Apple has been making their very popular Airpods lineup for quite a long time. Other than the latest Airpods Pro I actually never liked their previous generation Airpods because of the old design. The updated pro version has a new design with silicone eartips, which I like for their solid fit and comfort. There is nothing wrong with open earbuds but nowadays the design should be innovative like the Sony Linkbuds. Like other important fundamentals, the Airpods Pro has good active noise cancellation capability and excellent transparency mode that sounds pretty natural, which is very hard to make it just right. Now I am going to present you the facts that you need to know before buying these expensive Apple earbuds.




Inside the Box
Inside the eco-friendly package you will get some paperwork with a user manual but no Apple stickers with Airpods Pro this time. There is also a usb type-c to lightning cable and 4 additional eartips. Between the 4 eartips, 2 of them are small and other 2 of them are big sized eartips to simply offer you a better fit for your ears. Mid sized silicone eartips are pre-installed on the airpods. The Airpods are inside their charging case. So nothing special in terms of packaging but it's nice that there is at least a decent quality cable to charge the case.


Design and Build
The design of the Airpods Pro is unique and iconic in a lot of ways. When Apple released them, no other earbuds had that kinda look. The design was inspired from the original Airpods because they look kinda cohesive but there are a lot of differentiating factors here. The previous generation Airpods didn't have a design that would offer eartips with a good seal and fit for most people. But now they got all of them and even better than most OEMs, which is why I love them now. Read the features section to know more about advanced features.

The outside housing has a curve to it that looks really attractive and helps to keep them close to your ears. The way the eartips are attached is unique and different from most other earbuds these days. They have got indications for the touch sensitive portion which is on the outside housing. With a different chrome-like subtle shiny accent on the housing, they look good enough to like them. The build is solid and feels like a premium earbud. These are expensive Apple products and we know apple products offer amazing build quality. So no exception here and they are using high quality, durable and reliable materials for the build.


Fit and Comfort
As the earbuds have a really small form factor, they feel really light and comfortable, which is what everybody wants. You can wear them for a long period of time without getting tired or feeling uncomfortable. They are really good for running and workouts. The slightly curved outside pencil type housing helps to keep them in place and the eartips also provide a good seal from outside noise. So excellent fit and comfort that you're going to get with these earbuds as they have silicone tips now. You may need to change the eartips for a better fit because everyone's ears have different geometry.


Controls and MICs
The Airpods Pro has two tiny microphones both on the inside and outside for better transparency, active noise cancellation and voice pickup when you take calls. Apple is doing it somewhat right when it comes to touch control implementation. The touch sensitive portion is on the lower side of outer housing. You can easily tell where the area is because there is a slight dip on the surface.

So as for the controls, Airpods Pro has play/pause on single tap, skip to next track on double tap, skip to previous track on triple tap, voice assistant on ''Hey Siri'' and ANC/transparency/disable noise control on hold. So these are all the touch controls that you got and they are pretty useful as they work just fine. The Airpods Pro doesn’t have volume control feature implemented on touch control, which is a bummer for a premium earbud.


Sound Quality
These earbuds offer a very well balanced sound signature which is really a big deal and kinda hard to get in this price range. The sound has enough details in the bass, mids and highs but it will not give you silky smooth sparkly rich details in the highs. The mids are balanced with the low-end and high-end frequencies. These earbuds don't particularly miss out or lack in any part of the whole frequency range.

To me the range is from 30 hz to 16 khz which is decent enough before it starts to roll-off. The bass extension is low enough for a quality earbud and you can definitely feel the sub-bass in your eardrums. The bass is really very neutral that you may think it is lacking some punch and you are right. If you want a close to original or natural sounding earbuds then this one's for you but bass suckers will not be satisfied with the mid-bass punch. I use custom eq to boost 60 hz slightly for a little bit more punchy bass.

The sound is open and airy with decent soundstage but it's not that prominent like a more richer sound. It lacks a little bit of sparkle and shimmer to the sound. Little bit of boost in the upper treble and brilliance region can fix some of these lackings. Overall the sound has a really nice balanced character as a premium device. It will sound a little bit harsh and hard-edged at higher volumes but I think you do not need that much volume.


ANC - Transparency
The ANC is active noise cancellation that blocks outside noise so that you can enjoy your music without any disturbance. The king of ANC is Sony, like their high-end WF-1000XM4 earbuds. The ANC is pretty good in the Airpods Pro but Sony is way ahead in the game than Apple. The Airpods cannot block out loud environmental noise that well. But the transparency mode is great compared to other expensive earbuds in this category. They sound pretty natural in transparency mode, which is a big improvement in the right direction. These are two outstanding features in Airpods Pro, more features are discussed in the next section.


Features and Battery
These pros have a ton of features like custom high-excursion Apple drivers, ANC, transparency mode, pressure release vent, adaptive eq, spatial audio and so on. They have a lot of high-end sensors too, like dual beamforming mics, inward-facing mic, dual optical sensor, force sensor and accelerometer for motion detection and speech detection. The chip is Apple’s H1 head­phone chip, which is pretty powerful. Read the controls section to know more about control features. These Airpods Pros are ipx4 rated that means they are sweat and water resistant. The latency on Airpods Pro is pretty good with bluetooth version 5.0, which was latest at that time. They have got support for wireless charging too.

The charging case works with MagSafe charger as well as with lightning connector. They are claiming about 4.5 hours of listening time with ANC/trans­parency on and 5 hours with those off. They are pretty accurate because with average volume like at about 60 percent you should get more than 5 hours with ANC off. With the charging case you will get more than 24 hours of listening time and more than 18 hours of talking time. Only 5 minutes in the case provides around 1 hour of backup time, which is pretty useful when you are in a hurry.


Conclusion
The sound signature is well balanced and natural with a good amount of details. You don’t get nicely balanced tuning with most earbuds these days. A lot of expensive earbuds sound boomy, too bass heavy, muddy, harsh, recessed and narrow most of the time. But you can actually judge a sound or recording and you can also tell which instruments are coming from where with these earbuds. This is very rare to find even at this price range. Not just the sound, battery backup is also good and you get tons of features with premium build quality. Apple Airpods are in a league of their own backed up by Apple. People get locked up in their ecosystem. The price seems just a little bit high for average customers.

I hope you've got enough information from this article to decide if you want to buy the Apple AirPods Pro or not. I highly recommend these earbuds, and absolutely love their build quality and low profile com­fortable gorgeous design. They will definitely surprise you with its flat and neutral sound signature. Check the official webpage to explore more.

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