How good are attached microphone extensions for headphones verses inbuilt microphone extensions? I don’t mean an external mic, I mean some headphones has a drop down extension which goes right in-front of of your mouth, which is what I had for my previous Jabra headphones, now I have Sony which has a microphone somewhere in the headphones, I tested it briefly and you can hear it, but in terms of like, long-time calls or just some stats what might be the pros and cons of each, or is just non-dropdown microphones just better?
drop-down microphones tend to sound better simply because they’re closer to where the noise comes from. the people who make bluetooth headphones put alot of money and research into making the built-in microphones sound acceptable, but you can also get complete garbage in both cases.
i know from experience that 99% of the time both a drop-down and a built-in mic are perfectly cromulent for (video) calls and i also know that you will get weird looks if you walk around with a drop-down mic infront of your face in public, so in that regard my money’s on the built-in.
Personally, I tend to give weird looks to people who appear to be talking to themselves until I can spot their in-ear bluetooth earpiece or something…
Yeah, man you see guys
Walking down the street
Pushing shopping carts
And you think they're talking to allah
They're talking to themself
Man, no they're talking to ELVIS!
ELVIS! ELVIS!
(“Elvis in Everybody” - Mojo Nixon)
problem is some of us do just talk to ourselves 
normalize shizophrenia
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It’s super subjective - airpods, if you’re that way inclined, do a lot of clever stuff to make it sound decent, including picking up jaw vibrations etc (going by memory) but not all buds will do this. AD/DA conversion also a factor in any setup, location dependent. If you want the best quality for hands free use, and don’t want to go full arm-mounted microphone plugged into an audio-interface, then something with a dropdown mic is probably decent. You can also use something which does this but is corded and then you can run / control your own AD conversion at the input. If your mic plug routes to better AD conversion than the USB-headset, then that’s a good option.
Key thing is understanding - tracing it from source to target:
- Acoustics + setting / use case (and therefore is processing needed to filter noise etc or if controlled do you just need to pick up, amplify the signal well enough etc)
- Mic quality? (Check a frequency response curve if
- Cabling/etc - decent copper? Insulated?
- AD (analogue to digital) conversion happens where?
That’s how I’d approach it to get the best outcome.