7 ms·

Annoyance 8: When I'm using the (good) noise cancelling of the AirPods to eliminate distracting background noise so I can focus, after a few hours the battery w

by rogual 5y ago

Annoyance 8: When I'm using the (good) noise cancelling of the AirPods to eliminate distracting background noise so I can focus, after a few hours the battery will run down to 15% and trigger the EXTREMELY LOUD "PING-pong-pong-pong" low-battery noise, right in my ear, without warning. And it's Apple, so of course you can't turn it off.

hetspookjee 5y ago
You'd be no better off with a Sony Headphone that screams in your ear that a device connected, the device is turned on and the battery is almost empty. The flagship Sony headphone is so bug ridden it's a joke if you ask me.
- zwirbl 5y ago
  I can't comment on the bugs (I'm actually not sure that I've experienced any), but those connected etc. Messages really are very annoying, partly because they feel like forever
- Beltalowda 5y ago
  I'm reasonably sure you can actually turn those messages off though. I did that for a while, but ended up turning them back on again as connecting them can be ... difficult ... and I'm never quite sure if they're connected until they tell me they are (and if I don't play any audio fast enough, they will also helpfully disconnect).
- voisin 5y ago
  There should be an option to have this information shown as an alert on the device. iPhones already show the battery charge level of the headphones so why not make it an alert banner?
- Macha 5y ago
  You can use the android app to disable the device connected/disconnected dialogue.
- darrenf 5y ago
  What bugs are you referring to? > You'd be no better off with a Sony Headphone that screams in your ear that a device connected, the device is turned on and the battery is almost empty. I have the WF-1000XM4s. On the iOS headphones app, visiting System and turning off "Notification & Voice Guide" gets rid of the power on and battery level announcements leaving only the connection/disconnection alerts (although I keep all of them on as I find them useful, and wouldn't characterise them as screams).
  - minhazm 5y ago
    I have the same headphones and the main issue I have with it is their multi-device support is pretty much broken for me. If I'm on a zoom call and I get a phone call on my other device it takes over the audio (as expected), but then if I decline the phone call the audio doesn't switch back to my zoom call (computer). I end up having to turn the headphones off and back on for them to reconnect, which actually takes a good 10-15 seconds at least. The Bose QC35 I had before handled multiple devices way better, unfortunately they just didn't sound as good as the Sony.
    - lanstin 5y ago
      I hate to say this but I mostly turn Bluetooth on and off as I use different devices. If I get a iPhone call during meeting that I can not listen to for a minute, then I will check mute, stop video, and then answer the phone on speaker. I try to have Bluetooth off when I am outside anyways for security and privacy reasons, so it is complementary to that.
  - hetspookjee 5y ago
    I too have the WF-1000XM4 and I only have the function to turn off the notification & voice guide that will stop making the sound that tells me what mode it is in. But it will happily scream in my ear that its either connected, almost empty or on / off. Regarding the bugs I experience on a regular basis: - Every off week the Speak-to-chat is somehow activated and than it drops me out of the music with the sound amplified. - The standby function does no longer work since a month or two and I find it empty every time I forget to either manually turn it off or put it in the charger - The multi device is so odd that I need to disconnect all devices in the surrounding and start connecting one by one - The dual bluetooth sometimes struggle to work with both Windows and Mac. - The connection with Windows was something I actually needed to Google as I couldnt get the quality to work, I somehow had to read somewhere that I needed to wait for ±1min till the actual device pops up in the list (Its registered as two seperate devices) but for this I actually blame Windows - Teams often refuses to play with the main device, but rather prefers the crappy audio system one. To finish off and it's not a bug, but the microphone they advertise is so laughably bad that roughly 80% of the people couldnt hear me properly on the other end of the line. But reading the reviews I find myself one of the few in this situation.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- EamonnMR 5y ago
  I have a pair of (I wanna say Honeywell? Maybe 3m?) hearing protection bluetooth headphones that I simply keep off my head while pairing and unpairing because it's loud enough that I can hear it clearly with the phones down in my hand.
arnvald 5y ago
I had JBL earphones and they had exactly the same problem. Also couldn't turn it off. Extremely annoying.
lowercased 5y ago
AirPod Pro 4, coming in 2025, will like have a feature to let you choose custom alert sounds, tied to ios 19. And it will be heralded with enormous classy custom Helvetiral fonts in a multi parallax scrolling site announcing "we've heard the future, and it's quiet". Or... "If you listen carefully, you can hear the future". Or they'll provide haptic in-ear custom vibrations in AirPod Pros 5, and their slogan will be "Your ears never felt better".
- stillblue 5y ago
  I read way too much of this comment before I realised you were joking. Got me good.
  - lowercased 5y ago
    I'm not actually 100% sure I'm 'joking'. I think we'll see some in-ear haptic feedback stuff in a few years, which take a few more years to get 'right', and will be confusing as heck, but will be useful. If it's customizable, there will be a small but fervent ASMR community around it. It will be pitched as accessibility-friendly, helping people with hearing issues or other sensory issues just 'feel' indicators. Wire it up to 'apple home' and you'll get little in-ear tinglings when certain people come home or leave, or when the garage door opens, and so on. Happy/sad emojis in iMessage will trigger certain ear vibrations, etc.
    - germinalphrase 5y ago
      Having played around with very convincing binaural recording, I am all for subtle auditory haptics as an additional communication layer. I’d be surprised if it’s strictly coded rather than localized to specific objects/interactions within your specific environment.
