It’s just a shame that they’ve had to be made so big to accommodate the battery. In short, the battery life of the AirPods is great, and much better than the competition. You charge the case up via its Lightning port, and once fully charged the case holds enough power to fully charge your AirPods over four times.Ī small LED underneath the charging case’s lid glows red or green to indicate the AirPods’ charge status, and you can open the lid near a paired phone to see the relative charge levels of both pop up on the screen. ![]() The current charging case is an excellent work of design. This convenience is only going to improve in the future with the rumored addition of a wireless charging case that will allow you to charge your AirPods wirelessly. The long stems protruding from the bottom of each earbud might be bulky, but the plus side of that bulk is that the AirPods’ battery life is really great.Īpple’s claim of five hours battery life from the AirPods appeared to be completely accurate in our tests, and even better was the amount of time it took to recharge them using the charging case, meaning that charge was never far away whenever it did dip low. We were able to use voice-dialing to make calls, which were nicely audible to the person we were speaking to, and Siri felt just as accurate as using it on the phone itself – which is to say it’s good, but isn’t the best voice-assistant out there. Outside of music controls, Siri works very well. The AirPods are small and convenient due to the way they pair quickly and easily with your phone, but it’s unfortunate that you feel the need to take your phone out of your pocket to perform most controls if you don’t want to look like you’re talking to yourself on the bus. Having to double tap one of the earbuds just to skip a track or raise the volume never feels as quick or easy as using a simple in-line remote, and worse still, feels embarrassing in public, which is where you’re likely to spend the most amount of time listening to these headphones. ![]() This pause functionality is excellent, but we wish the AirPods had just a couple of buttons to handle other common music playback tasks. We say ‘almost’ because taking a single AirPod out of one of your ears will automatically pause whatever you’re listening to. We’ve found that some will happily connect automatically just by being turned on, while others will require you to dig into your phone’s Bluetooth menu every time. ConnectivityĬonnectivity has historically been a bit of a mixed bag with Bluetooth headphones on iPhones. To be clear, this sort of performance difference is absolutely warranted when the AirPods cost over five times the amount of the EarPods, but it’s reassuring to know all the same. The EarPods offer a flat and thin sound experience compared to the AirPods, which is comparatively buzzing with energy. The AirPods blow the Lightning-equipped EarPods, the ones bundled with recent iPhones, out of the water in terms of sound quality. There’s not quite the same crispness or detail across a track as a similarly priced pair of wired headphones, but the AirPods nevertheless provide an impressive listening experience. Instruments are able to share the soundstage without it feeling overcrowded. Turn on Back to Black by Amy Winehouse, and the layering in the orchestral backing is impressive. There’s also a good amount of space in the soundstage. It means the headphone’s sound has energy and rhythm to it, whether you want to relax with some Slayer, or get pumped up with Enya. Listen to a track like Turbowolf’s Nine Lives, and the bass nicely cuts through the track without overwhelming the mid and treble notes. ![]() Sound qualityįor all our reservations about the fit and feel of the AirPods, they actually sound pretty good. The downside of a lack of silicon is the fact the AirPods don’t feel secure, but the upside is that because they’re not pressing on the insides of your ear, they feel very comfortable over long listening periods. We forgive this when it comes to the standard EarPods, but when there’s no cable to catch the earbud when it falls we think it’s more important for that extra feeling of secureness. This was an ongoing theme with the AirPods, which was that although they never physically fell out of our ears, they never felt all that secure either, and we’d think twice before leaving the AirPods in while we ran for the train. Everyone was able to shake their heads without the AirPods falling out, but none agreed that they felt completely secure. We tried the earphones in a number of the TechRadar team’s ears, and they sat well in each of them. Instead, the AirPods rely entirely on their one-size-fits-all plastic housing to keep themselves sat firmly in your ears.
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