Maybe I got lucky, but I never had issues with my Bose, Shokz, or even with my Soundcore headphones and bluetooth. I don't use in ear, so I can not comment on that.

From what I've read, it's an accumulation of small details.

I have a pair of Soundcore buds, and they work well. Unless only one of the two decides to not connect to the phone. Or they randomly decide to change the noise cancellation setting. Or their gesture detection randomly triggers. To be fair, it's pretty rare and easy to fix: put them back in the case and back out, etc. But it's small things that remind me "yeah, I did not shell out for AirPods". (also, their transparency mode for conversations is nigh useless, but it may be because those are a 4 year old model).

I regularily use a pair of Sony headphones too, and they are a bit less troublesome, because it's a much simpler product: a single BT connection, physical buttons for some quick controls, etc. But they still have their warts: can't charge and be used at the same time, handoff between two source devices still don't work after years, etc.

It's an accumulation of details that are not big, happen rarely, and don't need much to get used to. But they still need to get used to.

Yep but with AirPods, you are listening music or watching a video, on your Mac, your iPhone rings (on your AirPods), you accept the call, and now the video is paused on your Mac and your AirPods are already connected to your iPhone.

Any time any of the registered devices needs to emit sound, the AirPods instantly switch to this device (and both devices will show an unobtrusive notification to reverse the auto switch).

And it works every. single. time.

Apple can't make Airdrop work reliably after decades but somehow, they are able to magically and instantly transfer bluetooth audio from a device to another device.

Though, if you use your airpods with anything non apple, it will juste work like a classical bluetooth device, with manual pairing and no magic switching.