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  Better yet, AirPods Pro 4 will allow you to adjust the volume of the warning tone, AirPods Pro 5 will allow you to customize it. AirPods Pro 6 will undo that but allow you to disable the tone and use haptic feedback. Then AirPods Pro 7 will allow you to adjust the volume of the warning tone, and customize it.
lajosbacs 5y ago
Agree completely. My ears actually hurt when this happens, cannot be healthy. The 'device connected' sound is pretty loud as well.
- timtimmy 5y ago
  I can feel my ears tense when those "pings" go off (on the AirPods Pro and AirPods Max). This can't be healthy.
Traubenfuchs 5y ago
What's the big deal here, Apple? People have been complaining about BEING CAUSED PAIN BY AIRPODS for YEARS and they are not doing anything about it! This being the top rated comment here further proves it's a major issue for airpod users. What the fuck, apple? I am absolutely terrified of that painful sound and will regularly check battery to ensure it won't hit me.
- onphonenow 5y ago
  Same when switching noise canceling - why so loud?
  - lajosbacs 5y ago
    Your comment made me realise that I actually never switch with the pods button (rather on the display of my phone) because of the loud noise. I don't get why they have not fixed this after years of complains from users.
    - gabeio 5y ago
      Doesn't it still make the noise when you use the onscreen switch? Either way it's horrible, all of these noises seem to be at a fixed or separate volume level than the media volume (which actually is common for apple). Siri used to have a separate volume than media (still might?), and then you also have ringtone volume, and sound in settings barely even hints that all these separate volumes exist.
- toxik 5y ago
  Every. Body. I. Know. that has a pair of AirPods commiserate. I can only assume they know but can't fix it. In fact, why isn't there "adjust volume to surroundings" like there is for brightness? They should KNOW how loud is appropriate based on mic input. Maybe it's for people who drop their earbuds? So it can be heard from a distance? That would certainly explain it... A hack would be to put some foam or so inside to dampen the sound and then max out the volume. Then they physically cannot make loud sounds.
macNchz 5y ago
Reminds me of my roommate’s Jambox bluetooth speaker years ago…I learned that it had this behavior while fully asleep at 4:30am after we’d had a party, when, every few minutes it started loudly blasting “BOOOOP. LOW BATTERY” alerts. The trouble was that it was hidden somewhere in our messy living room, and the alerts weren’t frequent enough to find it quickly, so I was standing around in my underwear for ages, waiting for each subsequent alert and getting a bit closer each time, because it was too loud to go back to sleep.
- emilecantin 5y ago
  Sounds like the small slice of hell that is a low battery in most smoke detectors: one short (and loud AF) beep every ~15 minutes. Fine when you have only one, but in a large house you never know which one of these f*ckers is actually the one complaining.
  - muttled 5y ago
    With Amazon Basics 9V batteries sitting at about $1.50 a piece, I've started the practice of just replacing all the smoke detector batteries when one of them starts getting low. When I get to the end of that supply, I'm going to switch to rechargeables and just recharge them all before they start chirping. One night of bad sleep from the option of laying awake, anticipating the next chirp, or going around the house changing batteries in the middle of the night isn't worth it.
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    The first time I had this happen I didn't know what the sound was and it took me weeks to work out because it's so hard to locate where it comes from.
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  I once had an EE friend that built these tiny chips he called Annoyers. They simply emitted a loud chirp at a random time interval. The interval was too long to effectively locate the chip, and the chirp was terribly annoying. It could take weeks to find the quarter-sides device hidden in someone’s home (or the battery would just die). Of course, while he was explaining this to me, the chip slipped from my fingers and fell down an air vent of another friend’s living room. The comedic timing was perfect, and it really might have been the funniest thing to happen to me in 2012.
idontwantthis 5y ago
This is the ridiculous experience with all blue tooth headphones. "BATTERY LOW CHARGE NOW!", or "DING DING DING". Your battery is effectively 10% or 15% because they become impossible to listen to once they get low.
jmacd 5y ago
SO LOUD
kristjansson 5y ago
Your (and other's) complaints about the volume of the AirPod alert notifications makes me think either (a) your hearing is more sensitive than most or (b) I've lost more hearing than I thought I had. Either way, those alerts play at what seems like a reasonable and moderate volume to me.
- jackson1442 5y ago
  I know a lot of people use airpods as like ambient sound, just keeping them playing super quiet all the time. I personally keep them at a moderate volume because I have no interest in hearing anything other than my music, but maybe the low battery sound is volume-independent, so people who listen at 10% would be jarred by it.
- matwood 5y ago
  Those alerts are pretty loud, particularly with noise canceling on. One of the things I love about noise canceling is I can listen to my music almost at zero volume on the phone. With everything else blocked out, it's plenty loud. Then the 'bloop bloop' happens and it's like someone hit me over the head.
guelo 5y ago
Annoyance 9: Misplacing or losing these tiny $200 devices is a lot more painful than when I used to lose $20 wired headphones. Maybe I'm more prone to losing things than the average person. But after losing two of these things over the last couple years I'm not buying them again.
tahnhnxfl 5y ago
I don't use my AirPods Max below 25% charge anymore because I'm scared of being startled by the ridiculously loud noise. I can't believe this passed Apple's QA.
timtimmy 5y ago
Apple engineers reading this: The painfully loud "PING" sounds on the AirPods Max hurt my ears when I switch from transparency to sound isolation mode. It's really unpleasant and I'm concerned this is damaging my hearing. The "ping" volume level should be customizable or at least quieter across the AirPods line.

