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These 1,000 yen Daiso earbuds taught my child to shop with logic.

By on March 12, 2023

 

My 8-year old daughter Dana came up to me to ask if she could get a pair of AirPods.

“Almost all the kids in my school own one,” she adds.

AirPods 2 costs around 19,800 yen and the latest AirPods 3 that comes with a MagSafe charging case is 28,800 yen.

I am not buckling under pressure to get her any of these expensive items. So I said ‘no’ but assured her that I will be looking into cheaper options. It’s probably in my DNA that I am frugal with my children. It’s for their own good.

Determined to to turn this opportunity into a teachable moment on spending, I borrowed a friend’s AirPods and laid them on a table with a pair of bluetooth ear pods I got at Daiso.

“Dana, get your laptop and let’s try these earphones,” I told my daughter.

“There’s no point throwing away 19,800 yen at something that will eventually lose its ability to charge,” I added.

I explained to her further that with constant charging, the battery life of both AirPods and Daiso earbuds is finite. Even if they don’t physically break, they will eventually die in two to three years. This is because they are both made from lithium-ion.

Some parents associate low price with poor  quality. That is not always the case. The latest 3rd Generation AirPods claiming to be sweat resistant, have a better battery life, better sound, and better fit are reported to be not selling well and might even be discontinued.

One reason parents buy their children AirPods is not because it is superior to others. They want their children to be seen as ‘cool’ for belonging to a particular cult following. That defeats the purpose of why people are buying an item in the first place.

What Dana needs is a pair of earbuds with a decent sound and basic functions. After testing this pair of 1,000 yen wireless buds, Dana gets it and is happy to use her brand new Daiso earbuds.

I still don’t understand why others are scared off by cheap earphones. There is really no big difference in terms of sound quality.

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This Daiso wireless earbuds that came out in Spring of 2021 features 12 hours of playback time, and uses Bluetooth 5.0 version. In tech lingo, the version simply means higher bandwidth. The Bluetooth 4.2 version can transmit data at 1 Mbps but at twice faster speed with Bluetooth 5.0. Bluetooth 4.2 can stay connected to a device up to a maximum distance of 60 meters. That distance is four times longer (240 meters) with Bluetooth 5.0.

The full charge for the case is 9 hours and only 3 hours for the earbuds. They turn on with a soft 2-sec long tap on the flat surface of the ear piece and turn off with a longer 5-sec tap.

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The main drawback here is that it talks in Japanese and there’s no option to change that into English. Every time you wear them:  Dengen ga hairimashita (power was turned on).  “Setsuzoku wa kanryou shimashita” (The ear buds have been connected.); Hikari gawa channeru (you are wearing the left) Migi gawa channeru (you are wearing the right) juuden shite kudasai (please charge your earbuds) dengen o kirimashita (power was turned off).

For some people, the actual size of the earbuds that are supposed to sit well in the ear canal may be a concern. These earbuds can not be tried at the store so you will just have to take your chances.  Luckily for my daughter, they don’t fall off.

Frugal parenting isn’t about penny pinching. It is about teaching kids the value of logic in assessing whether money is spent well. Learning this early in life can be to their advantage.

 

 

About Tim Dorothy