Playtime hours usually count the case

The big number on a pair of earbuds is nearly always buds plus case. Sixty hours means the buds run for some period, go back into the case, come out charged, and do that repeatedly until the case is empty too. Add it all up and you get sixty. It is not a single listening session and was never claimed to be.

The figure worth finding is the per-bud runtime, and good listings state both. One pair in this catalog states 30 hours and says explicitly that the total includes the case, which is more honest phrasing than most and does not make the product worse. Two pairs quoting 60 and 30 hours can have very similar single-charge runtime, with the difference sitting entirely in how many refills the case holds.

Then there is what the test assumed. Volume level changes battery life substantially. Active noise cancellation costs runtime, which is why a stated figure "with ANC on" is a more useful sentence than a bare number. Codec, connection quality, and temperature all move it too. None of these conditions appear on the box.

Over-ear headphones quote larger numbers for a simple reason: there is more room for a battery. Fifty hours from on-ear headphones and sixty hours from earbuds are not comparable claims, because one is a single charge and the other counts a case full of recharges.

And wired headphones have no figure at all, which is the only entry in this whole category that cannot be misread.