Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “AirPods Pro 2 Review: 1 Underrated Thing!”.
All right, I’ll be honest. I wasn’t even planning on reviewing these. You know it’s Tech, Timber, there’s, there’s a lot of stuff going on right now, like there’s other videos on other Tech that we’re actively working on that’s coming soon. That you’ll see so you know we saw the new airpods announcement in the keynote and the couple new features and then Apple sent over a pair.
It’S got my memoji on it and everything I was like that’s cute, but I promise you. I didn’t even take it out the box for a few days, because I was so busy working on some of the other stuff, but then I did take it out. The box – and I did try them and I got ta, say I. I am now very convinced that these are really good, but not by what you think. So there’s a lot of small new features here that airpods people have been waiting for for a long time.
On the surface, it’s still in a nearly identical design. You recognize them from a mile away. The only way you can tell them, apart from the last airpods Pro visually, is by these dual vents at the top, but on the inside there is an entirely new driver and amplifier, and these airpods do sound dramatically better than the last ones easily. The best sounding earbuds Apple’s ever made there are way more lows and mids.
So if you listen to Hip Hop or just music with a lot of bass, it’s very noticeable. It’S just way better and there’s also very little high volume Distortion and just the whole sound profile is very responsive and crisp. They sound good, like really good earpods. Now there still is no lossless audio with these, but it’s still 16 bit 48 kilohertz audio, and that is good.
But that wasn’t the thing that convinced me: it was a Difference Maker for sure it’s really nice, but that’s not the thing. These do now have a 33 longer battery life, so it’s six hours on a single charge now, with noise cancellation on and up to 30 total hours with the battery. In the case, I promise you I’ll never have earbuds in for six hours straight, so this was more than enough for me, but it wasn’t what impressed me either. There is also a new extra small ear tip.
So now it comes with the mediums installed by default and then there’s two sizes smaller and one larger size. So if you had smaller ears that the previous airpods didn’t quite work with, these may make a difference for you with the extra small ear tip. As you can imagine, that’s not me mediums all the way, but some maybe even tempted to say that the new case is the biggest upgrade. That’S certainly what I thought when I watched the keynote. It’S like apple, had a meeting about how wow people are losing these things and getting them mixed up with other people’s airpods, and then they just decided to do something about it. So the case is the same size and shape, but there’s this lanyard loop on the side. Now in case, you want to attach it to something it’s kind of like the loop on the top of the water bottle at mkbhd.com, but just way smaller, and then you can use whatever language you want to attach it to. But if that’s not good enough for you there’s a whole speaker at the bottom of the case now, and it is surprisingly useful, so it can play a loud sound to help you find them on top of the Precision finding that already works really well, since it Has a U1 chip inside so it’s just like an air tag.
If it’s somewhere in your general vicinity, it can guide you to it. That is sweet. It also plays a sound when you get it on a charger wired or Wireless, and the magsafe ring helps it stay in place on any magsafe wireless charging. Puck, that’s not new, but it also now works with Apple watch. Chargers too, which is a nice touch.
On top of all that, it is still ipx4 water resistant, which is an extra layer of security. If you work out and sweat around the case or if you end up in the rain in these and you can engrave it with your memoji now, so your friends will never accidentally pick up your airpods case by mistake, but not even that is what was convincing Me about the airpods pro 2., not even the most requested feature. Apparently this is something lots of other earbuds have had, but volume control on the earbud itself.
It’S on the stock. Now so, of course, it is now much more convenient to just adjust the volume without having to reach for your phone. It’S kind of like this pinch gesture where you hold your finger on one side and then slide with the other on the flat spot on the stock. It’S kind of awkward at first, but you do get used to it, but no, it was none of that. The thing that convinced me with these headphones that they are incredible is the H2 chip. So previous years, generations of Apple headphones have had the H1 chip inside and it’s this little chip, that’s doing the audio processing, noise, cancellation, Etc.
This is the second generation of that chip and apple is bragging on stage that it has like a billion transistors or something ridiculous. Whatever the point of the chip is that it enables everything that is special about these new airpods. So, first of all, there is much improved. Active noise cancellation Apple said something like up to two times more background.
Noise is removed versus the last generation. I don’t know about all that, but combining these new drivers and the sound profile with the improved noise cancellation is definitely noticeable. I mean it’s incredible: with white noise like air conditioners and transportation, you put the headphones on and it just erases them immediately like I’m, not the type of person to wear earbuds for an entire flight. I still much prefer over-the-ear headphones for that, but I get it with these now.
I understand why people would want to wear these earbuds on a plane, because they cancel is that well, I’m putting them on the same level of like the Sony mark IV, earbuds and right below the new Bose, quiet, Comfort, earbud twos, and I put them above the Airpods Maxes, as far as how well it actually cancels sound, I mean they still sound very different. I did the back to back test. Don’T get me wrong, you can tell the much bigger driver makes a difference in the airpods max, but these get quieter. They remove more background noise.
