- I've never been able to use AirPods for two reasons,
(electronic music) first, they're one-size
fits most design just doesn'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 AirPods I'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 your pants pockets just fine.
And it also still supports wireless charging,
so you can plop the Pro's down onto a charger at night
with your iPhone when you're ready for bed.
More importantly, Apple's changing the way
the new AirPod'S actually go 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't get 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't like how in-earbuds feel,
because they create the sense of pressure,
almost like you're underwater or something.
This happens because there's air getting trapped
in your ear because of that silicone seal.
So for the AirPods,
Apple came up with a really clever solution,
there's a vent on the outside that equalizes
the pressure on the outside and inside
so that discomfort of hearing your own voice too loudly,
that's not a thing with these.
Apple also designed the Pro so 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 test in the setting's menu
to make sure the ones you've chosen
produce a good seal for the best possible sound quality.
You're gonna hear a few seconds of music,
and in inside facing microphone analyzes
the sound in your ear canal as you're hearing it,
and it compares that back to 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 might end up with different sizes
in each one of their ears,
and that's okay, as long as 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 tips actually takes a bit of effort,
and they snap back on a little quiet click,
so you know they're on there good and tight.
If you lose them, Apple sells replacements in their store
for about four bucks.
The old AirPods used a series 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 your phone 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 having the choice of either one.
Squeezing and holding the force sensor switches you
between active noise cancellation and transparency mode
which amplifies outside audio in a natural way
so you can hear traffic or flight announcements,
or order a coffee without yelling at the barista.
You can have transparency mode on whenever you want,
so if you liked how the old 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 Siri to turn ANC on or off.
Apple's noise canceling system uses a pair of microphones,
one outside and one in.
The outside mic takes a reading of 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 Pro can adjust their sound signal
at 200 times per second to adapt for the shape of your ears.
Now, I can't verify that number,
but I can tell you that this noise cancellation is legit.
It'll quiet down city streets and your office.
If you turn down the volume,
you can hear some of what's going on,
these aren't over-ear noise 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 wondering how the Pro AirPods sound.
And the answer is good, very good,
and way better than the previous AirPods ever did.
They're balanced, they're neutral,
and the ear tips seal results in a big improvement to base,
which is right where I want it to be on these earbuds.
The Pros have all new drivers,
Apple won't say how big they are,
and there's this feature called adaptive EQ
that runs whenever you've got 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 cancellation also disables adaptive EQ.
And you can tell a difference.
Now, there are headphones that 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 people are gonna be very happy
and more than satisfied by how the AirPods Pro sound.
These are not audiophile headphones,
they never have been,
but they're fun, and they're well 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 microphone closer 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 way to make voice calls on the go?
I called Becca to see how they sound.
- Just waitin' for my friend Chris to call me.
(phone ringing)
- Hey Becca, I'm calling you from the AirPods Pro,
or the AirPod Pros,
or whatever we're supposed to call them,
but we're inside a soundproofed room, 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 loved for their voice quality.
And just as a wildcard,
I'm also testing the new Echo 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 really well in this regard,
and you're hearing the AirPods 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 pretty good for what they are.
Stepping away from Apple for a second,
here's what the Echo buds sound like when you're outside.
They're picking up my voice pretty well,
it's taking some time,
but the competition is catching up to Apple,
and these cost a lot less than the AirPods Pro.
So apple says battery life on the AirPods Pro
is good for 4.5 hours of continuous playback,
with the noise canceling on.
That's pretty close to the standard AirPods five hours,
and you get that here too
if you turn off noise cancellation.
But that battery is nowhere near the Powerbeats Pro,
which can last nine hours 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 sensor just stops working briefly
from time to time,
and changing modes in control center
doesn't always do what it should.
Now, Nilay is also testing 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's gonna 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 can change devices really fast
from your iPad to your iPhone to your Mac,
but you can't pair to more than one device at a time.
Other earbuds can do that,
and I'd love to see the AirPods do it as well.
Here's the thing about the AirPods though,
so much about their appeal is 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 the ability 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 still not the ideal experience,
so you might be better off 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 the environment situation.
If you use your AirPods a lot,
the battery inside is gonna last two years, three max.
This is a problem for the entire category
of true wireless earbuds.
None of them are what you'd call repairable.
Maybe you're okay spending $250
with the knowledge that these things 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 possibly can 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 your AirPods to the Apple store,
or some other place that can 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 by their 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've got more earbuds coming,
somehow, from Microsoft, Google,
and Jabra over the next several months.