AirPods Pros can’t quite match the best-in-class true wireless noise-canceling headphones for sound quality, but the unprecedented user experience and comfort levels still make them a very strong choice by combining excellent noise cancellation with a transparency mode that feels almost as natural as wearing non-isolating headphones.
Apple’s AirPods have been a huge success story – they’ve been one of the best Christmas gifts for several years in a row, and you can see them in people’s ears on any busy street – but the world of true wireless earphones has advanced and Apple has done the same with its Pro version.
What does it mean that these are Pro? Apple’s favorite buzzword, compared to the originals, is that in most cases the AirPods Pro are much better spec’d than the more basic and cheaper AirPods.
The Pros give you a proper in-ear fit, gym-grade (IPX4) water and sweat resistance, and a wireless charging case as standard. They also feature noise cancellation, which is up against a small band of in-house rivals like Sony’s WF-1000XM3s or Sennheiser Momentum 2s, which are beefier in that regard.
There are also clever additions like a test to see if the AirPods Pro fits properly in your ears; an adaptive sound that optimizes audio based on the construction of your ears and a new touch control system. There’s also all the usual Apple (and Beats by Dre)-specific iPhone features, like ultra-fast pairing and hands-free access to Siri.
Amongst all these nice features, a fundamental one of the original AirPods has been lost. Due to the way they penetrate deeper into your ears, these Pro earbuds are less easy to fit into your ear canal and interact with people and the world at large. However, a transparency mode allows you to let sound through, so perhaps die-hard AirPods users won’t be put off.
How long does the battery of the Apple AirPods Pro last?
With noise cancellation turned on, AirPods Pro has slightly less battery life than standard AirPods, at 4.5 hours per charge compared to 5 hours per charge. Turn noise cancellation off and Apple says the headphones should hit 5 hours again.
Depending on how you look at it, either the ANC system is impressively efficient, or the benefit of turning it off is oddly negligible. The recent Beats Studio Buds, by contrast, benefit from up to an additional 8 hours of life if you disable noise cancellation.
We decided that turning it off is a bit useless, even if you want to hear external noises, transparency mode is a clearer option than turning off NC (Noise Cancellation), which tends to mean you get some muddy and unclear background sounds.
In our experience, listening with NC reliably comes close to that 4.5-hour claim. Charging is fast from the case: the ability to get an hour of use in 5 minutes in the case is really useful, though not unusual for other true wireless earphones.
Apple AirPods Pro: Settings, Design and Features
The case for the AirPods Pro is thicker than the original, so it won’t slide into any pocket as easily at all, but the difference is less than you’d expect, and it’s still thinner than many of the cases on its predecessors. rivals, which is crucial so there is less bulge.
Part of the size difference is because the AirPods Pro has tips that fit properly in your ears, unlike the previous version, which just sat on the edge of your ear canal. This gives the AirPods Pro an even more secure fit, and we haven’t been able to dislodge them in anything resembling normal use, including various forms of exercise.
For those who value audio quality, this is great news. For the many casual AirPods users, you lose the ability to wear them for extended periods without being cut off from the world. However, for these people, there is a high-tech workaround in the form of Transparency Mode, which allows you to pass the sounds around you through the AirPods Pro’s microphones.
Various tips are provided, but Apple makes it easier than usual to determine which one you should go for: you can perform an ‘ear fit test’, which plays sound over the drivers, and again uses the built-in microphones to detect if there are any leaks., which would mean that it does not have a good fit. You can then change the tip size to see which one works best. It just gives you a tick in each ear, to tell if it’s ready or not.
Apple says its silicone tips have been specially designed to be more comfortable to wear without feeling heavy on your ear. They are really comfortable, but not a revolution in this sense. You can definitely use them for a long time, but that’s true of many other great true wireless earphones.
It’s a little more fiddly to get them in place with the correct seal though, no more difficult than other earphones that focus on a proper fit, but just a little more work than regular AirPods.
Apple has also shortened the length of the stems that protrude from the ear to make them look less ostentatious. We’ve already talked to a lot of people who wouldn’t play the original but are influenced by it.
Apple uses an air vent to equalize the pressure in your ears with the outside world, which makes a bit of a difference: You don’t get as much sense of your voice coming across as oddly boomy as other headphones do.
Pairing with an iOS device is as quick and easy as you’d expect. Siri works just fine like Siri, that is, it usually works. Sometimes there can be issues with picking up the “ Hey Siri ” command correctly if you’re on a busy road and trying to say it subtly, but it works in most cases and you’ll have no trouble getting your requests executed. In less noisy environments, I had no problem answering calls.
The Announce Messages feature is an interesting addition that is also available on the basic 2nd generation AirPods. It means that when you get a text, you’ll turn down your music and Siri will activate, saying who you’ve received a message from, which you’ll then read.
It reads pretty fast; Somehow it’s not perfectly suited to the casual way people chat in text, because if there’s not enough punctuation, it’ll just go through the words at an unbelievable pace. But the feature is especially useful for shorter texts, and Siri will keep listening after reading the text, so she can tell you how to respond.
