Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “3rd Gen AirPods vs 2nd Gen AirPods vs Jabra Elite 3”.
Hey, what’s up folks, what’s going on, this watch hope you guys are all doing well and today we’re going to be taking a look at the third generation. Apple airpods been doing a lot of testing with these for the past few weeks, specifically against the second generation. Airpods, as well as what i consider be to be the best budget oriented true wireless earbuds, the jabra elite threes. Now let me give you guys the footnotes in terms of what has changed significantly from the third generation coming from the second generation airpods.
Firstly, you can see that we have a new contoured design, similar to what you get with the apple airpod pros. But, unlike the airpod pros, you actually don’t have any earbud tips. So, just like the first and second generation air pods, you don’t have any kind of silicone or rubberized tip it’s just using the plastic in-ear design, which is not great from a comfort as well as passive noise, isolation sense, but it’s the design that we have. Nonetheless, some of the upgrades also include adaptive eq, which automatically adjusts the frequency spectrum of the sound that you’re listening to match to your ears. You also have spatial audio features which tracks your head: dynamically to simulate: a surround, sound environment, similar to what we found on the apple airpod pros. You also have the force touch sensor like the airpod pros, as well as a better sweat and water resistant with official ipx4 certification, as well as a longer battery life at six hours for the earbuds and 30 hours, with the wireless charging case. Moreover, the only real major thing – that’s missing from the third generation air paws. That would make it pretty much the same as the pro version is the active noise cancellation and transparency mode, which is not available on the third generation. Now, besides, the features that we just lost, there’s really no difference between the 2nd gen and 3rd gen from an audio listening standpoint.
They both have the same frequency spectrum in terms of a response rate from a base mid treble standpoint. They also have the same a microphone configuration with dual beam: foaming microphones, facing down towards your mouth, obviously on the third gen they’re inward facing, so they should possibly give you a little bit better pick up, but we’ll listen to that in our microphone test later on. In this article, but generally the internal fundamental technology on the third gen is the same as the second gen.
Now, let’s move over and talk about the dropper elite threes. For a long time, jawbar has been making some killer in-ear wireless headphones and are one of my favorite companies and kind of my go-to from a day-to-day basis in terms of true wireless earbuds. They offer exceptional audio quality for the most part and in fact, the elite threes sound very similar to the 75 t’s they’re kind of mainstream middle-of-the-road. True wireless earbuds, with the exception that they don’t have active noise cancellation, but they do have what uh jabra calls their hear through or pass through mode, which is kind of a transparency mode, something not offered on the third and second generation airpods. And since the elite. Threes utilize different earbud tip sizes.
You can adjust the size of the tip to match your ear, which is going to be great in terms of an audio perspective since you’re going to get better overall bass response, as well as better passive noise cancellation. I just think i’m a huge fan of the danish inspired minimalistic design that the elite threes utilize they sit very flush to your ears, are ultra compact and contoured enough to fit inside your ears for a prolonged period of time, without any major issues of discomfort, fatigue, Etc, and with the contoured design, they fit very securely in the ear, so you won’t have to worry about them falling out, no matter what kind of activities you’re going to go through. Additionally, from a durability standpoint, you have ip55 certification on the elite threes.
So that means dust and water resistance on all direction versus ipx4 on the third gen air pods means that it’s rated for splash and liquid resistance from all directions, including sweat, rain, etc, but not for solid particles such as dust. Furthermore, in terms of audio quality, we have a six millimeter driver inside the elite threes with a frequency response of 20 to 20 000 hertz, which is technically similar to the response that you get with the air pods. But what you will notice when actually listening to the elite threes, is they have a much more powerful bass response with a deeper, a low end mid-range frequencies, as well as a decent amount of upper end clarity on the higher end spectrum, however, the general definition of Mid-Range is kind of lacking, especially compared to the airpods, would actually do a great job of reproducing the human voice, quite well with a decent amount of realism and clarity.
However, with some slight eq tweaks using the sound plus app, you can get the elite 3s to sound fairly similar. But if you do listen to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts, and things like that, you might actually prefer the sound of the airpods you’re just going to have to do a little compare and contrast to see what sounds better to your ears. For me personally, i would still probably prefer the sound of the elite threes due to the fact that you have that better bass response and i’m predominantly a music listener myself now in terms of the microphone configuration on the e3s, we have dual microphones on both left Right, earbuds and obviously they’re embedded inside they don’t have a stem where you get a better microphone pick up, but let’s actually do a side-by-side comparison with the second and third generation airpods to see how they sound now in terms of how the microphone sound on the Third generation airpods we’re actually shooting with the new generation a macbook pro. This is the 1080p facetime camera and uh right now, you’re listening to the microphone out of the second generation, airpods, we’ll move over to the third gen to see how those sound okay. So now we’ve switched over to the third generation air pods and, as you can see, the stem is definitely not as long but it’s still very similar.
A microphone configuration they’re, dual beam, foaming microphones but they’re inward facing much like the airpod pros. So the audio quality coming out of the microphone should be very similar in terms of what you get with the airpod pros on the third gen okay. So we’ve now switched over to the drawbr elite threes. Now, since they don’t have a stem or an extended microphone, a design, the overall call quality and overall distortion levels are a little bit higher on the voice, capturing capabilities compared to the second gen and third generation airpods.
Even though the jar bros actually have a dual microphone configuration similar frequency spectrum, capturing capabilities down to about 80 to 100 hertz, they still don’t sound as good. The distortion levels are higher. It sounds like it’s more muffled and a little bit more compressed, even though we’re recording at the same bit rate.
So if you do a lot of video conferencing and things like that, i still think that the air pods have an edge up compared to the jabras. Now move over: let’s talk about battery life on the elite, threes you’re, looking at seven hours for the earbuds themselves and 28 hours with the charging case, the charging case charges through usbc there’s, unfortunately, no wireless charging, but it is enabled with fast charging and 10 minutes Time will get you about one hours of listening experience and it takes about three and a half hours for a full charge. Comparatively with the second gen air pods, you got five hours on the earbuds 24 hours with the charging case.
The third generation gives you six hours on the earbuds and 30 hours with the charging case and both versions of the apple airpod cases come with qi, wireless charging enabled and with the 3rd gen you additionally get magsafe charging last. Let’S talk about the price point and overall value the msrp of the 3rd gen airpods retails for about 180 dollars. You can sometimes find them on sale for about 150 dollars if you’re lucky the second generation airpods range from 129 and sometimes they’re on sale on amazon. For as low as 80 dollars and the jabber elite threes range from a hundred dollars down to seventy nine dollars so from a pure price and value perspective, i think you get the most bang for the dollar with the jawbra elite threes, especially from a listening experience. If you listen to a lot of music consume a lot of audio content on a day-to-day basis and require a awesome battery life, i definitely think they’re, probably the best under 100, true wireless earbuds that you can get out right now. Obviously, if you’re looking for something to do a lot of video conferencing with something that has a good built-in microphone uh, certainly the airpods really shine in that department, but really on that guys, that’s really it for this video.
I definitely love to know what you guys think is the best true was here, but that is out there kind of the lower mid-range tier and currently i’m actually working on a project talking about the best two wireless earbuds that you can get right now for, under A hundred dollars, so, if you haven’t subscribed already, please make sure to do so, make sure you have post notifications turned on check out the description down below for more details about everything we’ve talked about and a big thank you to your subscription and your continuing support. We’Ll see you real soon, next one take care. .