(upbeat music)
- Hey. What's up. MKBHD here. Okay.
So I'm in the last stages of my MacBook Pro review.
A lot of you have been even asking where it is.
I'm not rushing it, it is not early.
So, sorry about that.
But, my final bits of testing include editing a
full MKBHD video. Shot and red code raw
on the 16 inch M1 Max Mac Book Pro.
That's this video.
So if you're seeing this, then that means
at some point I got through that whole process.
So hopefully that went well.
Ah, if it didn't go well, then
check my Twitter because that's probably where
I was complaining about how things went.
Either way, that's next up.
Until then, these are the most popular
headphones on earth.
These are Air Pods.
So the new stuff that you're looking at here is
Air Pods 3.
They were a quieter announcement at last month's
Apple event, but they're $179
and honestly, the story with these is, well,
there's quite a bit of new stuff,
but also the competitive landscape for earbuds
has been heating up for years.
And there have never been more high quality alternatives
to Air Pods than there are right now.
So, the new Air Pods 3 design
basically looks just like a set of
Air Pods Pro, but without the silicon tips,
like someone chopped them off.
It's the one size fits all, hard tip
from the Air Pods of the past.
And this is simultaneously its biggest advantage
and its biggest downside for people like me.
See the shape is just slightly adjusted
from previous hardtip Air Pods.
You can see it's more of a wedge shape where
it goes into your ear.
It's a slightly bigger opening at the end
and it's a bit more of a larger bulb.
But, basically the idea is that it's pretty close
to the common ear and it just pops in
and sits there. No problem.
At least it's supposed to for most people,
but for me, again, it's not the best fit.
The left one happens to stay in pretty well,
but then the right one's constantly feeling like
it's slowly sliding out of my ear and eventually
it just falls out if I'm not constantly adjusting it.
So it's pretty annoying. Clearly not for me.
And for that reason,
I still prefer silicon tips instead of hard plastic.
I am super jealous of all you people who just grab
Air Pods and just put them in your ears and they just stay
forever. And just run around.
I'm not one of those people. Oh well.
But, I did test these for a little bit and there are some
other new things aside from just the new design.
So there's the controls on the stem now
on both sides like Air Pods pro.
You pretty quickly get used to squeezing it,
to play and pause.
You can double tap to go to the next song, et cetera.
There's no noise cancellation in these, but,
you can see the mesh cut out on the back
and around all the mikes,
all around this thing for adaptive EQ,
it passes through some of the sound from the outside
mainly to feel a bit more open
than some other earbuds.
They are sweat and water resistant now.
So if you want to workout in them,
you might've already done it,
but they'll officially be fine now.
And also if you walk around in the rain, no problem.
And there's also a new horizontal case.
Looks just like the Air Pods Pro case,
but it's a little bit smaller.
And for the first time,
the case is also officially IPX4 water resistant.
So like they might've survived water in the past,
but it's officially official now.
Still lightning at the bottom, unfortunately.
But this new case is now improved.
It'll still do wireless charging,
but it's also now MagSafe compatible,
which just means it'll snap onto the iPhone's
MagSafe charging puck.
And it holds pretty well there, too.
This MagSafe wireless charging case isn't unique
to Air Pods 3 though, by the way.
They quietly also updated the Air Pods Pro case
to also snap onto the magnets,
but they didn't also update it for water resistance.
So, small difference.
What would have been even cooler is if you could trickle
charge them via the T-charging on the back of the iPhone,
since they're both T-charging,
it would have been the sickest,
like little ecosystem plug.
They could've called it reverse MagSafe charging,
but there, they don't talk to each other like that.
It needs some extra hardware
to reverse wireless charge.
iPhones don't have that.
So that's not a real feature in this product.
Like it is with some other phones and their earbuds.
Now, if you decide to grab the sexiest case
on earth, the dBrand icons case,
or pretty much any other Air Pods case,
no magnetic snapping,
but yes, wireless charging does still work
if you're wondering.
I'll have a link below to this case,
if you want to protect your headphones.
And make sure you get an Air Pods 3K
specifically, because like I said,
Air Pods Pro cases are slightly different dimensions.
They won't quite fit.
But really, the most interesting
change to Air Pods, honestly, is the sound.
They have a, and I can't believe I'm saying this,
a perfectly respectable sound now.
So it's legitimately very improved.
I've trashed on Air Pods in the past,
as you guys have probably remembered,
for how weak they sound, how tinny they've been.
These Air Pods when they're set right in your ears
have much more body and bass frequencies now.
And they get plenty loud as always.
And they really do sound pretty solid.
Now the caveat is, one, there is no EQ
built in like a lot of other headphones have.
And two, these were meant to still be good,
basic everyday headphones.
And so Apple has tuned them as such
meaning they've got to be usable for phone calls
and podcasts, which have a lot of high focus
on vocal frequencies.
But also music listening in a variety of genres
and then also movie watching and everything in between.
