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I actually bought these. Yes, it's a pile of money, wireless charging for AirPods probably isn't all that useful (though I may grab a new wireless charger for
by paultopia 8y ago
I actually bought these. Yes, it's a pile of money, wireless charging for AirPods probably isn't all that useful (though I may grab a new wireless charger for the desk where my AirPods usually sit anyway), etc.
But, reality is: AirPods are by far the most convenient way to casually do anything with apple products and headphones. Stick 'em in a pocket, and if you want to listen to music or be on a conference call, pull them out and pop them in. And my old ones are having the battery wear-out problem. And I'm in the apple ecosystem.
So I'll happily pay a premium to have new AirPods with better battery (and cleaner!). And then I don't need to feel guilty about the old ones to the gym and ruining them further with sweat. (The one thing I'm mad about is that there's nothing about sweat proofing on these.)
- willyyr 8y agoSince you mentioned: "be on a conference call". There is nothing more annoying then a participant in a conference call (or any call) using AirPods especially when they are at a busy place. My experience is that you hear everything around them and most of the time they are hard to understand because of how the voice is picked up. I always ask them to switch back to the phone so i can understand. Not sure if the new version improves that or if it's just my experience.
- bluedino 8y agoNot really the Airpods fault there.
- zachberger 8y agoSure it is, most phones have outstanding ambient noise cancellation, something that AirPods does not seem to have.
- sa1 8y agoAmbient noise cancellation is not the same thing. Most headphones do it passively by having a closed-back design. It blocks noise from reaching your ears, not the microphone. Active noise cancellation is not the same thing either. See https://krisp.ai/ https://krisp.ai/ for what you really need, and this is not something best done at the physical device level.
- ericd 8y agoPretty sure they're referring to ambient noise cancellation using the microphones to make it so the background noise doesn't come through your microphone to the other participants while on a call.
- allworknoplay 8y agoI'd argue it is -- my earbuds stick the mic right near my mouth, and I can hold it nearer if needed. Not so with airpods?
- jmole 8y agoAirpods are much worse than Earpods for conference calling, no matter what the situation.
- ogre_codes 8y agoMaybe there are some headphones with better ambient noice cancellation, but AirPods don't seem any worse than the wired headphones I've used until this point. I just stopped doing conference calls at Starbucks or I go outside where noise cancellation works a lot better. When I got hired for my current job I did both interviews from the parking lot of a local Starbucks for exactly this reason.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y agoYep, I own AirPods and they are terrible when walking around town. Every person I talk to has commented on it. Which never happened with the regular wired ones. I still enjoy them for music. But the battery life alone for calls is weak — I only get about 1 hour of talk time.
- Jerry2 8y ago>walking around town You don't want to walk around the town with earphones that isolate too much. My coworker was hit by a car as he was jogging while wearing IEMs. He couldn't hear the car horn and he was hit by a driver who couldn't stop his car in time. He didn't suffer any major injuries but he learned his lesson and now only jogs with open earphones.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y agoThat’s why I wear AirPods, because they don’t isolate inbound noise. I’m talking about external background noise that the mic picks up.
- paultopia 8y agoThis is definitely true, but it's a terrible idea to be on a conference call in a busy place anyway. It's incredibly obnoxious for everyone around one. My use case is just sitting in my relatively quiet office; without headphones the person in the next office over can hear everything, with any other headphones there are annoying wires and such.
- mod 8y agoI find that interesting. I often talk on my airpods while driving, and have done so in both of my cars. One has incredibly loud road noise (like I think there is a problem), and the other has no A/C and I live in the south--so, windows open. In both cases I have received no complaints, and have even inquired about how the noise is recently. People can't hear my obnoxiously loud road noise at all, it gets canceled out.
- baybal2 8y agoToo late Apple... http://m.wiwu.com/h-pd-297.html http://m.wiwu.com/h-pd-297.html I have hard time imagining how those guys got original molds. Their second gen "AirBuds" have true wireless charging
- vuln 8y agoWhere can I buy these?
- acomjean 8y agoWasn’t air bud a movie about a basketball playing dog... .. checks the webb.... Yup https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0118570/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0118570/
- sandworm101 8y agoA couple movies.. off tpoic: I used to walk my dog at the same beach (west vancouver) as the air bud dogs. They were all over-bred show dogs. They lived short lives. I am not a fan of those movies.
- Rebelgecko 8y agoI have a hard time trusting a product if its marketing photos are just a rendering of the item photoshopped into random stock photos.
- Will_Parker 8y agoI accidentally put mine through a wash cycle, the buds not the charging case, and amazingly they survived! The sound was muffled for a while. Would not recommend as a solution to your cleanliness problem them.
- Canada 8y agoYeah, I'm wearing ear buds so much I just don't care that I'm paying a stupid amount for them. I'm going to buy the Apple ones because at this point my ears have probably changed their shape to conform to them. And I even keep an extra pairs on hand because heaven forbid I ever go without for even a minute because one broke, was lost, or ran out of battery.
