Sound performance; design; good NC; comfortable; gym-friendly
Cannot manually adjust NC; batteries cannot be replaced
We don’t like writing reviews such as this. By ‘this’ we mean overly positive reviews. You can easily sound like a lapdog for the brand. However, fresh from methodically chipping away at almost every niggling issue with the Apple Watch, Tim Cook & Co. have only gone and done the same thing with the AirPods.
In our March evaluation of the then new AirPods 2, we had more than a few bad things to point out. We had a pop at the design, the fact they were earphones and not earbuds, the lack of a secure fit making them poor gym buddies, the tapping UI being unreliable and, finally (and most importantly), that there was no noise cancelling.
Here’s the problem: with the AirPods Pro, Apple has gone and fixed every single one of these issues. And when a company addresses almost everything you called out for being wrong with the previous version of a product, it gives you frustratingly few places to go other than praise. So here goes.
Pre-order the Apple AirPods Pro from Amazon for £249
Design
We didn’t like the old AirPod design. It was too obvious that the form, and in particular the long stems of the earphones, was driven by a necessity to squeeze all the tech inside its admittedly small proportions. But given the choice you would never want them to hang down so far from the ear, would you? Well, the AirPod-flexers may have liked it, but in reality it screamed compromise.
The stems on the new Pros are almost a full centimetre shorter, and it really shows. Where once it was obvious you were wearing the headphones, now they mould to your face from the ear. They look right. They look great, in fact. They look like how a designer would design them when not having to figure out where to put everything.
The other big change is the Pros ditch the one-size earphone in favour of three different sized interchangeable silicone ear tips. You need this for noise cancelling, of course, but with buds come a few technical issues. And Apple has solved these as well. Buds usually ping off precisely when you don’t want them to as you remove the earpieces. With the Pros, however, Apple has designed a fixing mechanism that renders their own silicone tips seemingly welded to the casing. We thought we were going to rip one set apart getting the buds off when trying to switch sizes. We don’t know how Apple has achieved this, but the person who came up with the solution deserves some sort of medal.
Buds can also feel uncomfortable when you put them in as the seal creates suction and pressure in the ear canal. To counter this, the Pros employ a vent system to equalise the pressure, minimising that uncomfortable suction – and it works. These are the most comfortable earbuds we’ve ever worn.
Finally, even the larger head of the Pros is elongated and shaped to fit in the pinna, thus hiding the bulk – if you can call it bulk. This new size and shape has resulted in a shorter, wider case that we initially thought was dumpier than the old one, but is actually perfectly fine.
In short, the new design is not merely a successful tinkering of the old model, but a triumph – one where Apple clearly went back to the drawing board and started from scratch.
Performance
Thanks to those silicone tips and the addition of sweat and water resistance (IPX4 rating), the Pros will now serve you much better while exercising. We tried running, star jumps, sit ups, press ups and free weights, and the Pros took it all in their stride. In fact, such was the performance while being active, you have to wonder how the chaps at Beats in charge of the Powerbeats Pro feel about Apple’s new creation, as these are clearly now a viable alternative for fitness earbuds.
Battery is a little less than the old version, 4.5 hours with noise cancelling compared to the older AirPods’ five hours without. But you do get more than 24 hours of listening using additional charges with the case – plus in an emergency a five-minute case charge provides about an hour of listening or talk time.
The reason for the battery drop is of course largely due to the addition of active noise cancellation, bringing the Pods up to spec with the likes of Sony’s WF-1000XM3 earphones. As is standard, the AirPods Pros use two microphones to remove background noise. An outward-facing mic is there to detect external sound and environmental noise, while a second inward-facing mic listens toward the ear while the noise cancellation software adapts the sound signal 200 times per second.
We wouldn’t go as far as to say the NC in the Pros is the absolute best we’ve heard in any headphones, but it is very good indeed and up there with the top performers considering the size of each unit. Also, mercifully there is no hint of hiss or whine that is present in some noise-cancelling headphones.
The transparency mode, now almost an obligatory function with noice-cancelling headphones, also works well. The idea is that this lets you dial out the noice cancellation to filter in sounds from the outside world. It uses that clever pressure-equalising vent system coupled with software tweaks to keep a small amount of noise cancellation active. You’re meant to use this to hear people speaking or announcements in stations or airports. But does it work? Yes. Is it spookily natural? No. The person talking at the other end of the train carriage will, on occasion, sound like they are sitting next to you. But still it’s welcome and useful.
There are other features such as audio sharing with other AirPods and Siri integration, which are perfectly serviceable, but you want to hear about the sound quality, right? Well, they sound superb. Apple has created an adaptive EQ that automatically tunes the low- and mid-frequencies to the shape of your ear, while the sound itself is driven by a custom high-dynamic-range amplifier and high-excursion, low-distortion speaker driver that can deliver bass down to 20Hz.
Listen to The Meters’ Just Kissed My Baby and in the first 30 seconds you will hear all you need to discern how well the Pros deliver high, mid and low frequencies. What’s most impressive is the balance of these frequencies, though, with vocals never being overwhelmed by instrumentation, or vice versa. Switch to something with enormous, deep bass - such as Peter Gabriel’s Secret World - and you would expect the Pros to fall at the last. They do not. Podcasts and spoken word are also equally well delivered.
Read more: The best headphones for any budget in 2021
Feel the force
Apple has ditched the multiple tap system it used to control the old AirPods, swapping in a new sensor placed on each stem. Switching between active noise cancelling and transparency is done via this sensor. As is track control with one press to play, pause, or answer a call, two to skip forward and three times to skip back.
Dropping the tap system, which was easy to get wrong, is the right idea. And this squeeze command is more direct and assured than how it was before, and is therefore better. But you can still get it wrong, although not as often as the tap interface. We also like the fact that the action of squeezing looks less, well, idiotic than tapping the side of your ear. Most will simply think you are adjusting your bud rather than accepting a call or skipping a track.
And if you have an Apple Watch and want to bypass this UI altogether, then you can use the smartwatch to control audio and toggle between noice cancelling, transparency mode and switching noise cancelling off completely.
All this technical performance is powered by the on-board H1 chip already used in the previous models, which means you get the same (if not better) rock-steady Bluetooth connection and quick pairing as the old AirPods – and these are things that were well worth preserving in the Pros.
Verdict
So are these new AirPods Pro perfect earbuds? Almost. We have to scrabble around looking for things to knock, such as the lid on the new case, perhaps because it is wider than before, seems slightly looser now and not of the usual high standard.
The ear tip fit test, where your iPhone tells you if you are using the correct size of silicone tips or if they are seated properly, although impressive, is nowhere near as clever as Apple would like you to think. We got the green light on both the small and medium tips, with no advice on which was better for our ears. Apple has been vocal on the thousands of ears it has scanned across the world to make this work, so we were expecting more here.
And although it is very good, we’re sad that it isn’t possible to manually adjust the level of noise cancelling, as you can with other headphones. And then there is the fact that you still can’t replace the batteries in AirPods, so when your Pros eventually stop holding charge you will have to throw them away rather than repair. This is not very eco-friendly – and at £250 a pair no small matter for your wallet either.
Having pointed out these few remaining flaws, we are left with being forced to admit that Apple has addressed practically everything we didn’t like about the AirPods 1 and 2. And although these are £50 more than the next model down, the obvious improvements could easily command a bigger premium. Apple has done well. The AirPods Pro are annoyingly good.
The Apple AirPods Pro are available to pre-order now from Amazon, John Lewis and Apple for £249. Orders starts shipping on November 15. Read the WIRED Recommends guide to the best wireless earbuds read more about AirPods alternatives.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
