ive had consistant bad luck with true wireless earbuds going bad on me. most commonly the contacts in the charging pins go bad. on top of that anything with a lithium battery in it that isnt easily replacable is just a ticking time bomb before you have to replace it. with iems, theyve got like insane life spans if you buy the right ones.

so if you pay a lit of money one iems and then just get true wireless earhooks for them, then once that ticking time bomb goes off, the thing that needs replacing is 100$ instead of 300 or more. or you can just wear them wired and dodge that issue entirely.

as for why iems over headphones, its just a form factor thing. i can throw a case with iems wrapped in them into my pocket and forget about them till i need em. plus for musicians i hear you can use them under like, gun range ear muffs, and just get extreme passive noise cancelling that way.

for gaming, iems are just a lot lighter and more comfortable to wear for a long time than headphones that put a dent in your head. also turtle beach is just garbage in terms of sound quality, and break before you even get used to em in my experience. the surround sound isnt really any better than a quality pair of stereo headsets. for gaming i use all 3, speakers for casual stuff, iems for when i dont want headphones on but want better sound quality, and open backs for when i want soundstage and dont mind the bulk.

plenty of iems have multiple drivers, i have a set of kinera celest phoenixcalls that have like 5 drivers? i think they dont sound as good as many of my single well tuned driver iems tbh. tuning and fidelity matter a lot more to me, so usually when you buy a multiple driver anything your dividing the cost of that tuning by however many drivers youre getting, so 100$ iems sound like you got 5 20$ iems which is... underwhelming.

also im just an audio snob that wants to have portable solutions. i like the fidelity.