Shopping at Costco can be dangerous.

First I notice a mesh office chair at the far end of an aisleway. "Probably cheap and ugly," I thought to myself. Turned out to be inexpensive: True. But it wasn't ugly, felt pretty good and seemed pretty solidly built. Looked it up on-line. Four-star reviews and close to $200 on Amazon.

Seemed hard to go wrong for $104 at the local Costco. (Listed at $114 in their on-line catalogue.) On the cart it went.

Then, as we were rolling our take down the aisleway, we briefly stopped for some reason and what do I see right in front of my face: Apple Airpods for $139! "I'm buyin' these!" and grabbed a card.

Initial Assessment: Bayside Matrex IV Mesh Office Chair

It seems pretty solidly built. Didn't run across anything that seemed flimsy during assembly. Sitting in it, it seems nice and stable. Rolls nicely enough on the Persian-style carpet in the computer room. (More nicely than the office chair it's intended to replace.)

Only issue so far is the arms. I'm used to resting my forearms on the chair's arms while typing and mousing. These arms don't go low enough for that. At least not comfortably. (My desk has a keyboard drawer. If your keyboard is at desk height this won't be an issue.) But the arms easily swivel all the way back and out of the way.

The shapes of the chair's seat and back encourage good posture, which is a big plus in my view. I tend to get lazy in my chair and start sliding my butt forward. That is not at all comfortable in this chair.

Unexpected benefit to all this: With my arms more free and my posture better I haven't typed this efficiently in years!

"They" say "cheap chairs don't last." I'm one of "they." We shall see.

Initial Assessment: Apple Airpods

I have been searching for "decent" earbuds for years. My search complicated by my unwillingness to spend Real Money. Thing is: I don't listen to music with my mobile devices much. But I've been reading so many positive reviews about these things, so...

They paired with my iPhone incredibly easy. Just open the storage box/charger while it's sitting next to your iPhone, acknowledge on the iPhone you want to pair them, done! If that and your other devices are on a shared iCloud account the other devices are automatically paired, too. Easiest device pairing I've ever experienced, iThing or Android.

The Airpods fit my ears slightly better than Apple Earbuds. (The lower concha of my ears [that's the "bowl" in which earbuds nestle] is large.) Most earbuds fit me too loosely. These also fit more loosely than I'd like, but that has a silver lining: I generally find earbuds annoying after wearing them for a while. Not these.

They survived twenty minutes of light house-cleaning this morning, with only occasional re-seating. I think they're going to work. They sound great to my ears. And they're "typical Apple" in use.

There are "jackets" and other solutions for providing for a more secure fit. I may try one of those for use at the gym.

ETA:

One fell out a couple times when I bent over during the more exhaustive upstairs cleaning. No surprise there.

Bluetooth performance: House is approximately 36'x36' (1300 sqft). Bluetooth nearly makes it corner-to-corner.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: ensigmatic,