AirPods Pro review: the perfect earbuds for the iPhone
I've never been able touse AirPods for two reasons, (electronic music)first, they're one-size fits most design justdoesn't work with my ears. And I know I'm not alone, and two, they've got an open design that just lets in so much outside noise. I don't know how people deal with that on trains or city streets. But now, with the $249 AirPods Pro, Apple has addressed both of those points and gone even further. For the first time, they've got active noise cancellation.
I guess that's what makes them Pro. These sound like the AirPodsI've been waiting for, and maybe you have too. There's a lot that's new here, so let's start with the case. Now it opens on the longer end, it's a little bit bigger than before, but still fits in yourpants pockets just fine. And it also still supportswireless charging, so you can plop the Pro'sdown onto a charger at night with your iPhone whenyou're ready for bed. More importantly, Apple's changing the way the new AirPod'S actuallygo into your ears. The old ones are hard plastic, and they just kinda go in and sit there. For a lot of folks, that's fine, they stay in place. But I'm someone who can'tget them to stay put no matter what I do. The new ones have silicone tips and an in the ear design, and they stay put so much better. Now, some people don'tlike how in-earbuds feel, because they create the sense of pressure, almost like you'reunderwater or something. This happens becausethere's air getting trapped in your ear because of that silicone seal. So for the AirPods, Apple came up with areally clever solution, there's a vent on theoutside that equalizes the pressure on the outside and inside so that discomfort of hearingyour own voice too loudly, that's not a thing with these.
Apple also designed the Proso that the hard plastic doesn't really touch your ear very much, and that also prevents soreness. Okay, so three sizes of silicone tips come in the box with the AirPods. Well, how do you know which one to pick? You can run this testin the setting's menu to make sure the ones you've chosen produce a good seal for thebest possible sound quality. You're gonna hear a few seconds of music, and in inside facing microphone analyzes the sound in your earcanal as you're hearing it, and it compares that backto the original audio. If there's too much of a difference, the ear buds might be loose, and you're told to try another size. Apple says some people mightend up with different sizes in each one of their ears, and that's okay, as longas there's any seal at all the test comes back green, and you're good to go. So when I took the test, I got good results for both the medium and large sized ear tips. Choosing one really depends on comfort, and how tightly it stays in your ear. Pulling off those ear tipsactually takes a bit of effort, and they snap back ona little quiet click, so you know they're onthere good and tight. If you lose them, Apple sellsreplacements in their store for about four bucks. The old AirPods used aseries of taps on the side to skip tracks or bring up Siri, but now there's a new force sensor, it's this little indent on both stems that you squeeze to do things. A fast squeeze will play and pause tracks or answer phone calls, a double squeeze skips to the next song, and a triple goes back, but there's still no way to control volume with the earbuds themselves. You've gotta pull out yourphone or have Siri do it, which is often just an awkward guess. And squeezing the stem does take a little bit more effort than tapping did. I would have liked havingthe choice of either one.
Squeezing and holding theforce sensor switches you between active noise cancellationand transparency mode which amplifies outsideaudio in a natural way so you can hear trafficor flight announcements, or order a coffee withoutyelling at the barista. You can have transparencymode on whenever you want, so if you liked how theold AirPods kept you aware of your surroundings on a run outside, you can get that same experience here. But the big sell is noise cancellation, and there are several ways to turn it on. You can do it with the sensor, you can do it in control center, or you can just tell Sirito turn ANC on or off. Apple's noise canceling systemuses a pair of microphones, one outside and one in. The outside mic takes a readingof all the sound around you, and then blocks that out with anti-noise. And the inside mic, meanwhile, listens for whatever does come through and tries to cancel that out too. Apple says the AirPods Procan adjust their sound signal at 200 times per second to adaptfor the shape of your ears. Now, I can't verify that number, but I can tell you that thisnoise cancellation is legit. It'll quiet down citystreets and your office. If you turn down the volume, you can hear some of what's going on, these aren't over-earnoise canceling headphones like those from Sony or Bose. On a plane you can't beat those, but everywhere else, I'm really impressed by what these AirPods can do.
