- I wouldn't really describe myself as a fan of anything,
but I love my AirPod Pros.
They sound fine.
The active noise cancellation is excellent,
without any kind of weird pressure on my ears,
and they are among the most comfortable-in-ear headphones
that I have ever used.
So, when I saw Apple's third gen regular AirPods,
which bring that AirPods pro shape to a lower price point,
all be it without active noise cancellation,
I was pretty excited.
And this is my first hands-on, brand new,
there you go, we're tearing off the seals.
AirPods with MagSafe charging case, okay.
For headphones, I actually see MagSafe
as having more value for me personally,
than it does for a phone.
I don't have a tonne of difficulty lining up my phone
on a regular charging pad.
But every once in a while, I do miss with these,
just because they're so small
compared to the normal shape of a charging pad.
That I could see that being extremely useful.
AirPods. Thanks.
Don't bother telling me what generation I bought,
or anything like that, who cares, right?
Still resentful of their naming schemes.
Now is this smaller? It's smaller.
I've sequestered myself, actually,
Anthony did all our coverage of the event,
so all I saw was that it's the AirPods Pro shape,
but you don't have to pay quite so much for it.
They are a lot smaller. Wow.
They're basically the size of the old AirPods carrying case,
except it opens up horizontally now, instead of,
instead of vertically.
Actually here, I'm just going to pull this out.
That is like, is that, is it exactly the same size?
Boy, is it ever close? Wow, hold on.
I think it might be a little thicker.
If it's thicker, it's marginal, it's really close,
which means then that it's going to fit perfectly
in your headphone pocket.
Boom, just like that.
Oh man, that goes into real easy.
That is one of the biggest advantages
that Apple has over their competition
because there's tonnes of other earphones out there
that have four-ish hour battery life
in the earphones themselves
and then offer another 20 something in the case.
But where Apple really stands out,
is that they do it in a case that is way smaller.
And now they do it in an earphone
that is really, really aggressively sized.
To be clear, the new third gen AirPods
have six hours of battery life,
which is even more impressive given the size of the case.
Now, one thing that I can tell you guys,
that I'm going to miss immediately,
is you can see that the silicone tip from the AirPods Pros
is not present on the new AirPods.
One nice thing about this, is it means that after six months
you won't be being shamed actively into buying a new pair,
because your ear tips, which are white for some reason,
turn yellow.
There, that's a little less unpleasant looking,
right Brendan.
Now, interestingly,
these are not really quite the same shape.
- [Brendan] Wouldn't you be more concerned
with the AirPods gen three clogging up with wax?
- No, that's a really big grill.
All you're going to need is a little bit of moisture,
like an isopropyl alcohol.
Get it kind of softened up a little bit,
you should be able to pretty much wipe that out.
I mean, the deeper it goes in your ear,
the more wax buildup is going to be a problem.
I know that some people in particular do have trouble with
their AirPods clogging up with wax,
but I'd say that they've actually done
a better than usual job of making it cleanable here.
Obviously, if it disassembles in any way,
that was helpful for those kinds of things,
it would be better, but never change Apple.
Oh, is there anything else included?
Yes. You get a USBC to lightening cable.
So wireless charging sold separately.
Okay, what I'm really interested in is the ergonomics,
cause that's my favorite thing about the AirPods Pros.
LG's latest tone freeze, the FP eights,
are actually very, very close in terms of comfort,
but these are really, really good.
I just want to put my regular Pros in for a sec here.
My daily drivers. Okay. Basically perfect.
They're impossible to remove from my ears
without putting my fingers in to take them out.
I actually sleep with them in almost every night.
I turn on the active noise cancellation,
just kind of helps me sleep through random noises.
I absolutely love these things.
Let's see how much you're giving up,
for what is it, 70 bucks?
That's the difference in price, I think.
Hmm.
They're not going to come out,
but you're also not going to have that snugness
that you get from a silicone ear tip.
My biggest takeaway just from putting them in my ears,
haven't even listened to anything yet,
my biggest takeaway from them right out of the gate is,
Apple, please don't discontinue the Pro line.
Not everyone likes that in ear canal,
sort of violated feeling though so, your mileage may vary.
But the other thing you're not getting compared to the Pros,
is you're not getting any kind of passive noise isolation,
which is not the same as cancellation.
So the Pros have both.
They isolate well,
because they've got this nice seal with your ear.
But, they also actively noise cancel using the microphones
that are on the outside of the earphone.
These have neither, there's no active noise cancellation,
and because they don't form a seal with your ear,
I can hear every bit as well right now.
maybe slightly less well,
but almost as well as if I didn't have them in at all.
But no, I don't want to find contacts.
Just not now.
I'm trying to listen to music you idiots.
Why's every music app wanna know everything about you.
Well, I mean, we all know the answer, but stop.
Oh my God. I have to put iOS 15 on this iPhone.
While we wait, it's time for message from our sponsor.
- [Brendan] Hey-ya.
- Hey-ya indeed.
Instructions, dip the toothpick, dab it on your tongue.
Read the sponsor spot.
Don't be a B word.
Flatline hot sauce.
