Why Wires Beat Wireless Every Time

Wireless gadgets might seem freeing, but they can be less reliable, way less repairable, and put you at the mercy of software in a way that wires never will. In short, wired is definitely not tired, and wireless, once we actually look at all its downsides, isn’t even that much more convenient. 

Take headphones, which are a very popular wireless option, and for good reason. From AirPods-like buds to big on-ear Bluetooth cans, wireless means no tangles. There’s no need to run a cable under your t-shirt, and no need to coil up the cable when you’re done. And yet, like many other wireless options, the sacrifices made for this convenience are huge, environmentally, functionally, and financially. And as we shall see, even those perceived conveniences come with their own hassles. 

Bluetooth Earbuds: Unrepairable, Unrecyclable, Unreliable

Let’s stick with headphones, as they embody so many of the problems of wireless tech. 

First, and probably the biggest issue, is batteries. Wired headphones, even the biggest, fanciest ones costing thousands of dollars, don’t need their own power. They’re so sensitive that they are driven by nothing but the audio signal coming down the line. But as soon as you add Bluetooth to the mix, you need to power transmitters, receivers, a computer to do the digital-to-analog, and analog-to-digital conversions, and to control buttons, microphones, noise-canceling, and more. 

If you’re using AirPods Pro, then those batteries are pretty much stuck inside for good. Replacing them requires a special jig to hold the earbud in place, a heat gun to melt the glue, and a soldering iron to desolder the contacts—then you’ve got to get the thing back together. Because the batteries are so tricky to get out, essentially no electronics recyclers will take AirPods. This renders your $200+ headphones disposable. Sales representatives for all kinds of earbuds at CES this year said that their companies have no plan for replacing batteries.  For comparison, I have a pair of old Sony wired earbuds which I bought like 15 years ago, and they’re still going strong today. Even something like Fairphone’s Fairbuds, which have easily-replaceable batteries in both the buds and the charging case, still creates e-waste every time you switch batteries. And you have to charge them, which is electricity used—and carbon produced—that just isn’t needed for wired headphones.

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Wireless headphones are also lacking in other ways. Bluetooth has gotten better, but in most cases your audio signal will end up sounding worse than it would over analog wires, and there’s one even more obvious drawback—latency. Because the audio has to be converted, beamed to the headphones, and then converted back to audio, you get a delay. It’s smaller than it used to be, but it still makes playing games feel laggy, and makes it impossible to use Bluetooth to make music. The delay between pressing a piano key and hearing the note is just too disconcerting. 

There are zero-latency RF wireless options, as used at music concerts, but these still need charging, and can suffer from radio interference.

Wireless Charging Is Lossy and Degrades Batteries

And while we’re on the subject of charging, let’s think about so-called “wireless” charging in general. When you slap your phone onto a Qi charging pad, it’s not really wireless—you still have run a cable from the pad to the charger. And instead of just picking up the phone to use while it charges, you have to pick up the phone and the charging pad, and keep them together. 

Then, inductive charging wastes energy. We measured wireless chargers using anywhere from 1.3-3x the amount of energy as wired when charging a phone. That waste energy ends up as heat. Charging hot batteries is a great way to reduce their service life. All the wireless chargers we tested kept the battery well above 30℃ while charging—and according to Battery University, keeping batteries above that threshold for an extended time “can be more stressful than cycling.” 

Wireless charging is also less reliable. Ever woken up to an almost-dead phone because you didn’t line it up properly on the Qi puck? That never happens with USB-C or Lightning (as long as your port is clean). 

Wired Stuff Will Stand the Test of Time

If you happen to have a pair of old headphones around, from the 1970s say, or earlier, then guess what? They’re still 100% compatible with modern audio gear. You can even plug them into the proprietary Lightning port on an iPhone with a simple dongle. The mono quarter-inch jack goes back to the dawn of the telephone system, where the operators used them to patch calls at the exchange. It’s the same jack used for electric guitars, and most electronic audio gear.

In all its variants—mono, stereo, and more recently, tip-ring-ring-sleeve (TRRS), which accommodates a microphone signal)—the quarter-inch jack is robust, reliable, and dead simple. The 3.5mm mini-jack version that we’re used to on most headphones and line-level speakers today is a little less robust, but still way more robust than a wireless connection. Even if your Bluetooth headphones could last as long as a simpler wired pair, they may eventually lose compatibility. Perhaps we switch to a new codec that is not supported on your old buds. Or maybe Apple just ditches its current auto-switching tech for something better, and leaves old AirPods hanging.

It can happen. AirPlay 2, Apple’s Wi-Fi-based audio streaming protocol is not backwards-compatible with AirPlay, in that older devices cannot be updated to the newer version. That’s a road to yet more e-waste right there. Wired headphones will also never receive a firmware update that removes or degrades a feature you paid for.

Wireless tech in general is also a lot less reliable. Wi-Fi can slow down, or just stop working until you restart it on your computer or the router. Ethernet always just works. The same with an audio cable. I have lost count of the times I switch a podcast or music to the little kitchen HomePod, and it decides not to connect. Or it suddenly stops streaming, mid-breakfast. 

Bluetooth MIDI is generally better than audio in terms of reliability and latency, but it’s definitely not as bulletproof as running MIDI cables. The same with wired and wireless security cameras (that Wi-Fi jammer won’t work on Ethernet cameras), and when was the last time you flipped the light switch on your wall and it didn’t just work (not counting power outages)? The answer is probably “never,” which is definitely not the case for even Matter– and Thread-based smart-home gadgets.

In short, if you plug in a wire, it’s going to work first time, and keep working. And if it doesn’t…?

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Cables

Some common and uncommon cables used with computers and in the home.

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Repairing Wires Is Simple

Let’s get to the iFixitest part of this story—repairability. What do you do if you snag a headphone cable, say, and yank it out of the earcup? Or a jack socket gets loose in its mount?

You can fix it, that’s what. Now, it’s totally possible to repair electronics, as the entire iFixit site will show you. But it’s a lot easier to solder a simple cable than it is to remove, find a spare part for, and replace a wireless radio in a device. Repairing jack cables is trivial if you have a soldering iron. This extends to wires inside your gadgets. You can locate a bad monitor ribbon cable and replace it (or even repair it) more cheaply than replacing the wireless radio, for example (although a good, repairable laptop will have an easily-swappable Wi-Fi module). 

Wires definitely have their downsides. They snag, tangle, and break, and you never have to cable-manage a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. On the other hand, a wired keyboard never has to be charged, and you troubleshoot BIOS problems with a computer—which is often impossible with a Bluetooth keyboard. 

It’s easy to be seduced by the convenience of wireless tech, but wires are even more convenient, just in less obvious ways. And the wired option is almost always cheaper than wireless, both in the short term (the purchase price), and the long term, where wired tech just keeps on trucking.