You can specify whether Announce Messages should work for all your incoming text messages, or just those in Favorites, which prevents interruptions too often.
How is the sound quality of the Apple AirPods Pro?
If you’ve tried Apple AirPods, you’ll know the kind of sound profile to expect: nicely balanced, but without skimping on the bass. They have a pretty neutral presentation all things considered, and that’s possibly helped by the adaptive EQ.
However, that’s not to say that the sound is the same as the original AirPods; here is a distinctive step. The original AirPods sound great in a quiet room when you’re not on the go, but the finer details are easily overpowered by outside sounds due to their loose fit.
Here you really get the full effect, thanks to both better noise isolation, due to the fit, and electronic active noise cancellation.
As in Apple’s HomePod speakers, a ‘high-excursion’ driver is used. This vibrates more and displaces more air than an average driver of the same size, for more impact.
As in the latest Beats headphones, the result is plenty of basses, but without being obtrusive on bass. Certainly, if you’re used to the headphones that came with your phone or even the original AirPods, the AirPods Pro will sound very full and rich, as ‘proper’ headphones should.
Apple has placed a microphone inside AirPods to detect how the shape of your ear canal affects music and tailor the sound so you hear something more faithful to the original sounds. He calls this “ adaptive equalizer ”. There’s no telling how big the difference is, although it certainly all sounds impressively detailed.
The AirPods Pro does a really impressive job of letting each part of a track breakthrough. That’s especially true when you have noise cancellation turned on, as it makes everything feel brighter as doesn’t compete with background sound.
The high end, mids, and bass don’t blur into each other, and each instrument feels like it’s presented clearly. It’s not a HiFi revelation in terms of quality, but it’s up there with the best in this price range.
About Noise Cancellation
As we already mentioned, AirPods Pro has highly optimized active noise cancellation; it reduces downtown traffic to just a background hum, and the rumble of being on the subway all but disappears, though only a few high-pitched noises are heard (as is often the case with active noise cancellation).
They may not do as well as the Sony WH-1000XM3 or the Bose 700 noise-canceling headphones, but we already pointed that out at the start of this review. Sony, in particular, has the magical (well, maybe scientific) ability to cancel even major roadworks more or less completely, but getting through roadworks with the AirPods Pro lets in a bit more noise.
The AirPods Pro still turns that overwhelming din into a simple annoyance you wouldn’t notice, and they cut through just about everything in an office environment. Sony’s true wireless noise-canceling headphones, the WF-100XM3, do an equally good job on the ground but struggle with noise from planes, and the AirPods Pro seem to pale in the same way.
Most noise-canceling headphones these days come with a transparency mode, to let outside noise in. The AirPods Pro is no different, and you can switch between noise-canceling mode and transparency mode by squeezing one of the AirPods Pro’s protruding arms for a moment.
You can also use this squeeze to pause or skip tracks, and you can have it summon Siri by changing an option in your iPhone’s settings.
Squeezing is a bit weird, it took us a few tries to get the hang of it, but it works pretty well and doesn’t alter the fit, which is more important. It even works with gloves. You don’t need to press hard, it’s just a light touch and you’ll hear a little click to indicate it’s worked.
You can also turn transparency mode on/off via the iOS control panel: long-press the volume rocker to reveal a switch, including the ability to turn off all noise cancellation modes (you can also set the press to turn everything off noise cancellation if you prefer).
The transparency mode itself is very effective at letting voice and similar noises through; like other devices, it actually amplifies them so they can cut through your music, even at high volume. If you want to hear someone speak, it actually makes things clearer than if you just turn noise cancellation off.
The Sony WH-1000XM3s have different transparency modes for different situations, so an office mode focuses on voices only, while a city mode allows for a wider range of traffic sounds. Other devices simply let you move a slider to decide how transparent you want it to be.
There’s only one setting here, and the only complaint about the whole noise-canceling system is that we’d like to be able to adjust that. It seems a bit unnecessary to be able to hear the click of someone’s chair as you recline in an office, even if you get the benefit of being drowned out by air conditioning and distant chatter.
It’s more than clear that a lot of people really like that the classic AirPods let outside sound in because it means they can have them on all the time. Transparency mode is obviously a good option for them to do something similar, but because it emphasizes noises, it’s not a 1:1 replacement if you used the original AirPods that way.
Should you buy the Apple AirPods Pro?
AirPods are very popular, but with the AirPods Pro, Apple has made something that is very similar in terms of design and ease of use, but much better when it comes to sound quality. AirPods Pro addresses many of the issues that keep more ‘serious’ music listeners away from regular AirPods, such as leaky sound, off-ear fit, and ‘iconic’ protruding arms.
Better drivers and noise cancellation are then thrown in, and the result sounds fantastic. One negative note to note is that while AirPods Pro works well with Android, there’s no doubt that the experience is better on iOS, with a more comprehensive range of features. Wasn’t that what was expected?
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