If you're not familiar with D-Brand,
they make expensive electronics tape
that you can wrap your devices with.
This is from a drop we did with them awhile back,
their sticker bomb skin.
Message them and ask them for it.
I know they've got, they've got lots of this still.
It wasn't limited edition at all.
And they also make a habit of trolling me
in their sponsor spots,
that they must sell a lot of electronics tape
in order to pay for it because they're not cheap.
Pepper palace the end. I just want to know what's in it.
Oh, Reaper's okay.
Oliorism, capsism, capsism?
I think I've heard of those before.
I think those are bad things.
All right, well good luck everybody.
(man choking)
(man laughing)
- [Brendan] Oh no!
- D-Brand if I end up with hiccups
for the entire rest of this video,
I'm going to be pretty pissed off.
That's it, D-Brand,
you don't get any more talking points than that.
Don't like it, complain to your reps boss.
Oh wait, he don't care.
The cold water is so soothing.
LTTstore.com, baby.
Updates done. We're ready.
I'm expecting a super simple pairing process, connect.
Press once to play, pause, twice to skip forward,
three times just to backwards.
Here we go.
Oh, interesting.
Okay, I was not expecting them
to make a noise when I put them in my ears
because that's usually the indicator
for whether you're turning ANC on and off.
Okay. Holding just gives you Siri.
Oh shut up, Siri.
I do strongly prefer the squeezed style stems
compared to the tap in the old regular AirPods.
This is way better.
It's way harder to accidentally actuate
and it's way easier to hit on purpose.
Got the same little tic noise to confirm that it registered.
Now how do I control whether spatial audio is on?
I can tell that it's probably on right now.
That seems like a weird thing for them to have on
by default though.
The fact that there's so many hits for this
tells you everything you need to know.
Settings, Bluetooth.
Thank you for not bringing that up when I searched for it.
There we go.
You can turn it on in control center.
So I can't turn it on here?
It doesn't do anything, see?
This is just to hear the difference. Okay, it was on.
So that explains why it had that huge kind of sound to it.
Let's turn it off and see how they sound
without any weird digital tricks.
I could see people liking it
in the same way that there's a lot of people
that do like DSP effects, you know,
like to give them more auditorium like sound to what they're
listening to or whatever else.
Personally, I strongly prefer to listen to music
as the artist intended it without any effects.
That's not my vibe here.
I'd also probably never use that head track mode.
Now that's interesting.
Apple is doing more than just adding a DSP effect here
that gives it spatiality.
They're also playing around with EQ as far as I can tell.
And in much the same way that modern laptops,
if you listen to their speakers with the drivers installed,
they sound horrible.
Manufacturers are adding a lot of software compensation
for the drivers that make them sound better.
I think Apple is actually tuning the sound,
as well as adding that openness to it.
- [Brendan] Yeah the big thing is they
have an adaptive EQ on these ones.
- Sorry, adaptive EQ? Where do you adjust that?
There appears to be just running all the time.
That's a really interesting move
because I think a lot of people
are going to turn on the spatial audio
and they're going to be like, wow,
how did they ever listen to music before this?
But a big part of the effect is coming from something
that doesn't have to do with that spatial effect.
I wonder why?
Well, I guess I don't really wonder why,
I guess it's a way to have people hooked
on the Apple ecosystem.
Because to my knowledge, these features won't be supported
if you pair it to an Android device.
Like I do.
I actually daily drive these with an Android device.
All right. Let's move on though.
How do they sound compared to the AirPods Pro?
Because I think that's the decision
a lot of people are going to be making.
Especially with how much more expensive the gen three
AirPods are compared to gen twos.
Interesting.
So my option for spatial audio goes away
when I'm sharing my audio.
It's really hard to compare.
It's like comparing an open backed headphone
with a closed back headphone.
They have very different flavors.
Another thing that makes this challenging
is these are my daily drivers.
I listen to them every single day.
So inherently there's a bit of bias towards them
because your ears tend to like what they often listen to.
I, other than the lack of noise isolation
and noise cancellation, I can't find a problem with them
compared to the AirPods Pros.
I'd say they are on par.
To be clear, neither of these are audio file grade IEM's.
If you wanted those,
you could expect them to have a wire on them,
but they both sound good enough.
And if your main concern
is not tuning out the world around you,
man, these are huge step forward compared to last gen.
In terms of comfort, in terms of sound. Yeah.
What can I say? Good product.
- [Brendan] Do you Want to test the microphone though?
Oh, the mic. Is the mic supposed to be worse?
Oh, I mean, yeah, we can do a quick, we can do a quick call.
What's up Mr. Ten?
How's my, how's my audio quality doing over there?
I would have you test my AirPods Pros as well,
but I have a slight problem with the microphone
on my AirPods Pros because I ran over this one in my car.
(man grunts)
(man laughs)
Microphone is a little bit, it used to be good.
- [Brendan] It used to be good.
Well, we can't really fault apple for that one.
(Brendan laughs)
- Just like my videos used to be good
back when I was in the kitchen, Linus sucks now.
But if you disagree with that statement,
go ahead and subscribe.