Now, beyond noise cancellation, you're probably wonderinghow the Pro AirPods sound. And the answer is good, very good, and way better than theprevious AirPods ever did. They're balanced, they're neutral, and the ear tips seal resultsin a big improvement to base, which is right where I wantit to be on these earbuds. The Pros have all new drivers, Apple won't say how big they are, and there's this featurecalled adaptive EQ that runs whenever you'vegot noise cancellation on. That inside mic listens to how the music sounds to your ears and adjusts the low end and mids to make everything sound more full. Turning off noise cancellationalso disables adaptive EQ. And you can tell a difference. Now, there are headphonesthat offer more deeper base, like the Powerbeats Pro, or the Echo buds from Amazon, and others. If that's your style, these might not work, but I think a lot of peopleare gonna be very happy and more than satisfied byhow the AirPods Pro sound. These are not audiophile headphones, they never have been, but they're fun, and they'rewell suited for everything from Taylor Swift to Miles Davis. (funky music)So the AirPods have this reputation as the best earbuds for making voice calls with, and that makes total sense, the stems put the microphonecloser to your mouth, and a lot of earbuds don't have that. But for the new AirPods Pro, Apple made that stem a little bit shorter. So my question is, are these still the best wayto make voice calls on the go? I called Becca to see how they sound.
Just waitin' for myfriend Chris to call me. (phone ringing) - Hey Becca, I'm callingyou from the AirPods Pro, or the AirPod Pros, or whatever we're supposed to call them, but we're inside a soundproofedroom, noise isolated, so it couldn't get much better for testing earbuds in this situation, but how do they sound? And this is me back on my iPhone 11 Pro. Now, there's no beating a phone, and now again, from the quiet room, I'm using the second generation AirPods, which, again, people lovedfor their voice quality. And just as a wildcard, I'm also testing the newEcho buds from Amazon, which are only $130, and also have pretty decent microphones. But the real test is calling someone outside on city streets, trying to overcome all this noise. The old AirPods did reallywell in this regard, and you're hearing theAirPods Pro right now. And here I am on a second gen AirPods, where again, those stems reach a little bit closer to your mouth, and does that make a difference? And here's the iPhone 11 Pro again, of course the phone still reigns supreme, but the AirPods sound prettygood for what they are. Stepping away from Apple for a second, here's what the Echo budssound like when you're outside. They're picking up my voice pretty well, it's taking some time, but the competition iscatching up to Apple, and these cost a lot lessthan the AirPods Pro. So apple says batterylife on the AirPods Pro is good for 4.5 hoursof continuous playback, with the noise canceling on. That's pretty close to thestandard AirPods five hours, and you get that here too if you turn off noise cancellation. But that battery is nowherenear the Powerbeats Pro, which can last ninehours on a single charge, albeit, they don't do noise cancellation.
Now, the saving grace with AirPods, just like always, is the case, which holds enough juice for 24 hours of total listening time. So having heard all that, you're probably thinking, Apple did it, these are the perfect AirPods. Not quite. See, much like iOS 13, these can be buggy. Sometimes the force sensorjust stops working briefly from time to time, and changing modes in control center doesn't always do what it should. Now, Nilay is alsotesting the AirPods Pro, and he's had his noise cancellation just shut off randomly until he turns them off and on again. Now, these are minor issues, and they don't happen very often, I fully expect Apple'sgonna fix them through iOS or AirPod firmware updates, but you're paying $250 for these earbuds, and any bugs are kind of disappointing. And second, you canchange devices really fast from your iPad to your iPhone to your Mac, but you can't pair to morethan one device at a time. Other earbuds can do that, and I'd love to see theAirPods do it as well. Here's the thing about the AirPods though, so much about their appealis tied to Apple's ecosystem. So if you have an Android phone, you lose out on a lot. You give up the instant pairing by holding them close to your phone, and you lose out on theability to configure what the touch controls do, and so on, and so on. Noise cancellation still works on Android, and the sound quality remains the same, which is good, but it's stillnot the ideal experience, so you might be betteroff with the Echo buds, Sony's, Samsung's Galaxy buds,or even the Powerbeats Pro for that battery life they have. And then there's theenvironment situation.
If you use your AirPods a lot, the battery inside is gonnalast two years, three max. This is a problem for the entire category of true wireless earbuds. None of them are whatyou'd call repairable. Maybe you're okay spending $250 with the knowledge that thesethings have a shelf life, and you'll have to upgrade in a few years, but what happens then? I've asked Apple about this, and the company says it tries to recycle as much as it possiblycan of every earbud. No one wants to see these things wind up in the garbage or landfills, so when the time comes, be sure to take yourAirPods to the Apple store, or some other place thatcan responsibly recycle them so that doesn't happen. They're a great product, but be cool to the earth. So should you get the AirPods Pro? If you've got an iPhone, you somehow don't have AirPods yet, and you're ready to upgrade, and you're not turned off bytheir high cost, absolutely. They finally fit my ears, and hopefully they'll fit yours too. The noise cancellation really works, and the sound quality is a big improvement compared to previous models. We've come to accept these white stems hanging out of our ears as normal. The AirPod Pros, the AirPods Pro, are the best reason to do that yet. They feel like a next generation product. They're not perfect, but they're inching very close. Hey everybody, thanks a ton for watching, and stay tuned because we'vegot more earbuds coming, somehow, from Microsoft, Google, and Jabra over the next several months.
