World is on path of escalation.

They held 8.5 to 9.5 range for just about 1 year. Before and after it was 16-20% range.

Source: https://base.garant.ru/10180094/

There are valid concerns of economic overheating from huge internal investments.

Russia is experiencing standard consequences of rapid economic expansion: salaries are rising up, labor market is constrained.

One negative point is high interest rates, which are held high to slow down economic expansion.

Sanctions have impact, but the impact is falling very far from expectations.

Chinese currency took 53.6% of all Russian trade in May of this year.

Compare this with just 1% 2 and a half years ago in the beginning of 2022.

Russian financial system is already prepared for this scenario and absolutely no serious impact is expected to occur.

These events (sanctions and switch in trade) will simply accelerate transition of Russian economy away from dollar in the trade.

Russia and China already use each other’s currency to settle trade between each other. World manufacturing and world resource store are now exclusively connected and now fully control internal inflationary pressures.

EU and US are not able to control price inflation and are forced to guard their economies through additional tariffs. For example, recent introduction of tariffs on Chinese made electric cars demonstrates loss of competitiveness of western economies. Cars are complex products that require a lot of energy to produce. As a result they are a good subject to aggregate economic efficiency.

if this continues China and Russia may be able to dictate the rate of currency inflation in the non-dollar space (read BRICS future currency control).

dollars that used to work inside Russia-China trade space are continuing to get pushed out into the dollar space and causing upward inflationary pressure on the dollar. This forces US Fed to keep pumping freed up dollars from the dollar system through elevated interest rates to keep inflation down in the dollar space.

There are 1st signs of economic slowdown in US and fed is currently unable to react quickly due to the need to pump excess liquidity from the dollar system.

So, all this impact on the dollar for a questionable impact on Russia.

Trust that it works well and it does. However, first gen was not as good as after it.

1. Good microphone quality. Not true for first gen after some time in my experience

2. Reliable connection. True most of the time.

3. Apple ecosystem, yes to a small degree. Ability to see battery level is nice.

4. Fast recharge times

5. Endless usage time if using one headphone at a time. It is my preference usage method.

Cons: high price. After several years I expect to find comparable competition. It exists, and i use it, but i lost: 1, 2, 3 from my list. And usability is crap: accidentally touching headphone turns it off.

Downvotes shall list better headphones.

I myself have not found a better solution.

I like apple headphones and i settled on similar shaped non-apple brand at a fraction af the price, but it is lower in quality compared to apple. Microphone is crap and I stopped trying to use it. Headphones level is good at low level and high level sound reproduction, but it is not as accurate as apple.

In the end the trade off is worth it to me for the price, but i will not claim at is better.

So, bring on your alternative and price of it.

Mine lasted for years as far as battery is concerned.

Unfortunately the loudness level has dropped significantly. I went to Apple store and they acknowledged this as that’s what happens to them.

Eventually I gave up and replaced with alternative lower cost similar style headphones. The sound level is plenty, but microphone is terrible. I tried several and found I found similar problems. It is acceptable for much lower cost, but doesn’t compare.