But one feature that sort of gets highlighted
at least every time Apple talks about
these headphones is spatial audio.
Now, I don't typically use spatial audio very much,
but every time I try these, I give another shot.
And basically there are two types of spatial audio
experiences.
So one, is if you're just listening to music
or watching a video and you can just force it
on with the iOS settings and the head tracking
turns on. And for most mixes, it basically sounds
like you're suddenly in a small room with a set of
speakers in front of you.
And as you turn your head from left to right,
those speakers will sound like they continue to
stay in front of you.
But then two, there's, there's a very
small number of really well done mixes
in Dolby Atmos.
And you can find some on Apple Music
that actually do a great job of separating
the instruments and the channels and sort of
spreading them out around you in this whole symphony
with a decent soundstage.
And the Air Pods do a good job
of letting you kind of place
the instruments and vocals around you
in space around your head.
But I find that to be a pretty rare experience.
If you get to listen to these,
listen to "Blessings" by Big Sean,
that's one really good example, but again,
these types of tracks are few and far between,
but ultimately the sound for me comes down to
the hard tipped plastic.
They do sound much, much better,
but unfortunately I have one of the cursed ears
that doesn't work with hard tip earbuds.
So I would take silicon tipped earbuds every single time.
Some people are the total other way around.
So there's a lot of people comparing
Air Pods Pro with Air Pods 3.
I would personally pay the extra money for
Air Pods Pro.
Also, right now, if you check on Amazon,
Air Pods Pro have been like 190 bucks
for a while, and this is the new version too,
with the updated case.
So it's like 10 extra dollars to get
the noise cancellation and the silicon tips.
I'm picking that every single time.
But, for some people who don't care about
that type of thing, this is what they'll pick.
But that's really the summary for these headphones.
They don't really do any one thing amazingly.
Meaning they'll get beat in certain
single categories, but they do everything
you'd want headphones to do daily very well.
They have a slightly longer,
but totally reasonable, six hour battery life.
They have an all around good tune that's not adjustable.
They have a small case that wireless charges
and they fit great in the iPhones ecosystem.
They instantly pair with the rest of your iCloud devices
and seamlessly switch between them.
And they have better Find My ability now.
So if you lose the case,
which I don't know how many people lose just the case,
but if you do, you can use Find My to track that down.
It's not nearly as super precise as AirTags,
but it's very convenient to get a notification on your
iPhone if you start to leave somewhere
and you realize you left your Air Pods behind.
But look at the whole rest of the landscape,
it's way more diverse and interesting now.
Beats Fit Pro just came out today.
These have the best in-ear fit of any earbud
I've ever worn.
Wing tip for the wind.
They're amazing for working out.
They have noise cancellation,
but they have a kind of a still clunky case that also
doesn't have wireless charging. Or check these.
These are the Sony WF-1000XM4
These also blow the Air Pods out of
the water in terms of sound quality.
But if you've ever worn these, I mean,
they're much bigger and don't really sit
in the ear as comfortably
and you wouldn't work out in these and they're $250.
So they're in a different price category.
There's also the Nothing earbuds that I reviewed,
which have a better battery life,
but also a pretty big case that does wireless charge.
And it's a more interesting distinctive design,
especially with the buzz that I really like,
but they don't fit as well in the iOS ecosystem.
And then there's also Samsung's buds too,
which have a lot of the same stuff and wireless charging,
but you get the idea.
There's a lot out there.
So Air Pods are meant to sit right
in the middle of the road.
Like that's, they don't do any
of the things amazingly in any one
category, but they do everything pretty well.
And that's what makes them so easy to recommend.
It's also, they came out right before
the holiday season.
Like they know I'm probably gonna end up
getting these as a gift for some people.
They're incredibly popular for that exact reason.
But, there's a fun fact, Air Pods,
if you just cut off Air Pods from Apple
and just made it its own separate company,
Air Pods, Inc,
that company will be worth about $175 billion.
That's from an estimate from back in 2019,
just looking at how many they're selling,
approaching a hundred million units,
tons of revenue, obviously.
But can you imagine just a headphone company
by itself with only like three models
being worth $175 billion?
Like just for some context, Logitech,
which makes lots of headphones,
but also plenty of other accessories,
is worth $14 billion.
Sony, which makes headphones, but a ton of other stuff.
They make movies, they make the PlayStation,
they make phones and cameras.
Sony is worth like $150 billion tops right now.
So that's that's not to say these headphones are amazing,
but that's to say they are probably the best lure
to bring people into the iPhone ecosystem
and they're all around extremely convenient.
They're the easy choice. So there you have it.
Thanks for watching.
Hopefully the MacBook Pro isn't exploding
exporting this video.
Catch you guys soon with that review.
But until the next one, it's Tech-Vember...
That doesn't roll off the tongue as well.
See you guys in the next video.
(chuckles)
Peace.
(video sound)