My ears are incompatible with 99% of earbuds, including EarPods and AirPods. These Spigen ear things arrived yesterday (I’ll call them “ear bits”) and seem to work great for me:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01NAM69IJ/
There’s a typo in step 1 of the instructions on the back of the package (“form” instead of “from”). The silicone rubber softgel material is great for my ears, but makes it tricky to quickly remove from the AirPods when I need to fit them back in the charger. I think a combination of TPU+plastic+softgel materials would make it easier to take on and off. I really wish it would just click/snap-on. Figuring out how they were supposed to be installed onto the AirPods was also confusing. I noticed the faint “L” and “R” markings immediately, but still it took a while to figure out how they’re supposed to go onto the AirPods. The pictures on the box were not very helpful.
I also got these and compared them:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01LVZ4SXN/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01N2UMXGE/
I like the Spigen TPU material neck strap much better than the Elago with its silicon rubber softgel. The rubber Elago brand strap conducts too much sound through the straps in into my ears through the AirPods and also has too much friction with the back of my next as I turn my head left/right. The Spigen isn’t as long as the Amazon pictures seemed to imply, but I think the length will be fine for me. I suspect the thin flat design doesn’t interfere with the microphones as much. I installed it by deliberately pushing much further past the tips of the AirPods and made it so the flat part is kinda back/down relative to the front of my face. I suspect that would be less likely to block sounds between my mouth and the AirPods. Both are designed to wrap around your AirPod charge case for storage.
The main issue with having ear bits + neck strap is the need to repeatedly install and remove them each time the charger battery case is used. I hope someone makes a combined product that performs the functions of both the neck strap and the ear bits. It would be so much better to just clip something to each AirPod and go.
And the last thing I got was a silicone softgel skin for the charger case:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B06ZXR3BC9/
There was some kind of half-off coupon code I got from Slickdeals. With this, I have to awkwardly use a finger to keep the case open while I’m inserting or removing the AirPods. That’s annoying. I still hate silicone softgel material for cases. It attracts too much lint and cat hair. TPU would be so much better. Still, it works fine to protect the case.