The user finds the touch controls on the Soundcore AeroFit 2 too sensitive, leading to accidental triggers when brushing against them, especially during side sleeping or arm movements.
I've been using cheap wired headphones and wanted to switch to some Bluetooth earbuds for a while now. I couldn't find any because I find earbuds with rubber tips incredibly uncomfortable and I don't trust a piece of plastic to just stay in my ear without falling out. My use-case for the earbuds is watching movies or series on my phone in my bed or listening to music on the train on my way to work. I also plan to use them while jogging in the coming spring, so they should sit securely on my ears. I am also not willing to compromise on comfort, as that would not be a problem with the wired earphones I've been using until now. I don't want ANC etc. because I want to hear my surroundings. I think something with the speaker-tip of the wired Apple EarPods or similar, but with an ear-hook would be perfect, but I haven't yet found something quite like that. I noticed quite a few open-ear earbuds have been released now, which seem to fit my use-case, so I tried some of them out: * Soundcore AeroFit 2 * JBL Soundgear Sense * Shokz OpenFit 2+ * Baseus Inspire XC1 JBL Soundgear Sense: Sound was good, the speaker is quite big. I decided against these as soon as I put them on. They did not fit my ears as the hook-piece is quite hard and pressed against the back of my ears. Other ear-shapes may not have this problem, though two members of my family said the same thing when trying them on. Baseus Inspire XC1: Sound was good. My problem here was, that they did not feel secure. While putting on the hood of my jacket I noticed they can fall out of my ears quite easily. With that, I decided against these. Soundcore AeroFit 2: Fit is good, though all parts that touch the ear are plastic and therefore may be a little tiny bit slippery. You can adjust the position of the speaker with which you can make the fit a bit more secure. This way you can also adjust the volume a bit by placing the speaker a little farther away from your ear hole. The case has a white LED bar which shrinks when the charging level of the buds drops. Sound is good, no adjustments needed. The earbuds have touch controls. Every input action is fully customizable which I really like, because I did not like the default settings here. The main problem I encountered was that the touch is too sensitive. If I put an arm up or lie in a bed on my back with one arm behind my head, such that the arm loosely brushes against the earbud, then the touch controls instantly trigger, maybe multiple times, which is quite annoying. Also, the app itself is about 500MB big, which is unreasonable bloat. My guess is that their AI-assistant thing is included in the app binary, but I don't need it and absolutely don't want it. They should make it an optional download or so. The decision between these and the Shokz OpenFit 2+ was hard. Shokz OpenFit 2+: Fit is good. The silicon covering feels good. The earbuds just sit perfectly outside of the ear, so the ear hole is completely free, solving any discomfort inside the ear. They might also get less dirty over time because of this, but I can't prove that. The case features an LED which shines green or orange depending on the charging level of the case and buds. Sound is good, though not as good as Soundcore AeroFit 2 out of the box. With the EQ settings I found [here on Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/shokz/comments/1kteq1a/those_that_wear_shokz_openrun_pro_2_try_this_eq/) they sounded comparable enough to the Soundcore AeroFit 2 in my humble opinion. These earbuds feature button controls, which is a plus for me. The controls are only partly customizable, which makes me a bit angry. For some reason you can only set input-actions in pairs for both earbuds and not all actions can be mapped to all inputs. I cannot think of a reason for why they did this. Don't they have 8 bytes to save those settings somewhere in the earbuds? At least the default settings are mostly usable for me. The app is about 50MB which is fine I guess. Another problem I found is that when I decrease the volume to 0 I get an irritating DunDun sound, which I think is stupid. I want them off in that moment, so why do they play a relatively loud sound here? I couldn't find whether I can turn this off. Conclusion: I bought all of those earbuds with the intention of returning them if I don't like any of these. JBL Soundgear Sense hurt my hears and Baseus Inspire XC1 did not fit securely. In the end I decided to keep the Shokz OpenFit 2+ over the Soundcore AeroFit 2. The Shokz seemed to stay in place a bit better, the buttons were a lot better than the touch controls (I want to support products with button controls) and the app size is a lot smaller. I still have my gripes with the Shokz, but those should be fixable (though I won't count on that, because companies be companies). I've been using them for the last few months now and I like them. I often read online stuff like "audio quality is not the priority for these headphones" or "you can't expect good sound with open-ear headphones" and I think those statements are wrong, because they make it seem like open-ear headphones sound like shit, which they don't. ANC is not a factor here, because those earphones are built for a completely different use-case. I don't need or want ANC. Of course when it's windy or a train passes by I will hear it and it may overshadow my music in that moment, but that's a tradeoff I **want** to make. Sound-Quality-wise I compare the earbuds with my Sennheiser Game One. For an audio-normie like me any of the earbuds I've tried here sound fine (and a lot better than cheap 15€ headphones from Amazon). They even have a bit bass which others said they don't! I hope this short review/comparison may help some poor soul in a similar situation to mine.