alt Hacker NewsWearing headphones while hiking is uncomfortable, and wearing earbuds for any length of time is always uncomfortable - hiking or not. They also fall out.
As others have said - not really a big deal. Either get ahead of them and maintain a significant distance, or stay behind and do so.
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No. This is YOUR problem. If you want to play your own music on a speaker, you're making your problem everyone else's problem. Grow up.
There you go. Quite comfortable, don’t have to stick them inside your ears, and still allows you to perceive the sounds around you.
In the spirit of fairness, I’ll also share the cons from my experience: First is battery life isn’t as good as headphones. That’s somewhat obvious as they’re much smaller, but they will still last you the whole day so not really an issue for hiking. Second one is that because they don’t block outside sounds, they’re not appropriate for audiobooks/podcasts while walking in the city. Again, not an issue for hiking.
It is a big deal. It means for a lot of people there's nowhere they can go to actually enjoy the sound of nature. The strategy of getting ahead or staying behind doesn't work when there are switchbacks or crowded trails. The strategy that does work is to get fit enough to go deep into the backcountry because the troglodytes that bring speakers to hikes lack the discipline to ever get that far.