by rogual 5y ago

hetspookjee 5y ago

You'd be no better off with a Sony Headphone that screams in your ear that a device connected, the device is turned on and the battery is almost empty. The flagship Sony headphone is so bug ridden it's a joke if you ask me.

zwirbl 5y ago
I can't comment on the bugs (I'm actually not sure that I've experienced any), but those connected etc. Messages really are very annoying, partly because they feel like forever
Beltalowda 5y ago
I'm reasonably sure you can actually turn those messages off though. I did that for a while, but ended up turning them back on again as connecting them can be ... difficult ... and I'm never quite sure if they're connected until they tell me they are (and if I don't play any audio fast enough, they will also helpfully disconnect).
voisin 5y ago
There should be an option to have this information shown as an alert on the device. iPhones already show the battery charge level of the headphones so why not make it an alert banner?
Macha 5y ago
You can use the android app to disable the device connected/disconnected dialogue.
darrenf 5y ago
What bugs are you referring to? > You'd be no better off with a Sony Headphone that screams in your ear that a device connected, the device is turned on and the battery is almost empty. I have the WF-1000XM4s. On the iOS headphones app, visiting System and turning off "Notification & Voice Guide" gets rid of the power on and battery level announcements leaving only the connection/disconnection alerts (although I keep all of them on as I find them useful, and wouldn't characterise them as screams).
- minhazm 5y ago
  I have the same headphones and the main issue I have with it is their multi-device support is pretty much broken for me. If I'm on a zoom call and I get a phone call on my other device it takes over the audio (as expected), but then if I decline the phone call the audio doesn't switch back to my zoom call (computer). I end up having to turn the headphones off and back on for them to reconnect, which actually takes a good 10-15 seconds at least. The Bose QC35 I had before handled multiple devices way better, unfortunately they just didn't sound as good as the Sony.
  - lanstin 5y ago
    I hate to say this but I mostly turn Bluetooth on and off as I use different devices. If I get a iPhone call during meeting that I can not listen to for a minute, then I will check mute, stop video, and then answer the phone on speaker. I try to have Bluetooth off when I am outside anyways for security and privacy reasons, so it is complementary to that.
- hetspookjee 5y ago
  I too have the WF-1000XM4 and I only have the function to turn off the notification & voice guide that will stop making the sound that tells me what mode it is in. But it will happily scream in my ear that its either connected, almost empty or on / off. Regarding the bugs I experience on a regular basis: - Every off week the Speak-to-chat is somehow activated and than it drops me out of the music with the sound amplified. - The standby function does no longer work since a month or two and I find it empty every time I forget to either manually turn it off or put it in the charger - The multi device is so odd that I need to disconnect all devices in the surrounding and start connecting one by one - The dual bluetooth sometimes struggle to work with both Windows and Mac. - The connection with Windows was something I actually needed to Google as I couldnt get the quality to work, I somehow had to read somewhere that I needed to wait for ±1min till the actual device pops up in the list (Its registered as two seperate devices) but for this I actually blame Windows - Teams often refuses to play with the main device, but rather prefers the crappy audio system one. To finish off and it's not a bug, but the microphone they advertise is so laughably bad that roughly 80% of the people couldnt hear me properly on the other end of the line. But reading the reviews I find myself one of the few in this situation.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
EamonnMR 5y ago
I have a pair of (I wanna say Honeywell? Maybe 3m?) hearing protection bluetooth headphones that I simply keep off my head while pairing and unpairing because it's loud enough that I can hear it clearly with the phones down in my hand.