Now there is already a lot of computational audio happening in airpods Pro Sound they’re, literally adjusting the EQ with everything you listen to and across every different volume level to make sure they sound a certain way which is kind of funny. It actually makes them hard to review sometimes against other headphones, because every track hits a little bit different, but the one huge Advantage airpods have had for a long time now over the competition over the poses and the Samsungs and the pixel buds of the world is The transparency mode as someone who has used them all like the transparency mode from airpods, has for a while been on a level by itself. Above the Rest, the real-time pass-through of outside sound is kind of amazing, and in these with the H2 chip, it is leveled up again so on stage Apple introduced. What they’re calling adaptive transparency mode? It’S actually not a separate mode.
It’S still the transparency mode, which is with a different name, but what’s happening is it’s still passing through all the outside sound but anytime, there’s a loud or a harsh, sound above 85 decibels. It cuts that sound down to not be loud and harsh. So let’s say you’re walking or biking through the city. You need to keep transparency mode on, so you can hear the cars and the people around you for safety, but you’re still listening to music or a podcast or whatever, and then an ambulance drives past. You Sirens blaring, you will still hear the sirens, but that super loud sound will be suppressed to a level that doesn’t hurt your ears. It’S just it’s super smart like and that ambulance could be anything that could be uh, someone honking.
It could be a jackhammer construction. Noise, it could be a dog barking, but it’s keeping it’s keeping the same, sound signature of whatever sound that is and just bringing it down below a certain level, and it’s doing it all in real time with virtually no DeLay. So the crazy number is it’s sampling outside sound 48 000 times per second apparently that’s 240 times faster than the last generation, and so it could even be like a really sharp. Like quick outside sound like a dog barking, it will actually reduce a loud dog barking as fast as it’s actually happening so by the time it reaches your ears.
It’S a lower degree of sound. It’S crazy. Now I’ve been trying it. I’Ve been walking around with them and it’s working really well, it’s so good that this is.
This is a real situation, a scenario that I’ve dreamed up that, I believe, could happen. I haven’t tried this myself, but you know how you typically go to a super loud concert and like front row. Middle row like the speakers are obviously too loud, they’re damaging your ears. If you have an Apple Watch, it’s giving you like. You know warnings that you, if you’re in this type of sound for too long it’ll, be damaging to your hearing instead of wearing earplugs. You can. Actually, you can really do this. You can wear airpods Pro 2 and put them in transparency mode, and it will take the entire sound signature of that whole thing you’re listening to and it will drop it down to a reasonable level. You’Ll still feel the bass in your chest of the speakers, but your hearing won’t be damaged as much because it’s taking all of that and reducing it and you’re still hearing the music.
That’S incredible. So all this real-time processing is happening on the earbuds, not on your phone, and that is the H2 chip at work plus, there’s also a few other features. It enables too it talks to the noise app on the Apple watch in real time, to show you how much noise is being canceled out in case.
You want a visual for that sort of thing, and also, if you accidentally ever put the wrong earbud. In your case, like someone else’s, the speaker will actually play a chime and you’ll get a mismatched airpods notification on your phone. Another nice touch for those people who have inevitably lost airpods to their friends cases and probably don’t even know it and then there’s a new ear scan for personalized spatial audio.
This was kind of a weird one, so it’s using the face ID depth sensors to measure your head and measure the depth of your ears. To give you a personalized spatial, audio mix, Sony’s been doing the same thing for a little bit with some of their headphones. They use the front-facing camera.
I don’t know if I was uh convinced that the usefulness of this I mean the spatial audio was already pretty good, but after I did the personalized audio basically for me, it just sounded like the Sound Stage got a little bit wider. Maybe like there’s just a bit more of a spread to how far apart the different sounds and instrumentals are. I don’t know exactly how much of the ear scan data was being used for this, but that’s even more computational audio thanks to the H2 chip.
Overall, though, these airpods are a significant upgrade and they’re just flat out better than I expected. I wasn’t expecting this much of a change and they sound way better. They work way better. There is still lots of other competition in the in the earbuds World. Samsung’S buds are really good. I also really like the pixel buds. I did a whole separate video review of those.
If you want to watch it, you can check it out with the card, but at the beginning of the video I said a little phrase. I don’t know if you caught it, but I said airpods people airpods people, and this is something that you might see a lot if you live in a major city or where there’s a lot of mass transit or something like that, it’s it’s when people just wear Air pods everywhere they go like they walk around the streets with them. They bike around. They just live with airpods in their ears, and these are going to be amazing for those people like it’s everything, you’d care about, it’s the better battery life, it’s the better, sound quality, it’s the better noise cancellation and much better transparency mode, the better case, the volume Control on the stocks, all in one package at the same price – I get it – I get it.
It’S really good, airpods, Pro 2, really really good, and now you know why all right! That’S it! Thanks for watching catch in the next one, peace, [ Applause, ], [ Applause, ], .