I can totally understand what you are saying and that what I thought in the beginning it had a poor battery life. But I had a former coworker, who bought a pair and after she had them for couple of weeks, she loved them.
I did ask her quite a few questions, but the case can hold a 24 hour charge. You don't need to charge the case every few days, depends on how much you use them. It a force a habit for me for now, to charge them everyday. But I have notice at the end of the day, the case is anywhere from 75% to 80% plus. So I'll try and not charge them tonight and see how much battery life, I can get by end of the work day on Friday. Also the case is like the size of a dental floss container.
The headphones can last 5 hours, but once you put the airpods back in the case for 15 minutes, you can get an extra 3 extra hours of battery life pretty fast. So technically they can last the whole work day. The airpods may feel a little extra weight, with the gadgets in it. They might look weird on you, but they feel and fit pretty just right in my ears. They are just like the old earbuds but without the cord.
The sound comes in pretty great and I haven't had any issues talking people through them. Once you take one airpod out of your ear, the music pauses until you put the airpod back in. You tap on the side, if you want to access siri. But there is no volume control. You have to use your phone or watch to control the volume or talk to siri and adjust the volume like found in the link below.
Quickly adjust AirPods volume by percentage and check listening levels with Siri
So I'm totally satisfied and would recommend them, if you like the old Apple's earbuds. If you want to go cordless. They airpods can also work with my watch, macbook and any other devices that can use bluetooth like Androids.