- AirPods Pro for 250 bucks? No way!
(laughs) Welcome to Crazy Uncle Riley's Apple Emporium
where I got prices on Apple products so low,
I'd have to be crazy to sell 'em.
AirPods 2? (laughs)
Their newfangled AirPods 3? (laughs)
All genuine, 100% real.
Guys, just kidding. It's me, regular Riley.
These are all fake, super fake.
But are they real enough that they could trick someone
into thinking they're real?
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(bright music)
After covering knockoff AirPods Max,
we received a package with a letter attached.
"Dear LTT, those old and outdated replicas you've tested
are like buying a Dell prebuilt when you want a gaming PC."
They sent us two clones
that they claim are as good as the real things,
AirPods Pro at $55 and AirPods 2 at $35.
And something they didn't even mention in the letter,
AirPods 3 clones at $42.
To see if these can pass as genuine, we took these boxes
to our resident Apple expert Jonathan Horst.
- [Adam] Without opening the box,
do these look legit to you?
- You know what, I have to say no,
because I reviewed these
and I remembered how fake the real box looked.
Oh yeah, this is totally real.
Yeah. Yeah, that's a dead giveaway.
- [Adam] What's the giveaway?
- Probably the CSA logo 'cause that's Canadian
and we're in Canada and they have to put that on there.
- [Adam] There is a difference in the print quality.
- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's like, this is like ink jet, this is like laser.
So I'm opening these up.
You can tell the difference already,
but just with the way the light,
the indicator light is inset on the device.
Well, I guess it really depends
on whether or not you've seen a real pair.
If you've seen a real pair,
yeah, you'd be able to tell immediately,
particularly with the way the mesh is.
If it was just based off product shots, then yeah.
You probably, you might be like,
"Oh yeah, that looks pretty convincing".
But that's the thing with these knockoffs
is you start questioning yourself
and you start questioning reality.
Yeah, if you wanted to just look like you're wearing AirPods
out on the street, no one would be the wiser.
- But how do they sound?
To test, we got a few people from around the office
and ran an experiment.
- My name is Ethan.
- I'm Lloyd.
- Chase.
- I'm Sarah.
- I write for Channel Super Fun.
- I've been working on
like a lot of like really cool T-shirts.
- I'm supposed to be an event coordinator.
- I am a graphic designer.
Go to lttstore if you're interested in seeing
some of the projects that I get to work on.
- [Riley] Our subjects will now listen
to each pair of headphones while blindfolded
and will choose which pair of AirPods
they think sounded better.
They'll also tell us
how confident they are in their decision
with a value from one to five,
with one being a wild guess
and five being complete certainty.
♪ Ooh yeah ♪
- My instant reaction is just,
I can't hear the outside world more
and I do like that for if I'm trying to enjoy music.
Oh, it feels like my ears are plugged.
- It's like just richer and fuller.
- Definitely the noise canceling is something you notice
as soon as you put them in, which is cool.
- I don't know about these.
With my Pros that I have,
usually when I hear the white noise and put them back in,
it goes away,
but for some reason I can still like partially hear
the white noise.
- If I can't tell the difference between any of these,
then I spent way too much money on my headphones.
I could have just bought the old ones.
- [Adam] Here's your right. Here's your left.
- It's kind of quieter,
but I don't know if it's just actually quieter.
- I would say the bass
is definitely much more over-prominent.
- I couldn't really tell a difference at the moment.
Other than they were just a little bit quieter.
I could definitely tell you that these ones,
I don't know if they,
I would say they don't go in your ears easily.
- These sound terrible.
- [Adam] Really?
- They have like almost a static coming from them.
- I pick the first one.
- Based solely on the sound, I like the first pair.
I thought it sounded just like a touch better.
- The first one, and I'm five,
I'm like on a scale of one to five, I'm five.
- [Adam] Okay.
- I'm five.
- I would say like a one on that one.
- Two.
- I am, yeah, one out of five confidence.
Not very confident, but there's something there.
- Wow, unsurprisingly, everyone chose the real AirPods
as the better pair.
But none of our subjects were confident in their answers,
with two of them saying it was a coin toss.
The sole outlier was Sarah,
who was very certain the real ones were better,
but her confidence rating may have been skewed
by some errors encountered during testing.
- [Adam] Apparently it's disconnected.
- Uh-oh. Do you need them back?
Hmm, you don't usually have to do this with Apple AirPods.
♪ Ooh yeah ♪
- They sound the same. I don't know if I'm crazy.
They sound maybe a bit less bassy,
but oh nah, they're the same.
I couldn't tell you.
- They're very light. I would say they're comfortable.
I definitely can hear a lot of sound from outside.
- There's a little bit less bass on them at the moment.
I would say that I don't really notice
much of a difference at this time.
- [Adam] This is the right earbud. This is the left earbud.
- All right. - Put 'em in.
- I don't know if it's just the problem with my ears,
but so far the fit is like better on the right ear.
I would enjoy this, I would. There's a lot of bass.
- The sound from this is much fuller, I think.
I feel like this one is not as well made as the first one.
- So far, the only difference I really noticed
was just like a ton of bass.
I don't mind a ton of bass,
but I don't usually have it cranked.
So for me, when there's a lot more bass on new headphones,
it's a little jarring sometimes.
- They sound good. Like, yeah.
I feel like I'm at a concert, but I can't see anything.
- It's actually better than my AirPods, I feel like.
My AirPod Pros.
- I would say I'm very certain
that I like the second one better.
- The confidence levels are terrible.