arnvald 5y ago

I had JBL earphones and they had exactly the same problem. Also couldn't turn it off. Extremely annoying.

lowercased 5y ago

AirPod Pro 4, coming in 2025, will like have a feature to let you choose custom alert sounds, tied to ios 19. And it will be heralded with enormous classy custom Helvetiral fonts in a multi parallax scrolling site announcing "we've heard the future, and it's quiet". Or... "If you listen carefully, you can hear the future". Or they'll provide haptic in-ear custom vibrations in AirPod Pros 5, and their slogan will be "Your ears never felt better".

stillblue 5y ago
I read way too much of this comment before I realised you were joking. Got me good.
- lowercased 5y ago
  I'm not actually 100% sure I'm 'joking'. I think we'll see some in-ear haptic feedback stuff in a few years, which take a few more years to get 'right', and will be confusing as heck, but will be useful. If it's customizable, there will be a small but fervent ASMR community around it. It will be pitched as accessibility-friendly, helping people with hearing issues or other sensory issues just 'feel' indicators. Wire it up to 'apple home' and you'll get little in-ear tinglings when certain people come home or leave, or when the garage door opens, and so on. Happy/sad emojis in iMessage will trigger certain ear vibrations, etc.
  - germinalphrase 5y ago
    Having played around with very convincing binaural recording, I am all for subtle auditory haptics as an additional communication layer. I’d be surprised if it’s strictly coded rather than localized to specific objects/interactions within your specific environment.
ASalazarMX 5y ago
Better yet, AirPods Pro 4 will allow you to adjust the volume of the warning tone, AirPods Pro 5 will allow you to customize it. AirPods Pro 6 will undo that but allow you to disable the tone and use haptic feedback. Then AirPods Pro 7 will allow you to adjust the volume of the warning tone, and customize it.

lajosbacs 5y ago

Agree completely. My ears actually hurt when this happens, cannot be healthy. The 'device connected' sound is pretty loud as well.

timtimmy 5y ago
I can feel my ears tense when those "pings" go off (on the AirPods Pro and AirPods Max). This can't be healthy.