I guess that's what makes them Pro. These sound like the AirPodsI've been waiting for, and maybe you have too. There's a lot that's new here, so let's start with the case. Now it opens on the longer end, it's a little bit bigger than before, but still fits in yourpants pockets just fine. And it also still supportswireless charging, so you can plop the Pro'sdown onto a charger at night with your iPhone whenyou're ready for bed. More importantly, Apple's changing the way the new AirPod'S actuallygo into your ears. The old ones are hard plastic, and they just kinda go in and sit there. For a lot of folks, that's fine, they stay in place. But I'm someone who can'tget them to stay put no matter what I do. The new ones have silicone tips and an in the ear design, and they stay put so much better. Now, some people don'tlike how in-earbuds feel, because they create the sense of pressure, almost like you'reunderwater or something. This happens becausethere's air getting trapped in your ear because of that silicone seal. So for the AirPods, Apple came up with areally clever solution, there's a vent on theoutside that equalizes the pressure on the outside and inside so that discomfort of hearingyour own voice too loudly, that's not a thing with these.
Apple also designed the Proso that the hard plastic doesn't really touch your ear very much, and that also prevents soreness. Okay, so three sizes of silicone tips come in the box with the AirPods. Well, how do you know which one to pick? You can run this testin the setting's menu to make sure the ones you've chosen produce a good seal for thebest possible sound quality. You're gonna hear a few seconds of music, and in inside facing microphone analyzes the sound in your earcanal as you're hearing it, and it compares that backto the original audio. If there's too much of a difference, the ear buds might be loose, and you're told to try another size. Apple says some people mightend up with different sizes in each one of their ears, and that's okay, as longas there's any seal at all the test comes back green, and you're good to go. So when I took the test, I got good results for both the medium and large sized ear tips. Choosing one really depends on comfort, and how tightly it stays in your ear. Pulling off those ear tipsactually takes a bit of effort, and they snap back ona little quiet click, so you know they're onthere good and tight. If you lose them, Apple sellsreplacements in their store for about four bucks. The old AirPods used aseries of taps on the side to skip tracks or bring up Siri, but now there's a new force sensor, it's this little indent on both stems that you squeeze to do things. A fast squeeze will play and pause tracks or answer phone calls, a double squeeze skips to the next song, and a triple goes back, but there's still no way to control volume with the earbuds themselves. You've gotta pull out yourphone or have Siri do it, which is often just an awkward guess. And squeezing the stem does take a little bit more effort than tapping did. I would have liked havingthe choice of either one.
Squeezing and holding theforce sensor switches you between active noise cancellationand transparency mode which amplifies outsideaudio in a natural way so you can hear trafficor flight announcements, or order a coffee withoutyelling at the barista. You can have transparencymode on whenever you want, so if you liked how theold AirPods kept you aware of your surroundings on a run outside, you can get that same experience here. But the big sell is noise cancellation, and there are several ways to turn it on. You can do it with the sensor, you can do it in control center, or you can just tell Sirito turn ANC on or off. Apple's noise canceling systemuses a pair of microphones, one outside and one in. The outside mic takes a readingof all the sound around you, and then blocks that out with anti-noise. And the inside mic, meanwhile, listens for whatever does come through and tries to cancel that out too. Apple says the AirPods Procan adjust their sound signal at 200 times per second to adaptfor the shape of your ears. Now, I can't verify that number, but I can tell you that thisnoise cancellation is legit. It'll quiet down citystreets and your office. If you turn down the volume, you can hear some of what's going on, these aren't over-earnoise canceling headphones like those from Sony or Bose. On a plane you can't beat those, but everywhere else, I'm really impressed by what these AirPods can do.
Now, beyond noise cancellation, you're probably wonderinghow the Pro AirPods sound. And the answer is good, very good, and way better than theprevious AirPods ever did. They're balanced, they're neutral, and the ear tips seal resultsin a big improvement to base, which is right where I wantit to be on these earbuds. The Pros have all new drivers, Apple won't say how big they are, and there's this featurecalled adaptive EQ that runs whenever you'vegot noise cancellation on. That inside mic listens to how the music sounds to your ears and adjusts the low end and mids to make everything sound more full. Turning off noise cancellationalso disables adaptive EQ. And you can tell a difference. Now, there are headphonesthat offer more deeper base, like the Powerbeats Pro, or the Echo buds from Amazon, and others. If that's your style, these might not work, but I think a lot of peopleare gonna be very happy and more than satisfied byhow the AirPods Pro sound. These are not audiophile headphones, they never have been, but they're fun, and they'rewell suited for everything from Taylor Swift to Miles Davis. (funky music)So the AirPods have this reputation as the best earbuds for making voice calls with, and that makes total sense, the stems put the microphonecloser to your mouth, and a lot of earbuds don't have that. But for the new AirPods Pro, Apple made that stem a little bit shorter. So my question is, are these still the best wayto make voice calls on the go? I called Becca to see how they sound.
