In it's initial announcement about the AirPods, Apple promised:
- AirPods would sound great,
- AirPods would power themselves off when taken out of the ear,
- AirPods could be used individually, and
- AirPods would recharge quickly.
This list has basically become my requirements. As someone who has ended up on
conference calls lasting 12 hours, all of these features were very important to me
important enough to make them worth the wait.
I often spend very long hours at my desk. There are times when I'm on calls running
demonstrations and leading debugging sessions that require me to have hands on
the keyboard and a display in my face. My point is, I'm not very mobile. Most
of the walking I'm doing is between my desk and another room on the same floor.
I'm typically sedentary and (relatively) stationary while the AirPods are in, but I'm not necessarily
looking straight ahead all of the time. I have several monitors I'm looking at.
EDIT:
It's a few days after I originally published this post. I ended up on a status call
while running an errand. With the AirPods in, I did some VERY brisk walking up and
down flights of stairs. I never had a problem with them falling out, or even feeling
loose and I was really moving.
Also, I'm trading up from the wired earbuds that were included with my
mobile phone. In the case of the iPhone 7, these are small, white, standard issue
earbuds that terminate with a lightning plug instead of a standard 1/8" stereo audio
plug.
Finally, my main reason for looking for a BlueTooth solution was to get rid of
the wires, which would also allow me to have my phone on a charger as needed
(a new complication with the release of the iPhone 7).
My review of the AirPod is very positive.
- AirPods do sound terrific. They fit just like Apple's standard earbuds do,
with some very minor design changes (I think the AirPod's earbud part is a little longer
than the standard, wired earbuds are). They stay in the ears and don't move while I'm
working. By the way, I have my music playback settings set thusly: EQ is set to "Classical",
Volume Limit is off, and Sound Check is toggled off. These are the settings I've used
with the wired earbuds.
- AirPods do power themselves off when removed from the ear. Music stops, and
phone conversations are routed back to the phone.
- AirPods can be used individually. This is excellent for calls. It means you
can "hot swap" one earpiece for the other if the battery runs out on the one
you've been using.
- AirPods do recharge quickly. The pods fit in a case that has a lightning port
on the bottom.
I have only one gripe about them: battery life. I'm seeing that a single earpiece
will only run for about 1.75 hours. When it's losing power, the user gets two warnings --
an indicator of a complex series of tones when the power is low, and then then the same
indicator about a second before it dies. Given that ability to swap one earpiece for another,
I would recommend once you first hear that indicator, pull out the other earpiece and
stick the spent one back in the case. The case has the ability to charge the earpieces
with or without connection to power through that lightning port (the case is essentially
a battery by itself). To check the battery status, simply flip up the lid on the case
while the case is less than an inch from your phone. You'll get a pop-up that shows
the battery status of each earbud and the case. Simply touch elsewhere on the screen
to dismiss it.
There's really not much to using them. Pairing them to your Apple device is a snap.
The AirPods take only one input from the user a double-tap to engage Siri. I've
issued the following commands with succcess:
- "Siri, turn up the volume by half."
- "Siri, start this song over."
- "Siri, play the previous song."
If you're Apple Watch enabled, instead of seeing the familiar red and green icons
for refusing and answering a call, you'll see the green "answer" icon is replaced with
a white icon with a green outline of an AirPods earbud. Put another way, the Apple Watch
is smart enough to know you're using AirPods.
Overall, I absolutely recommend these. But I encourage you to compare and contrast
your use case to mine when considering my recommendation.
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