I'd say two out of five from confidence.
- I'd be like a two, maybe.
- Five out of five.
- I'd say my confidence is like a 4.5 out of 5.
- Wow, a clear winner.
The $35 knockoffs actually beat the real things.
That's pretty crazy.
To my ears, they have a bit more oomph to the bass
that the real AirPods lack,
but it comes at the cost of precision,
with kick drums sounding more full, but less punchy.
Other than that,
the tuning is virtually identical to the real thing.
Now we have one more device to test,
but in the seller's defense,
they didn't intend for these
to be sent along with the others.
And, well, the results speak for themselves.
♪ Ooh yeah ♪
- They sound pretty average.
Do you wanna turn it up like all the way?
Okay, it's way too loud.
- These ones don't fit as nicely in my ears.
- I'm running out of things to say.
These are just the normal headphones.
I still enjoy them and still don't care.
Oh God.
- [Adam] We'll swap them out.
- All right.
- I would say I notice a difference on these
even right away.
Part of it is probably the way
that it doesn't fit in the ear
quite as well as the other ones.
And it sounded a little bit off or different
than the other four pairs.
- I don't know if you're pausing it,
but it keeps connecting in and out, in and out, in and out.
- I heard a little static, like beeping.
Like (trills) I dunno how to describe it,
but sounds like these got like sat on.
- Personally, I like the first one better.
I would say five.
- 3.5.
- I'd be like, that's like a four out of five for sure.
- 100% I would pick the other ones that I like them better
because they don't have a weird static sound.
Also the left ear played music in the other ones.
I am five out of five confident
that I like the other headphones better.
- Cool. - These suck.
- Big oof. The FakePods 3 did terribly.
Every single test subject
agreed with relatively high confidence
that the replicas were much worse.
They had some electrical noise.
We couldn't get them to connect to our iPhones,
only to Android devices.
Also, we couldn't get our case to charge
via cable or MagSafe, so these are already dead.
Thanks for producing actual junk, Jenny.
I hope no one actually wastes 42 bucks on these things.
And don't waste money buying a new controller
just because the joysticks are drifting.
We're gonna be fixing a bunch of broken controllers
for an upcoming video.
So get subscribed so you don't miss it.
Now those first two pairs, those are nothing to sneeze at.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,
then Apple should be very, very flattered.
They sound good, they look good, but do they work good?
First, let's look at the feature parody.
Magic Pairing worked for all the clones.
Battery life was acceptable, but worse than the real things.
Recharge time was fine.
Wireless charging worked on all of the cases,
except for the AirPods 3, which wouldn't charge at all.
But battery reporting was wonky with the replicas.
They would like just die suddenly
while reporting 18% battery life.
Huh?
The case battery life on the FakePros seemed good,
but on the Fake 2s,
the case seemed to constantly be draining
and we weren't sure why.
Maybe a reporting error due to the knockoff chip set?
The active noise canceling on the FakePods Pro
when listening to music was pretty good,
but without music there was a slight hiss
and a not so slight bass rumbling
that was literally headache inducing.
As for the Find My network,
while all the devices can be located using GPS,
you can't make the headphones chirp
or use any of the other Find My features.
Spatial audio and MagSafe? Nope.
Touch controls on the FakePods 2? Terrible.
They basically don't work.
The FakePods Pro?
You need to squeeze the stem so firmly,
you will almost certainly pull them out of your ear.
Plus all the fakes
tended to suddenly stop connecting to iPhones
and require a soft reset.
And here's the real fun part,
if you wanna update the firmware on either of these,
you need to have an Android device,
download an app from the Play Store,
use that to sideload an APK, download the firmware,
open it in the app, and then slowly update over Bluetooth.
That's if these companies even bother
to release updated firmware for these chips.
It's not fun.
But on the plus side, the app has an EQ,
unless you turn on A and C on the A and C less FakePods 2,
so you can make this happen.
Oh, it's beautiful.
Even though these products
may have competitive audio quality and crazy low price tags,
FakePods 2 are a full Benjamin cheaper
and the Fakepods Pro saving nearly twice that,
we still aren't going to recommend them
or even tell you where to get them.
I mean, you can probably figure it out
using the info in this video and novice Googling skills,
but we don't feel comfortable
supporting the reptronics industry
with its consumer hostility and regulation dodging.
If large companies like Apple and Samsung
struggle to suss out human rights violations
in their supply chains,
well, imagine what these nameless faceless companies
could be doing.
And look at the FakePods 3,
you could just end up with garbage, literal garbage.
Instead, we'd recommend spending that cash
on some high quality, budget, true wireless headphones
that we will have listed for you down below.
But people don't want that. They want AirPods.
The question is why do people want AirPods so bad
that entire communities
have emerged specifically to procure knockoffs?
Well, even though audiophiles
may not care what their headphones look like,
tech is fashion now.
And like luxury clothing brands,
Apple has gone to great lengths
to make their products feel like an exclusive club.
Green bubbles versus blue bubbles.
Lock-in features like AirDrop and FaceTime.
The entire Apple ecosystem
serves as a purposeful class divide.
If you aren't wealthy enough
to pay the entry price to join that club,
well, you're stuck with the Android plebs
and their weak-ass open standards
and basic text messaging, pah!
But a pair of knockoffs could be the fake ID
that tricks others into thinking
you are part of those chosen elite.
So don't be tricked and don't buy these.
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Hey, thanks for watching guys.
If you liked this video, go check out our video
we did on the fake AirPods Max headphones.
What a saga this has been.