Traubenfuchs 5y ago

What's the big deal here, Apple? People have been complaining about BEING CAUSED PAIN BY AIRPODS for YEARS and they are not doing anything about it! This being the top rated comment here further proves it's a major issue for airpod users. What the fuck, apple? I am absolutely terrified of that painful sound and will regularly check battery to ensure it won't hit me.

onphonenow 5y ago
Same when switching noise canceling - why so loud?
- lajosbacs 5y ago
  Your comment made me realise that I actually never switch with the pods button (rather on the display of my phone) because of the loud noise. I don't get why they have not fixed this after years of complains from users.
  - gabeio 5y ago
    Doesn't it still make the noise when you use the onscreen switch? Either way it's horrible, all of these noises seem to be at a fixed or separate volume level than the media volume (which actually is common for apple). Siri used to have a separate volume than media (still might?), and then you also have ringtone volume, and sound in settings barely even hints that all these separate volumes exist.
toxik 5y ago
Every. Body. I. Know. that has a pair of AirPods commiserate. I can only assume they know but can't fix it. In fact, why isn't there "adjust volume to surroundings" like there is for brightness? They should KNOW how loud is appropriate based on mic input. Maybe it's for people who drop their earbuds? So it can be heard from a distance? That would certainly explain it... A hack would be to put some foam or so inside to dampen the sound and then max out the volume. Then they physically cannot make loud sounds.

macNchz 5y ago

Reminds me of my roommate’s Jambox bluetooth speaker years ago…I learned that it had this behavior while fully asleep at 4:30am after we’d had a party, when, every few minutes it started loudly blasting “BOOOOP. LOW BATTERY” alerts. The trouble was that it was hidden somewhere in our messy living room, and the alerts weren’t frequent enough to find it quickly, so I was standing around in my underwear for ages, waiting for each subsequent alert and getting a bit closer each time, because it was too loud to go back to sleep.

emilecantin 5y ago
Sounds like the small slice of hell that is a low battery in most smoke detectors: one short (and loud AF) beep every ~15 minutes. Fine when you have only one, but in a large house you never know which one of these f*ckers is actually the one complaining.
- muttled 5y ago
  With Amazon Basics 9V batteries sitting at about $1.50 a piece, I've started the practice of just replacing all the smoke detector batteries when one of them starts getting low. When I get to the end of that supply, I'm going to switch to rechargeables and just recharge them all before they start chirping. One night of bad sleep from the option of laying awake, anticipating the next chirp, or going around the house changing batteries in the middle of the night isn't worth it.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  The first time I had this happen I didn't know what the sound was and it took me weeks to work out because it's so hard to locate where it comes from.
germinalphrase 5y ago
I once had an EE friend that built these tiny chips he called Annoyers. They simply emitted a loud chirp at a random time interval. The interval was too long to effectively locate the chip, and the chirp was terribly annoying. It could take weeks to find the quarter-sides device hidden in someone’s home (or the battery would just die). Of course, while he was explaining this to me, the chip slipped from my fingers and fell down an air vent of another friend’s living room. The comedic timing was perfect, and it really might have been the funniest thing to happen to me in 2012.

idontwantthis 5y ago

This is the ridiculous experience with all blue tooth headphones. "BATTERY LOW CHARGE NOW!", or "DING DING DING". Your battery is effectively 10% or 15% because they become impossible to listen to once they get low.

jmacd 5y ago

SO LOUD

kristjansson 5y ago

Your (and other's) complaints about the volume of the AirPod alert notifications makes me think either (a) your hearing is more sensitive than most or (b) I've lost more hearing than I thought I had. Either way, those alerts play at what seems like a reasonable and moderate volume to me.

jackson1442 5y ago
I know a lot of people use airpods as like ambient sound, just keeping them playing super quiet all the time. I personally keep them at a moderate volume because I have no interest in hearing anything other than my music, but maybe the low battery sound is volume-independent, so people who listen at 10% would be jarred by it.
matwood 5y ago
Those alerts are pretty loud, particularly with noise canceling on. One of the things I love about noise canceling is I can listen to my music almost at zero volume on the phone. With everything else blocked out, it's plenty loud. Then the 'bloop bloop' happens and it's like someone hit me over the head.

guelo 5y ago

Annoyance 9: Misplacing or losing these tiny $200 devices is a lot more painful than when I used to lose $20 wired headphones. Maybe I'm more prone to losing things than the average person. But after losing two of these things over the last couple years I'm not buying them again.

tahnhnxfl 5y ago

I don't use my AirPods Max below 25% charge anymore because I'm scared of being startled by the ridiculously loud noise. I can't believe this passed Apple's QA.

timtimmy 5y ago

Apple engineers reading this: The painfully loud "PING" sounds on the AirPods Max hurt my ears when I switch from transparency to sound isolation mode. It's really unpleasant and I'm concerned this is damaging my hearing. The "ping" volume level should be customizable or at least quieter across the AirPods line.