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Apple Lightning to 3.5mm adapter

6owners with an opinion
20%of verdicts positive
0/1positive/negative since 2024
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for performance; criticized for sound and durability.

What people wrote

Doesn’t like it
It's just one more thing to buy and lose. I know I own both Apple's lightning-to-3.5mm adapter and the USB-C-to-3.5mm. Right now, I know where my nice big-cans headphones are, but it's not with either adapter. I'm pretty such I know where my cheap wireless buds are. The lightning adapter should live in the same travel pouch, but I'm not 100% sure if it's there because I frequently use those with devices that have a 3.5mm jack, so they might have been separated. I know for a fact my USB-C-to-3.5mm adapter has been separated, and I've not seen it for over a year. I know it's in the house somewhere, so I certainly wouldn't buy another one (especially considering how infrequently I used it before), but I have no idea where it is and so if I did want to use my iPad with my nice headphones, I can't. Contrast that to the simplicity with devices that still have a 3.5mm phone - my daily Android phone, my Macbook Air - I can just plug any old headphones in and not have to go searching for the adapter. And despite the fact that I also own two bluetooth headphones, my wired big-cans headphones have far superior sound quality to either of them. I know it's not a fair comparison because they were well over $100 compared to $10 for the others, but I'm still limited to what I can use them with - which in my case is absolutely everything except my Apple kit (laptop excepted).
Doesn’t like it
> Instead, this: Hello? … Wait, hello? Can you hear me? Okay, hold on. Ugh. Okay, okay, just a second. I have to get my earphones to connect. Damn it. Okay, never mind, I’ll just hold it up to my head. Hi, ugh, sorry about that. i had basically this same problem just yesterday. for years i would take calls with wired earbuds that had an integrated mic. i upgraded my iphone and now i have to use one of those lightning to 3.5mm adapters for that. the official adapters last for like 2-3 months until they begin flaking. not usually a deal-breaker, because it just means ~0.5s of lost audio every couple minutes but… a recent iOS update made it so that if the earpiece disappears during a call then the OS drops the call . so i had to redial 3 times during my call. eventually we switched to Facetime, which still disconnects me upon audio drops but leaves the other side connected so that i just have to press “join” instead of redialing. not an infra issue, but it adds up to the same crappy call experience.
Neutral
> i'd prefer to keep the headphone jack, but that's probably asking too much of apple. Yeah the headphone jack being removed pissed me off too. However the lighting to 3.5mm adaptor isn't as bad as I thought it would be. Sure it was an extra £9 I wish I didn't have to spend, but was also a figure that I didn't lose any sleep over when ordering it. The adaptor just lives on my headphones as I use a differnt pair at my desk. The only reservation about it now is "Will it fray like all other apple cables do with time?" EDIT: Also had a 6s. Had 2 battery changes and the phone was due for a 3rd before recently just swapping the phone. First was done by Apple for free (excluding the cost of travelling to the Apple store and turning it into a shopping day :-P), the other I did myself at home with a 3rd party battery.
Likes it
If you need to move around, wired headphones suck. IME, interference and latency are non issues with BT. Otherwise, the lighting to 3.5mm dongle works perfectly. At my desk, i do have wired headphones, but they are plugged into my TB dock.
Likes itDoesn’t say they own it
Pro users use audio interfaces. The headphone jack is useful for quick improvised sketching or listening but Apple's official dongle will be fine in those situations as well. It's actually a pretty well made DAC for its size: https://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-qu... For any serious work you'll probably be around a decent audio interface anyway.
Likes itDoesn’t say they own it
> The one in your lightning to 3.5mm iPhone adapter may not be as good as a $100 desktop DAC hooked up to your PC playing from USB, and that may not be as good as a $500+ DAC in a recording studio. This isn't true; it's better than the first and possibly better than the second. It's a very good $9 dongle.