- What's a good pair of wireless headphones
to take with you when you're traveling?
In this video, we're going to be
taking a look at the Apple AirPods.
Really great for making calls
and good for listening to music.
Let's check it out.
(techno music)
- At the time of publishing this video
I've had the AirPods for about a month now.
I've been testing them.
AirPod audio test.
Here's how the AirPods sound.
Be sure to head over to PackHacker.com
for this review page if you
wanna take a look at any updates.
We kinda keep track of how this stuff
is performing the longer that we have it to make sure
that we're always recommending the best products for you.
So, be sure to head over there and check it out.
It's amazing.
Love it.
So I talked to my friend Francis a couple months ago,
who is an engineer at Apple, he swears by these things.
He really loves them and obviously recommends them.
So, I wanted to check them out for myself.
One more thing about Francis, he loves mini-golf.
(crickets)
It's been a while since I've been able
to get my hands on them, but I was able to grab
a pair in Brisbane, Australia when I was there.
Randomly went into the Apple store
and they had some, so I picked some up.
So to start off, any wireless headphones
are gonna be good for travel.
You're not going to have the cords tangling up in your
luggage or your backpack as you're carrying them.
And especially if you have an over-the-shoulder bag,
when the cord either has to go under or above.
Or if you're buckling your seatbelt on the plane.
You don't really have to worry about the cords at all.
And you'd be surprised how big
of a difference that will make.
One of the concerns that I have with these
at first was that they were gonna
be falling out of my ears.
That's actually not the case and a lot
of that is attributed to that cord not being there
pulling down, getting caught randomly.
These will even work decently for a run.
Again, it's cordless.
These things stay in pretty well.
If you use a standard earbuds right now,
when you pop in the AirPods,
you're gonna notice a different feel.
These feel more solid, less cheap.
They have a little bit more weight to them.
And I think they really nailed the design
in creating what will generally fit into most peoples ears.
These have been really instrumental for calls as well.
I've been using them with Slack Audio,
Skype, FaceTime Audio.
The sound is crystal clear on both ends.
I can hear the recipient and they can hear me very well.
With the AirPods you have three
pieces to manage instead of one.
We have the charging case and each individual AirPod.
It's more to lose and more to manage
which can be a little bit annoying,
but if you're good at keeping track
of stuff, not gonna be an issue.
Something really nice with this though
is if you pull one AirPod out of your ear,
say to listen to somebody try to
have a conversation with you,
What?
Your music or audio will pause.
Apple is smart enough to tell whether or not
these things are in your ears.
Which is a little bit freaky,
but also very good when you're using them.
When setting these up initially, it's super easy.
You pop this lid open and your phone
recognizes the AirPods immediately and will ask to pair.
But all in all, super easy to toggle back and forth
between your laptop and your phone for calls.
It is hard to tell sometimes which these are paired to
when you wake them up, so the one feature request
that would be kinda cool is if
when the AirPods were in, a different tone would play
based on the device that it's currently plugged into.
So, sometimes I find myself out listening to music
on the MacBook Pro and then I toggle
quick back for a phone call and then I put these away.
I pull the MacBook Pro out later and then I forget
that I switched it over so I start the music
and everybody in the coffee shop is like...
(techno music)
(crickets)
These are very comfortable.
Once they're in, it's easy
to forget that you're even wearing them.
A couple times in the past, I've found
that I just kept these in and I'm not even listening
to any music or anything but they almost become
like an integral part and they're
very, very comfortable and I just forget they're in.
It's also great that you have a free range of motion.
So, you get up, you go to the bathroom,
or you get up and grab some more coffee, just keep these in.
If you do get too far away from your device,
the audio will just cut out but once you come back,
it'll just continue playing where you left off.
The carrying case also functions as the charging case.
When you're not using these, you just pop the AirPods in
with a little magnetic kind of
a connection once you throw them in.
That part is really great.
The case holds up to 24 hour
of battery life when it's charged.
But, compared to corded headphones,
these things always have to be charged up.
So if you're on a call, they start running out of battery,
you gotta change to the headset or stop and charge these.
So again, just another thing to charge
of all the other devices I'm sure that you already have.
To charge the case, you plug it in
just like you would your phone with a lightning cable.
Super simple and you don't need
to take another cord with you, which is great.
I'm also slightly afraid that someone's gonna run up
behind me and just pop these out but it hasn't happened yet.
The weight of the charging case and the AirPods together
is 1.62 ounces and then the dimensions are going to be
1.74 by.84 by 2.11 inches for the charging case.
I did interview another frequent traveler on PackHacker.com
my friend Jesse who travels all the time working for Tesla.
She's a regional manager.
She swears by her Dre Powerbeats 3.
She loves them and she's the one that kinda
turned me on to the idea of wireless headphones for travel.
With the AirPods, they're not gonna be the best on a plane.
They're not noise canceling.
They're not gonna block out that sound.
But overall, that's okay.
I really wish there was a wireless pair of these Shure
headphones that I've been using for the past two years.
They're chewed up, they're beat up, but they've been
with me through thick and thin
and I wear em on the plane, they cancel the noise out.
That's sort of the next echelon of headphones.
It's gonna be a little bit more expensive than the AirPods.
So the pros of the Apple AirPods is that the audio
on both ends is super clear and when you're
heading through the airport, on a plane, a train,
cabs, buses, you're not gonna have those cords in the way
when you're taking your bag on and off in transit.
In addition to that these are super comfortable
and you're hardly even going to be
able to notice when they're in.
So some of the cons with these
things are that there are three pieces.
Just more to manage, maybe more to lose.
They're not noise canceling so they're not gonna block out
that noise on the plane or your
annoying neighbor next to you that won't stop talking.
And charging can be a bit of an annoyance.
Especially if you're in the middle of a call
and it's hard to kinda seamlessly transition
onto your headset or onto your computer microphone.
Thanks for taking a look at the Apple AirPods review.
Be sure to head over to PackHacker.com/newsletter
and never miss an update on the best travel gear
and new tips and tricks coming at you all the time.
We'll see you in the next video.
(beep)
What was that son?
I couldn't hear ya, I had my ear pods in.
(beep)
Whoa, this chair is....
(chair squeaking)
What's up guys?
Tom from PackHacker
and in this video we're gonna
be reviewing this Apple bracelet.
That was a huge apple bite.
(beep)
(techno music)