Apple AirPods Pro Review: Best In Class
The Apple AirPods Pro are a quality set of in-ear wireless earbuds. The Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) is seriously good to block out noise when commuting, at the gym or in the office. The design speaks for itself. The sound is great.
The Fit
For a long, long time, I loved Apple headphones, but from a distance. I’ve never actually really used them for one crucial reason: The fit SUCKED.
It must be different genetics, because some people love the classic Apple earbuds, but for me they would constantly fall out my ears. No matter what position I put them in, or how hard I pushed, it just didn’t work for me.
With the release of the AirPods Pro, an in-ear style earbud, I had to get my hands on a pair.
In-ear style earbuds provide a natural seal between your ears and the outside, so I see 2 benefits to this. Firstly, you naturally cancel out peripheral noise. Secondly, you get a more secure and comfortable fit.
Apple have a really nice touch with the AirPods Pro for getting setup. When you are connecting your headphones, you can run an “Ear Tip Fit Test”. You put your earbuds in, it will play a short bit of musical melody, and then return your results.
If your results come out saying they’re too loose or too tight, then the AirPods Pro come with a few different silicon bud sizes, and so you can switch them out, retest, until you find the right size!
Active Noise Cancellation (ANC)
Before I moved to using the AirPods Pro, I was using the Jabra Elite 65ts. I really enjoyed using those headphones, and considered the passive noise cancellation to be decent.
Passive Noise Cancellation is something you get from any in-ear earbuds. The seal that is created between your ear and the earbuds produces a noticeable amount of noise cancellation.
However, when I first tested out the AirPods Pro, I was BLOWN AWAY.
When you first connect your AirPods Pro, you are presented with 3 audio states. “Neutral”, “Active Noise Cancellation” and “Transparent”.
Essentially, when you're in neutral mode, you're only benefitting from the passive noise cancellation from the seal in your ear, just like in the Jabra Elites. It is decent enough, but in a noisy gym, train, plane you name it, it's far from perfect and you're going to hear a lot.
The moment you switch on the ANC though, it is a CRAZY shift. It is literally like someone turned down the volume on your TV to the lowest setting. I tried it out in the gym where there is so much noise from music, equipment and people grunting, and it just washes away. I can only liken it to when you step out of a nightclub, or a gig, and the moment the front doors shut, all the sound gets muffled out.
The Active Noise Cancellation alone was enough to convince me to switch from my Jabras. There are so many environments where you notice the impact. Walking alongside roads, working out in the gym, being in the office, commuting on buses or airplanes.
Audio Performance
Okay so now you know you can shut your ears off the outside world, what is it like to listen to music and podcasts with these?
Well, luckily my friend once showed me that Spotify has a playlist designed for testing out new headphones. The idea is that it plays an ecclectic mix of high quality songs, to test all aspects of your headphones audio ability.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DWZtZ8vUCzche?si=49629371c49049de
After listening to this playlist for a while, and especially in comparing them to the Jabra Elite 65ts, these headphones are a step above. Especially when it comes to bass, it feels more impactful in your ear, like it just feels more natural and there's more oomphf and clarity.
Design
The design of the AirPods Pro in my opinion is fantastic. For the quality they are packing into the earbuds, they look amazing, but also stack up really well when comparing certain aspects to competitors.
For example, the AirPods Pro weigh a total of 56.4g. Compared to other brands such as Sennheiser, Sony, Bowers and Wilkins, Beats, they are the lightest earbuds out there.
The size is also very competitive. The graphic below (from Apple’s website) shows exact measurements. When comparing to other competitors, the AirPods Pro are amongst the smallest, most compact models.
One design choice I really love is how you Pause/Play/Skip/Switch Modes. Most earbuds in the market have clickable buttons on the head of the earbuds. This has been the industry standard, and whilst it works perfectly fine, I’ve always found it slightly uncomfortable as you end up pushing the earbud deeper into your ear when trying to click the buttons.
With the AirPods Pro, you instead “squeeze” the headphone stems. This is a much nicer design and really demonstrates the level of thinking Apple put into their products. It makes for a much nicer feeling experience.
Battery Life
The AirPods Pro have a solid amount of battery life. On a single charge, they will run you 4.5 hours of listening time. When utilising the charge from the case, you get just over 24 hours of listening time.
Looking around at competitors in the market, this seems to be a fairly standard benchmark battery life and to be honest, I think that’s perfect. I find myself charging the headphones once or twice a week. Even the most intense user, I reckon would only need to charge once a day, and let’s face it, we do that with our phones, so it’s not an issue!
Verdict
It has been a long time coming for Apple to bring wireless, in-ear style headphones.
Their debut into this market did not disappoint. The Active Noise Cancellation alone is enough for me to recommend these earbuds. I cannot express how much I appreciate these earbuds in noisy environments when I need to focus or zone out. Couple this with the lightweight and compact design, with a very competitive battery life, and fantastic integration with the Apple ecosystem, they make an amazing set of earbuds.
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