Just waitin' for myfriend Chris to call me. (phone ringing) - Hey Becca, I'm callingyou from the AirPods Pro, or the AirPod Pros, or whatever we're supposed to call them, but we're inside a soundproofedroom, noise isolated, so it couldn't get much better for testing earbuds in this situation, but how do they sound? And this is me back on my iPhone 11 Pro. Now, there's no beating a phone, and now again, from the quiet room, I'm using the second generation AirPods, which, again, people lovedfor their voice quality. And just as a wildcard, I'm also testing the newEcho buds from Amazon, which are only $130, and also have pretty decent microphones. But the real test is calling someone outside on city streets, trying to overcome all this noise. The old AirPods did reallywell in this regard, and you're hearing theAirPods Pro right now. And here I am on a second gen AirPods, where again, those stems reach a little bit closer to your mouth, and does that make a difference? And here's the iPhone 11 Pro again, of course the phone still reigns supreme, but the AirPods sound prettygood for what they are. Stepping away from Apple for a second, here's what the Echo budssound like when you're outside. They're picking up my voice pretty well, it's taking some time, but the competition iscatching up to Apple, and these cost a lot lessthan the AirPods Pro. So apple says batterylife on the AirPods Pro is good for 4.5 hoursof continuous playback, with the noise canceling on. That's pretty close to thestandard AirPods five hours, and you get that here too if you turn off noise cancellation. But that battery is nowherenear the Powerbeats Pro, which can last ninehours on a single charge, albeit, they don't do noise cancellation.
Now, the saving grace with AirPods, just like always, is the case, which holds enough juice for 24 hours of total listening time. So having heard all that, you're probably thinking, Apple did it, these are the perfect AirPods. Not quite. See, much like iOS 13, these can be buggy. Sometimes the force sensorjust stops working briefly from time to time, and changing modes in control center doesn't always do what it should. Now, Nilay is alsotesting the AirPods Pro, and he's had his noise cancellation just shut off randomly until he turns them off and on again. Now, these are minor issues, and they don't happen very often, I fully expect Apple'sgonna fix them through iOS or AirPod firmware updates, but you're paying $250 for these earbuds, and any bugs are kind of disappointing. And second, you canchange devices really fast from your iPad to your iPhone to your Mac, but you can't pair to morethan one device at a time. Other earbuds can do that, and I'd love to see theAirPods do it as well. Here's the thing about the AirPods though, so much about their appealis tied to Apple's ecosystem. So if you have an Android phone, you lose out on a lot. You give up the instant pairing by holding them close to your phone, and you lose out on theability to configure what the touch controls do, and so on, and so on. Noise cancellation still works on Android, and the sound quality remains the same, which is good, but it's stillnot the ideal experience, so you might be betteroff with the Echo buds, Sony's, Samsung's Galaxy buds,or even the Powerbeats Pro for that battery life they have. And then there's theenvironment situation.
If you use your AirPods a lot, the battery inside is gonnalast two years, three max. This is a problem for the entire category of true wireless earbuds. None of them are whatyou'd call repairable. Maybe you're okay spending $250 with the knowledge that thesethings have a shelf life, and you'll have to upgrade in a few years, but what happens then? I've asked Apple about this, and the company says it tries to recycle as much as it possiblycan of every earbud. No one wants to see these things wind up in the garbage or landfills, so when the time comes, be sure to take yourAirPods to the Apple store, or some other place thatcan responsibly recycle them so that doesn't happen. They're a great product, but be cool to the earth. So should you get the AirPods Pro? If you've got an iPhone, you somehow don't have AirPods yet, and you're ready to upgrade, and you're not turned off bytheir high cost, absolutely. They finally fit my ears, and hopefully they'll fit yours too. The noise cancellation really works, and the sound quality is a big improvement compared to previous models. We've come to accept these white stems hanging out of our ears as normal. The AirPod Pros, the AirPods Pro, are the best reason to do that yet. They feel like a next generation product. They're not perfect, but they're inching very close. Hey everybody, thanks a ton for watching, and stay tuned because we'vegot more earbuds coming, somehow, from Microsoft, Google, and Jabra over the next several months.
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