboard earlier this year due to water damage, so the batteries have outlasted the keyboard (which was about 7 years old). I admit, I don't use a mechanical keyboard (I use a Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic) but is all of the above simplicity and commodity battery stuff impossible in the mechanical space? I get the impression they're eminently possible, as long as you don't have to power lots of rgb lights, etc.
As for a negative that specifically resonates, but not fundamentally so: AFAIK, I cannot tinker with the firmware on my wireless keyboard. The real negative IMO, is that rarely, keys become unresponsive for 3 seconds (presumably due to wireless connectivity drop). It's annoying, but losing 3 seconds of work is manageable to say the least, and it's not frustrating as long as it's rare -- and I don't use it for gaming.
On the whole, quite positive for wireless keyboards such as mine. A wireless mouse is a similar story. Wireless headsets/microphones are totally different, as low-latency high-quality audio codecs are relatively new in Bluetooth.
I loved the Microsoft sculpt until the connection started glitching sporadically. Even if you only lose connection for 10 microseconds every so often, it feels so disruptive to a workflow.
If it was more frequent, I would finally resign myself to spending a ton extra to get the same ergonomics with a wired keyboard -- it just feels like a waste right now, for how rarely and minorly disruptive it is for me, on my unit at least. It's nice to be happy and productive with commodity equipment.
But if my current keyboard had a wired option, I would get it -- not for any of the reasons listed in the article, though. Just to eliminate the already rare connectivity drops.
Bluetooth and AAA batteries also are industry standard and user replaceable. The 2nd gen Apple Wireless keyboard had a brilliant design to accomodate them (https://tech-rachat.com/1509-large_default/clavier-apple-mag...), and 15 years later you can still see them in the wild, working like day one.
Ha, I still use that as my “backup” keyboard at work. Came with the 21” iMac my parents bought in 2010. Sometimes you just need a break from the key travel of a mechanical.
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I never need my keyboard more than 1m away from my monitor anyway, so the upside is limited.
And I had a succession of mysterious, intermittent, difficult to diagnose problems. OK, so I think I'm getting lag and dropped keystrokes. Is it RF interference on a crowded 2.4GHz band? Is plugging the dongle into the back of my PC's metal case just too challenging? Are the batteries low? Is everything fine, and I was just miskeying my password? Oh, for some reason the problem's gone away... for a few hours.
Switching back to my wired keyboard made the problems disappear.
In addition, I also feel a big benefit of wireless keyboards got diminished with usb-c & thunderbolt. I now plug one cable for power/display/keyboard and whatever other peripherals are connected and it’s hassle free.
(Still use wireless mouse though)
Some things just don't need to be wireless.
Headsets are the one area I disagree on. :)
Not having to deal with a cord is huge. I've gotten tangled in them so many times and have almost pulled laptops off tables when getting up and walking away. (ADHD means I forever forget there's a cord attached to my head.)
Granted, I'm using Apple AirPods with Apple devices... which makes the wireless experience far better than average.
That explains it I guess. Most of us don't have ADHD so it isn't a problem for us
As a hard of hearing person, I need the absolute best, fastest audio I can get. After way more research than it should have taken, I ended up with the SteelSeries Arctis Pro Wireless and have been quite happy with it.
Not cheap, but for something in my critical path for literally every minute of my work, totally worth it.
Had the same issue before discovering flat cables (if you don't know what I mean, they look like linguine, not spaghetti).
And it would happen almost invisibly - there was no indication in the OS of what was going on.
Maybe it's better now?
The pain of seeing wires is not as bad as the pain of having the battery run out every once in a while, just when you need it, and having to plug it to charge.
Maybe once batteries last for months instead of weeks I'll change my mind.
On the other hand, accessibility sound has very bad latency with all wireless headsets that I've tried so far.
I know my contribution is negligible, but I still feel better not buying things that work on batteries, when possible. Quite frustratingly, this turns out to be quite hard / very limited in choice of design options. Here are some things that appeared quite hard to find w/o batteries:
* Alarm clock.
* Cooking thermometer.
* Cooking scales.
Eventually, I did find those, but I had to hunt them down, weeding through countless alternatives with batteries.
Things like angle grinder and impact driver also gave me some headache. Oh, and there's also pulseox and sphygmomanometer. You can sort of see how a version that works on batteries would be useful... but for a lot of people there's no need for the battery-powered version. But those become increasingly hard to find.
Are you talking about a device that is powered by the wall outlet but has a backup battery that is only used to preserve the time setting in case of a power outage?
But, yeah, you reminded me of another thing I forgot to mention: the "hybrids". Devices that can be plugged into the wall and also use battery. A lot of these work by using the battery all the time and charging it while plugged. Which obviously significantly reduces battery life.
My work laptop is like that (some Dell Experion model). After two years I had to throw the battery away (and now only use it when plugged into the wall). A bunch of cell phones are like that too. Bet there's more of that.
As for a negative that specifically resonates, but not fundamentally so: AFAIK, I cannot tinker with the firmware on my wireless keyboard. The real negative IMO, is that rarely, keys become unresponsive for 3 seconds (presumably due to wireless connectivity drop). It's annoying, but losing 3 seconds of work is manageable to say the least, and it's not frustrating as long as it's rare -- and I don't use it for gaming.
On the whole, quite positive for wireless keyboards such as mine. A wireless mouse is a similar story. Wireless headsets/microphones are totally different, as low-latency high-quality audio codecs are relatively new in Bluetooth.
But if my current keyboard had a wired option, I would get it -- not for any of the reasons listed in the article, though. Just to eliminate the already rare connectivity drops.
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