- jonawesomegreen 8y agoI own a pair and as well as everything you mentioned, the killer feature for me is not dropping out. Every other pair of bluetooth earbuds I've had were constantly dropping out on me when running through an airport or if I decided to pace around a room on a conference call unless I held my phone just so. I've found the range on AirPods to be fantastic. I work from home and if I want to pace around the house while I'm on a conference call, no problem. I couldn't even walk around in the same room before.
- Isamu 8y agoThe range is surprising. I've walked to another part of the house and then wondered, where did I leave my phone? Because the airpods just didn't quit.
- macintux 8y agoTangential but your comment reminded me: years ago (I hope this is no longer true) the iPhone would, when pinged via "Find my iPhone", play the alert sound to the current output. So if my iPhone was playing music via AirPlay, the alert sound would go to, you guessed it, the AirPlay speakers. Completely pointless.
- mod 8y agoIn a casino cardroom I once forgot to pick up my phone while I walked to a self-serve coffee station at least 30 yards away (with no walls in-between). There was no disruption in the audio. In fact it didn't occur to me until I got back and saw my phone on the table that anything had even happened.
- 8y ago
- sixothree 8y agoI spend a lot of time on conference calls and AirPods really change everything. Sometimes I will be on a call and only get pulled in once or twice. It's kind of a waste to not be doing other stuff during that time and they definitely make that easier.
- jaifraic 8y agoBut isn't this a benefit of all bluetooth/wireless headsets? I don't see how it is a specific AirPod advantage.
- sixothree 8y agoThis is correct. The advantages are solely personal preferences on features. They are shaped exactly the same as (err millimeter ish) the default supplied headset which I find comfortable. They are open to outside sound; meaning I can wear them in silent and have conversations etc. And they pair easily with my devices.
- eloisant 8y agoI have Jabra 65T earphones, they just work like you described with my MBP and Android phone. And no battery wear-out issue. They're not much cheaper than the airpods however.
- Aromasin 8y agoI've found the call quality to be substantially better and, like you've said, have had no noticeable depreciation in battery life. I just wished they looked a bit better aesthetically. I've had a couple of people say that they thought I was wearing some sort of hearing aid...
- lgvln 8y agoIt’s just a matter of time though. Li-ion batteries are typically rated for 500-1000 recharge cycles.
- baddox 8y agoWhat would be the reason that one model of wireless earphones would have worse battery wear-out than another? Wouldn't it depend almost entirely on how many recharge cycles the battery gets? If so, then I suppose it would only depend on the battery life of the earphones (if we hold the usage rate constant).
- 1stcity3rdcoast 8y agoI have the same Jabra headphones with my iPhone X and MBP. Great product. Jabra is a calls-first company, so the talk clarity is incredible, and the Bluetooth pairing is strong enough to walk between rooms. The very best feature, though, is that they’re much less conspicuous than AirPods. AirPods are a visual distraction.
- leevlad 8y agoI've been wearing my AirPods at the gym since I bought them (~1.5 years) and haven't had a single issue. And I sweat a lot during my workouts.
- debug-desperado 8y agoI haven't had any issues after sweaty runs either. Occasionally they won't sit right in the case and won't be charged though, likely due to being upside down in the gym bag.
- asdff 8y agoI just can't get over the fact that people are dropping $160 ($199 now) to get the same earbuds they've been shipping with every iPhone (unless Apple took that out of the box too), but without a wire. Does my wire get snagged and the earbud falls out? Sure it does, but that probably happens to me once every 6 months and that doesn't get me pissed off enough to hand apple $160. Airpods don't come without their costs, too. You loose that super handy control/microphone on the wire, you have one more thing to keep charged, and in 2 years when the battery shits you have to pony up $50 per ear to replace them. I still use the headphones that came with my iPhone 5, seven years later.
- LynxInLA 8y agoIt is still $160 for the airpods, and $200 if you want wireless charging. Tapping the Airpod, uou still have 2 controls vs. the 5 with an inline mic. You can almost say 3 controls since pulling one out of your ear acts as play/pause. Mine were a gift, but I'll likely drop $160 on a set in the future if these crap out in a year or two. About once a week, I used to get my wire snagged and it would sometimes yank my phone out of my pocket. Luckily it was on carpet and I had a case on it so there wasn't any damage. More importantly, the convenience has been well worth it. Even if I'm just saving 30s a day untangling, that is worth the price to me over a few years. Throw in being able to sleep with one pod in and my phone plugged in across the room and this has might be my favorite and most used gadget of the past few years.
- muraiki 8y agoNote that even at relatively low volumes, sleeping while listening to something can cause hearing damage. There's an interaction between both the volume and the duration of sound exposure. If you're using your device to drown out other sounds, that might be too loud.
- LynxInLA 8y agoThanks, I just use it on a timer to listen to something for 15 min as I fall asleep.
- 8y ago