I've been using these Apple Airpod 3's since the very first day they were released to the public
and as a former recording studio engineer and as someone who's never been really sold on full
wireless earbuds i've discovered some things that you're probably going to want to know about if
you're considering buying these. So welcome to the Apple Airpod 3 long-term review by Run The Joules
Before we dig into the surprisingly BAD parts of my Airpod's 3 experience, let's quickly
cover what i really liked about them during my day-to-day usage. Okay first up the thing that
you're going to be handling a lot which is the case and if you have had air pods before
you'll be very familiar with this style of case this one is really tiny it's been super durable
i haven't really cared about the health and safety of this case very much and i don't
see one single scratch on it i just throw it in my pocket with my keys it doesn't even matter
and it looks brand new still so i'm very happy with the build quality of the case it's got a
really satisfying click to it too next part that i've been very impressed with and actually i feel
like i'm gonna say the same line from when i was talking about the battery for the 13 pro
i never have to consciously think about when i'm charging these AirPods you just don't really have
to think about battery life i put them in i listen i'll put them back in the case every now and again
i'll think to myself oh maybe i should throw them on the charger and that's it they i have never
once ran out of batteries after months of usage in all kinds of conditions in cold weather and
hot weather it doesn't even matter now the next thing is fitment and i kind of won the lottery
on this one i know it's not going to be the same for everybody out there but the fitment for me
with these it it really could not be more perfect and so for me when i put them in my ears there's
not one single pressure point anywhere and so i have them in and i have constantly forgotten
that i'm actually wearing these and so i'll be on my computer and i'll be done work and
i'll head upstairs i'm working at home just like most of you now and i just totally forgot i was
sitting down at the supper table and i'm like wait wait a minute all that to say they fit me
really nicely and the interesting thing is like i kind of have bigger ears it's just how it is but
these also actually fit my wife Beth's ears really nicely and her ears are like half the size of mine
so i don't understand how that works but it just does comparing these to say the AirPod Pros that
have that extra sort of like gel tip those those types of earbuds don't work well for me because
my ears are the same size but my ear canals are different sizes and so i always have to like mess
around with different tips for that style and so this is definitely the style of earbud for me it
just happened to work out that way hopefully it does for you too all right the next thing
i'm going to cover is auto device switching now if you are deep deep within that apple ecosystem
like i am uh you're gonna really appreciate this so if i go and pick up my iPhone it says AirPods
connected just like that automatically if i were to put this down and say if i was in the studio
or in the office i'll just go and start typing on the laptop it automatically switches over to that
it works so so well the vast majority of the time sometimes almost even too well like i swear
i just put my phone down sometimes and i look at my laptop and it's like AirPods connected so
there is actually one situation where it is flat out terrible with the whole auto switching thing
but we'll talk about that in a second all right so now the reason why probably a lot of you are
watching this i know it'd be the reason why i'd be watching a review of these AirPods and that's
for audio quality so as you know i haven't owned previous generations of the AirPods
but i have had plenty of the ear pods like the wired ones including the very last generation
before they came out with air pods and i also have some nice high quality akg 240 st akg akg 240 AKG
k240 studio over ear headphones and the results were really interesting so what i found when
comparing the different AirPods and EarPods and headphones together is that when it comes to
wireless audio transmission and at least for these with the type of compression that they have to use
i just find that you lose a lot of high end there's almost like a pretty low cap for how
high of frequencies that you can hear with these and this loss in sort of high frequencies even
like the really super cheap ear pods that that are wired even those had better high-end sound
reproduction than these and until apple comes out with some sort of lossless way of getting
that audio wirelessly into these buds that's just something you're gonna have to deal with
so what i could tell immediately was that apple paid a lot of attention to the mid and low mid
frequencies for these that whole middle section sounds quite nice and that makes a lot of sense
because that's the frequency range where our voices live one of the things that i wasn't
super happy with was the stereo imaging of these and there's a lot of talk about spatial audio
and that's kind of using phasing tricks to you know have sounds coming from all over the place
but when you actually just put it in regular stereo mode and listening to regular music
i found that the whole sound stage was pretty two-dimensional
whereas i would put on my akgs and all of a sudden the singer is here the reverb is over there it's
incredible and there's no spatial audio trickery there it's just good quality audio drivers
okay so we've covered the good we've covered the medium meh now we're going to go over the
bad parts of these air pods it's getting cold now one of the things that i've noticed that has been
super super annoying with these airpods is that i when i do longer phone calls i definitely want
to use them it's so much more convenient it's got great microphones which i guess should have been
in the pro side of the video but the problem is that when i'm actually having like a phone phone
call not a facetime call not a zoom call not a google meets but an actual normal like phone phone
call it cuts out fairly often and during one phone call it cut out four or five times and i just had
to just pull them out and stop using them and that has been through all firmware updates i'm
not sure how many other people are having that issue but i was having that issue super annoying
it doesn't do it all the time but often enough that i really feel like i need to mention it here
another big con for me as somebody who's pretty deep into that apple ecosystem is when you have
multiple devices logged in under icloud which means these things are going to auto detect
whatever device you're on it can't differentiate what device it's necessarily closest to
it seems and the reason why i say that is because when i've say been on my laptop with these in
on a phone call or a zoom call or whatever and i've let my son go and take my ipad and watch a
youtube video or something the airpods get really really confused as to what's going on and where it
should be connected so if you are like me and you do have multiple devices signed in at any one time
and you share your devices with people that's just something to keep in mind so oh actually there is
there was one thing that i did want to talk about um as somebody who as i keep saying is well in
that ecosystem that apple ecosystem if you have an apple watch the combination between the air
pods and the apple watch has been really really nice i bought this specifically so i could start
leaving my phone at home it's the lte version and the one thing that i found was a little bit
tough was you know answering the phone like a total dork in the supermarket with your watch
but if you pair it with these i feel like it's the most perfect leave your phone at home situation
whenever you get notifications you can have it so that siri gently whispers them into your ears and
you could reply just through the microphones it's just really solid anyways that i totally forgot to
cover that earlier now you know it's great combo all right so here are my final thoughts on the
apple airpod 3s after a number of months of daily usage if you were someone who is say commuting on
the bus every single day and just really using it to listen to music and not much else i would look
into a higher quality wired set of earbuds it's just going to provide much better sound quality
overall and if you're a person who doesn't really need that that wireless aspect to it i would take
sound quality over wireless convenience any day of the week if i didn't really need it but
they do offer a lot in a person's daily life if they're using them for its strengths i know lately
that you can get airpod pros for roughly the same price as these airpod 3s and if you go that route
you get some active noise cancellation although i have heard a lot of people having issues with it
but in general for my daily use case i find that these have offered enough value that i do plan
on keeping them and i'm pretty happy with their performance so let me know down in the comments
what you think about all of this whether you've had experience with them or what you're looking
for in the perfect set of wireless earbuds and we'll see on the next one everybody cheers