My Aftershokz Aeropex broke, I'm getting a Monodeal DV68

The casing of my Aftershokz Aeropex headset (Shokz OpenRun after the rebranding) started cracking after 2.5 years — that was solvable with superglue and electrical tape. But now the main button has gotten stuck, the one responsible for power on, power off, and volume up. You can't turn the headset off or pause with that button, and you can only pair it through the phone after connecting the headset to a power source, which isn't convenient. Plus sometimes the button comes unstuck and the headset keeps turning itself off.

It's disappointing to see such low quality from a top brand of bone-conduction headsets. I see other users run into these problems before the warranty runs out, and they get a new headset sent without any hassle, because officially they don't repair them. So such a high price isn't because of quality, but because they just send free replacements if it breaks within the first 2 years.

The headset cost 121 euros after a Black Friday discount, and a repair would probably come to around 30 euros.

As a replacement I bought a Monodeal DV68 — it came to 32 euros, which is almost 4 times cheaper than the Shokz headset, and far cheaper than a repair would cost. Amazon gave a 30% discount that was good for 1 day — that's how they nudged me to buy it, sly ones.

The battery is almost three times bigger and the charge lasts 15-20 hours versus 6-8 hours on the Shokz. There's RGB lighting for when you run in the dark.

The sound quality on the Monodeal is still worse — speech comes out less intelligible, and on a bus or in a shopping mall you can hardly hear anything, whereas with the Shokz you could make out most of it, if not everything. Outdoors the difference isn't especially noticeable, though you can feel that the frequencies are less distinct. The volume isn't higher, even though the reviews said it was, but maybe that's the new OpenRun having lower volume.

The microphone has better noise cancellation, it seems you can do without using the extra windscreen I'd had to attach to the previous headset.

Overall, for that price it's good, and it won't be a big loss if something happens to it. But if you have spare money, then the Shokz comes out better than the Monodeal in terms of sound quality.